About my characters...

[Steerpike]

In one story I am working on, in sort of a dystopian fantasy setting, the two main characters are not admirable at the beginning. One is a teenage girl who is a drug addict and prostitute. The other is her sometimes boyfriend, who beats her up. He's also the one who got her hooked on drugs and into prostitution.

As the story progresses, the characters grow and I want them to be viewed as admirable, or at least redeemed, by the end of the tale. I'm not having too much trouble with the girl - she's as much a victim as anyone. The boyfriend got hold of her very young and set her down the current path. The boyfriend is a larger problem. I can't stand the guy myself, as I'm writing about him, and I'm wondering whether I can successfully make him likeable by the end. For this story, I want him to end up sympathetic. I think he's an interesting character, but my dislike for him early on is great.

What do you think - too much to come back from? I may be personally biased because I've worked with shelters for battered women, and this character's violence against the girl puts him in a very deep hole in my own mind. Maybe it won't be as hard to redeem him for some readers. I don't know.

Thoughts?

 

[Devor]

My first thought is that it's a pretty steep pit to crawl out of, and the easiest way to set up a believable path to redemption would be to pass the buck. He's corrupt because somebody pushed him in to it, and he's just passing it along. On the surface that's been done before, but you could maybe twist it or dilute it enough to get it to work.

In my own life, there have been times where I've had tensions build to the point where I've hit things or thrown my phone against the wall. I don't want to over-compare myself to this character of yours, but for me, the thing which builds the anger to that point is getting nagged at a time where you're trying to fix something that's been wearing at you a while. So this character of yours might find himself yelling, I'm trying to fix this, shut up about the dishes!, and that sentiment could turn abusive for two reasons: First, the angry tension has been built up significantly and suddenly in that moment as positive energy sours, and second, she becomes an obstacle preventing him from doing what he considers to be the right thing.

There is always, of course, an element of choice, even with the most violent of emotions. And there are, of course, some pretty despicable people out there. But I thought the above scenario might help open the possibility of how an abusive character might believably be constructed with an eye towards redemption.

 

[JCFarnham]

How long's your book going to be?

He might never achieve redemption thats for sure, perhaps not even sympathy (in light of his earlier misgivings) but you might find you can reconcile his "differences" with the girlfriend - say he lets her go, allows her to be a better woman without dragging her down. He doesn't come back from anything so to speak, but we can, how ever slightly, admire him for letting the whole thing go and moving on to ruining someone elses life.

That's probably your best bet, and the easiest to pull off with a conclusion to their relationship.

The second option and probably more of a stretch is to set him on the path to redemption by the end of the book. He's never painted in a good light, but there is a suggestion at the end that he could possibly be better.

Actually you could do both at the same time I suppose. How's that?

You'll need to tread carefully. Make sure the issues aren't tiptoed around, and make sure not to come across as glorifying it. I'm sure you wouldn't considering your background but sometimes the simple act of highlighting an issue in fiction is enough to "raise the hackles" so to speak. Some people huh

 

[grahamguitarman]

It would be very difficult. I too would have difficulty liking such a character, having been physically abused myself as a child.

However perhaps if you explore the reasons for the boyfriends behaviour you can begin to redeem him in the eyes of the reader. If he was abused as a child then maybe he is a classic case of the victim becoming the abuser. And by having him face up to and overcome his own personal demons, you can help the reader to see that he can indeed be redeemed. Realising that he has become the very thing he hated as a child could be a powerful catalyst for change.

Its quite rare for abusers to reform in this way, but it can happen.

Some people however can never be redeemed I think. My own abuser (my father) for example, will never admit that he did anything wrong, even now, because he is a sick and evil man.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Might be possible to redeem him by having him self-sacrifice in some way. An abusive guy isn't plausibly going to become non-abusive unless the underlying issues are dealt with, but that really only happens through lots of psychotherapy (or, in some case, alterations to diet/medication).

So if he realizes he can't help but abuse her, then maybe the best way for him to become sympathetic or likable (or at least marginally so) might be to have him go off on some kind of suicide mission so that he can do something self-sacrificing and noble, and finally give Girl the peace she needs.

 

[The Din]

You could make the boyfriend overly possessive (for a pimp anyway) as in he gets jealous of all the 'Johns' and beats her because he thinks she's falling in love with them. Throw in a few scenes of boyfriend getting beat up by the 'Johns' friends as he tries to protect her and you might eventually provoke a little sympathy out of the reader.

As a side note, I'd like to see the positions reversed for a change, have the boyfriend dependent on the girl and forced to suffer all sorts of humiliations to get his fix. You could have the girl pimp him out to her gay friends and beat him for not complying.

 

[Queshire]

What you're trying to do sounds really challenging, and I personally wouldn't feel confident doing it. I would take the boyfriend character's traits and apply them into an antagonistic older character make him like a father type character to the two, they hate him but they love him, and change the boyfriend character to be broken in another way.

However if you're set on using him as is, hm... have you read the Neon Genisis Evangelion fanfic NGE: Nobody Dies? The author does a good redemption side plot with one of the character's mother. Now I don't have experience with this type of thing but I think what it boils down to is;

He has to WANT to change, he has to acknowldege what he is doing is wrong, but maybe for some reason he can't change or doesn't have enough time. Maybe he promises himself that he'll change once they have enough money to live off of, or once whatever the plot is done is completed.

He has to have a REASON for doing whatever it is he has done, why does he think it's acceptable that he does it? A common reason is that the same was done to him.

And to actually change he has to be SMACKED in the face with just how horrible he has been. Something has to open his eyes to just what a horrible person he is. Maybe seeing some physical evidence of his actions, or seeing how much worse it could be. This could be him given the "not so different after all" by some scum that even the boyfriend character views as a horrible character and then the boyfriend realizing that they WEREN'T so different afterall, or the Girlfriend character almost dying or actually dying, not neccesaryily by the boyfriend's hand but by some way that he blames himself as responsible for.

I hope that helps...

 

[Helen]

I don't think it's a steep pit to crawl out of.

It's all about provoking him to change or to demonstrate a better side.

IMO it's all relative.

For instance, if the girlfriend is kidnapped by an even more intolerable antagonist and he goes to rescue her, then that makes him better...even likeable.

Also, he may care for someone if not the girl. Showing that may make him likeable.

I see more than a few options.

 

[ThinkerX]

True story from my own experience. Way back when I was young, I used to know a kid who were always in trouble - drinking, drugs, thieving - everything from burglary to grand theft auto. Eventually, of course, he got caught and locked up for a couple of years. That changed him - made him really sit back and think about the way his life had gone to that point. He got involved in one of these work-rehab things the prison system engages in, got released, and used that training to get a quasi-decent job. A few years after that he was married. Episode that sticks in mind was he brought his family out to my folks place for a grand get-together (fifty - sixty people) and one of the other guests managed to lock her keys in her car. Naturally, we all turned to him - because we *knew* that getting into locked cars was something he used to be good at. He said 'no', saying that part of his life was all the way behind him. Took three or four of us backyard mechanic types (with a garage full of tools twenty feet from the car) a good fifteen minutes to get that dang door open.

Now...that sort of thing is not always the case. Usually, in fact, it is not - for every kid I know of who reformed like that, there are many more who did not. But sometimes, a miscreant like that will undergo an experience which really will cause them to rethink their lives, and ask if this is how they still want to be doing things a decade down the trail.