The Lovable Sociopath

[The Din]

One of my protagonists is turning into a right evil bastard as I edit his chapters. This has always been my intent, as redemption lies in his future and that first requires some questionable acts. I just don't want to lose too many readers before then.

My question is: Are the majority of readers put off by the POVs of 'the dark side'? How much can my protagonist get away with? (Given that he has a valid reason for every action.)

So far he:
-Kills thieves and steals their loot, before chopping them up to feed to his dragon.
-Takes food from beggar children.
-Visits prostitutes.
-Ties up an elf and drinks its blood.
-Slaughters a tribe of halflings in defense of his dragon.
-And plenty more naughty acts.

 

[Feo Takahari]

Killing the halflings is probably too much, especially if this includes noncombatants. The rest is . . . well . . . I'd probably go with it, even if I wouldn't necessarily like it.

 

[Caged Maiden]

I dunno. The thieves, okay, I'd do it. The beggar children, he deserved a kick in the shin for that. Prostitutes, who cares. But drinking an elf's blood? That's a bit more than somewhat antisocial behavior.

First of all, most humans will vomit blood if they ingest more than a small amount. Also, WHY? Has he heard it will give him immortal life or something? As a person who is fascinated with blood and certainly doesn't shy from it, I still don't get it.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

I love a good, dark POV character. An anti-hero is a great concept if done well.

I think the problem you will have with the character you describe is that you will lose reader sympathy. What I mean by sympathy is that your reader should be able to relate to the things the character does if you want them to like him. I don't know many people that could sympathize with someone that steals food from poor children.

Regardless of whether or not he is sociopathic, it is essential that readers like your character. When I say "like" I don't mean he has to be good, I only mean he has to be interesting & relatable.

Here are a few ways to accomplish sympathy (there are more).

1) Make the character have some similarity to the audience you are writing to
2) The character should have difficult problems to overcome (The underdog syndrome).
3) Make the character something the audience readers would love to be (a skill, a quality, a trait, etc).
4) Show that people like the character. Even the worst, meanest men have mothers that love them. This aids in building sympathy.
5) Make him an expert at something.

Most good characters should be sympathetic for one reason or another, even your villains.

Take a look at the character Dexter from the showtime series. Now, although he's not a completely authentic sociopath he does lack the emotion & conscience the rest of us carry. (A true sociopath has no emotion & would view family, even kids as tools in their game, not people they care for).
Dexter is a great character, he is an expert at his job. His sister, father, son & various friends/women love him. He always has huge problems to overcome (another serial killer). He has a lot of the same life problems shared by all. And.... He can take revenge on the worst sorts of people by vigilante killing without having it effect them like it would the rest of us.
These things all garner our sympathy for him & make us like him, even if he's doing bad things.

Hope that helps.

 

[Amanita]

My question is: Are the majority of readers put off by the POVs of 'the dark side'?

I'm asking myself the same question because I have a similar problem with one of my characters. In my case, a character's dark side doesn't put me off, if a few conditions are met. The character's actions need to make sense to him. He has to believe that he needs to do what he does for some reason important to him. We as the readers don't have to agree but characters who simply do bad things because the enjoy suffering (usually) don't make good view-point characters
Still, the author shouldn't justify those actions either. See, the halfings are all evil, of course it's okay if he kills them from small child to old man. It's not easy to manage to do both, but it should be clear for the reader that the character's limited world-view isn't the author's own opinion but the character's personal feeling.

It's not that easy to tell that from your examples. A character visting prostitutes wouldn't bother me much at all. I've actually considered having my perfectly nice male main character do the same, but decided against it, because it might bother people in case of a man who's teaching a seventeen year old girl on his own. Shouldn't be a problem in your case though.
The same goes for the dead thieves. If your world is this cruel, it wouldn't be too much out of place and I've seen similar in quite a few stories. Taking food from children seems cruel to us, but if he's starving too... That's how things tend to go in desperate situation, the strongest wins. The tied-up elf bit really depends on your setting as does the situation with the hobbits. This is true for all of these. If you're having a very cruel world going through a chaotic period such as G R R Martin does and if his actions make sense, people will understand better than someone doing bad things for the sake of it in a setting that doesn't demand this.

 

[The Din]

Thanks for the input guys and gals. Like I said, my character has valid reasons for these actions, I just didn't want to get into validating my character's tormented psyche in a few short sentences. Suffice to say, the reader shall relate to his decisions, even if they don't like the consequences. (Much the same way as Dexter or Jamie Lannister.)

I was more curious as to people's general reactions to darker POVs (which some have answered -thanks).

 

[Steerpike]

If you want a good fantasy example of a despicable character as a POV character, read Monument, by Ian Graham. For a brilliant non-fantasy example, read Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov. Seeing how other authors have successfully handled such things is valuable.

 

[Devor]

Darker POV characters push you into a niche market because a lot of people just don't want to read about them. That makes it more important for you to do a good job of it in order to reach a larger portion of your smaller target audience.

I might make a post about target audiences. But in essence, if dark is what you want to do and can do well, you should write dark. Okay. But throwing a few bones out to other audiences can help as well.

For instance, let's assume there's only 20 people in the world. 15 like happy stories, 5 like dark ones, and your goal is to get 4 readers. You can shoot for 4 darker readers, but chances are you'll miss - I mean, that's looking for 80% of the audience, you have to be very good to reach those kinds of numbers. But maybe you can shoot for 2-3 darker readers, and just 1-2 of the happier ones. That's looking for 40-60% of your audience, and still only 5-10% of the happier audience. That's a much more attainable goal.

I mean, if you think that way.

 

[Ghost]

For me, the voice is pivotal. Average narration won't carry a character like that. The narration needs to pull more weight than it normally would to make up for the character's faults unless there are multiple POVs to dilute the effect this character has.

I don't need to like a character, but I should be drawn to him and/or his story. I don't think Jaime Lannister is lovable, but he intrigues me and I want to see him redeem himself. Wondering if he will is a big part of my interest in him. If he continued through the series by beating dogs and setting old ladies on fire, he'd be a character I hate completely instead of partly.

You say he has a valid reason for doing what he does. Because of that, it's hard to tell what he's like based on your list of his actions. Without knowing the details, I'd be worried the guy is a hypocrite if he's desperate enough to steal from children yet has the means to visit prostitutes.

I think most readers don't want to read about a character who dismembers people and steals from children. They probably want to relate to a main character and stick with him through the novel without wanting to hit him with a 2x4. Still, there isn't a numerical limit on we can assign to questionable acts. It depends very much on how and why he does things and the context in which he does them.

Do you have beta readers, The Din?

 

[Steerpike]

For me, the voice is pivotal. Average narration won't carry a character like that.

Yes, this is how Nabokov pulls it off. The narrator is witty and intelligent. Interestingly, though, Graham does it with a typical third person limited POV from the point of view of the main character, and doesn't take any steps to make you like anything about him (in fact, I think it is safe to say, there is nothing likable about the protagonist in that one).

 

[The Dark One]

Have recently been dealing with exactly this situation - in fact, just sent (what I hope is) the final draft of something to my agent today. It's not a fantasy novel (although, like everything I write it has some slightly surreal flavours).

Couldn't agree more with Ouroboros' point re voice - my character is a lawyer - very rich, very intelligent and very arrogant. He gets up to some unspeakable things but he's funny. Everyone who has so far read it has confessed to feeling quite guilty about enjoying his evil adventures and contemptuous narrative...but there are some massive twists at the end of the story which are designed to make the reader suddenly see the narrator in a completely different way. They suddenly have enormous empathy AND sympathy, and that's when he cops the worst come-uppance in the history of literature.

A come-uppance which was entirely undeserved.

It just goes to show how much you can manipulate a reader into loving, hating and loving again your MC - kind of analogous with the old three act structure - but the voice is crucial. Get the tone just slightly wrong when writing the loveable/evil POV and your readers will think you're worse than Hitler.

 

[Caged Maiden]

Wow now I want to read it. Good pitch Dark one

 

[Ghost]

Some clarification: When I was talking about Jaime Lannister being redeemed, I didn't mean that all "bad" characters should be redeemed. That's just how Jaime appeals to me.

And the part about hypocrisy, I only meant that it takes masterful work to make a hypocrite appealing and to show it in a way that looks intentional.

Your character can probably get away with anything if he was pushed into a corner and he only had one way to survive. Other than that, it really depends on too many factors, like the character's options, how it's portrayed, an individual reader's threshold, etc.

 

[The Dark One]

Wow now I want to read it. Good pitch Dark one

Thanks Anihow, nice of you to say so.

Funnily enough, I just had an email from a friend who hated it. Mind you, he's a painfully moral person himself, so I guess that made it a bit hard for him. Hate is a much better response than indifference.

He's the only one of my friends who is also a writer, so that might have been a concern, but about 15 have read it and 14 loved it. I like those odds.