How do I make a "bad boy" love interest?

I recently started making character profiles for a story I'm writing. Its based in present time and all the characters are in collage. I'm stumped on my love interest character though, I know I want him to be a "bad boy" but I don't know how to do that? I was thinking maybe something like he's rude and sarcastic but once the main character gets to know him they find out tat he's really messed up but caring? Is that too basic?

 

Thank you! I wasn't sure where to ask this but I know now! I've seen it portrayed really well in After with Hardin Scott, ill probably start there. I was thinking to maybe give him a really messed up backstory so he finds comfort in getting tattoos, smoking, drinking and things like that. I actually might change it to being a high school romance type thing.

 

I think Batman Begins said it best: It's not who you are underneath, but what you do that defines you.

And as I always say, the best way to make a character likable and accepted by readers, is to make them a good person.

A rude person is not a likable person.

Rudeness, as a trait for a character, (which I assume means this is what we're going to see from the character in his interaction with other people) is a terrible trait for terrible people. There's just no real excuse to be rude to people in real life, so I doubt readers will be very forgiving of it. And you can't say he's "rude but caring" because rudeness is the absolute opposite of caring. You're rude precisely because you don't care! You don't care that the waiter is a human being who's just trying to earn a living. She's not meeting your expectations. It doesn't work any other way!

So no, this does not work. If he's rude to everyone but "nice" to the main character because "he's caring" then he's a manipulative sociopath! Period! Any attempt to explain his behavior with a "hard life" or "abusive childhood" will just come off as playing the victim which is one of the traits of a narcissistic personality.

So, yeah, if you want your character viewed as an irredeemable narcissistic manipulative sociopath, that no one likes, and readers are going to roll their eyes at every attempt to be "good", then you're off to a great start!

Okay, so that's not the way to go.

What is the way to go? Well, I want to say as a woman, there is none. Bad boys, quite frankly, are just terrible people in general. And I say this after seeing several friends trying to find themselves a bad boy to fix and ending up abused or broke or both. You just don't change these types of people. The word "bad" isn't a cute reference.

You might say, "Well, okay, Kalisto. I get that's real life. This is one of those romance novels which is pretty much a fairy tale for grown-ups." Well, those relationships are not realistic. But they are also often criticized for the reasons I stated above. Just looking at Amazon reviews of these types of novels that try to use the bad boy trope ends up heavily criticized for the author's choice of a protagonist!

The better approach would be that the man is dangerous in the sense that he could cause great harm. He knows how to fight and he knows how to take care of himself. Often he's forced to do so based on circumstances. If he's a vampire, for example, his vampire clan might be embroidered in constant conflict. If he's a mobster, then it was how he was raised, and he's constantly conflicted by this idea of family loyalty. Now, it's not a question of being rude because he's an a-hole, but because he's in a situation of life and death. But it's always done in conflict with his moral compass. But at the same time, he's learned to control that ability. He's going to definitely grab a gun and shoot the person who threatens his livelihood, but then that gun goes right back in the safe. In fact, he may not even like the gun.

This allows two things: 1) The character to create merely the facade of being a "bad boy." It's merely a reputation bestowed on him by others, such as his enemies. 2) an opportunity for change.

 

You can still do college age, but those things @Homer Potvin said are true. A "bad boy" adult has a whole other set of troubles and baggage. He's old enough to have had rocky relationships and might even thrive on the drama to a degree or bounce from one relationship to another before they get serious. Maybe he's a college dropout instead of a fellow student, or maybe he's the brilliant but misunderstood student who blows off a lot of classes, listens to his earbuds when he is in class but passes his courses anyway. Maybe he's in a band, and that's more important to him than academia. Musician/bad boy is a cliche, but you really can't go wrong making him a drummer, lol. He should probably hang around with shady characters, too. Give him at least one friend who's a terrible influence.

 

A person can be prickly and direct, while still being a pretty decent human being. They just aren't concerned with soothing people's feelings so much as telling them what they need to hear. If that's the bad boy's character, then it sets up a story where the female lead is living in some kind of delusion, and everybody around her is soothing her feelings, telling her the surface stuff that feels good to hear but that fails to solve the problem. Sometimes what's needed is somebody who blasts through all the feel-good empty ego stroking and reveals the actual truth of the matter that all the nice people are ignoring.

If this is more what you're looking for I would change it from rude to direct or brusque. And maybe what the female needs is exactly someone who stops stroking her fragile ego and lets her know the more harsh truths nobody else is acknowledging. And maybe it takes her a while to see this about him. Maybe at first everybody just thinks he's a jerk, an obnoxious barbarian with no decorum, but he pushes her past some block that was stalling her, and then she realizes the truth about him that nobody else sees. I think it would be important though to make sure he's direct without being a real asshole. Or maybe out of defensiveness he turns rude to people who are jerks to him. It would also set up a situation where, in the beginning, the female lead is surrounded by sweet-tongued liars who make her feel good without actually helping, and in fact they're probably enabling her own delusions which are the problem to begin with.

Because ultimately what you need aren't nice people who lie to you to soothe your feelings, but a dose of actual truth, even if it hurts your feelings at first.

 

The bad boy exudes confidence. He doesn't care what you think. He is hypersexual. He probably has a lot of testosterone. He is a risk-taker, and damn the consequences. He doesn't follow, he leads.