I like writing mainly anti-hero's but writing deplorable characters can be a little hard but they can be some of the most interesting to write.
I agree. I'm having a lot of fun developing the MC in my short story. Without giving too much away (I'm going to post it for critiquing when it's finished) I'm hoping that the reader's opinion of him will change completely by the end due his actions throughout the story.
Oh man, writing deplorable characters is fun. Here is one massive tip. Give the character a "Save the cat" moment right away. This is a Hollywood trick for when a character does something "good." I had a sci-fi novel I'm working on that I temporarily shelved to let the idea mature in my head a little bit. I wrote a chapter dealing with my antagonist who is an assassin working for a pharm company in the future. He was loading some classified information to a cell phone while he was sitting in a diner and was interrupted by the waitress. He insulted her and the restaurant to get her to leave him be while he was looking at this classified information. In his head he kinda regretted being so harsh so he gave her a nice tip then left because he had a "meeting." His meeting amounted to breaking into an apartment. Tieing up two people. Searching for something that this person had stolen. Then executing them both. My writing group HATED the antagonist.
Great tip! But now you've given me an idea for my MC that will require him to be completely rewritten!
Yes! I have the most despicable, grotesque, perverted sub-main in my novel. He is so much fun to write! I love how much I can't stand him!
Well I always inject a bit of jet black humor with mine or irony to make up for their repulsive nature and one of my short stories involves excessive and over the top drug abuse and implied poverty. I wonder how the guy who wrote the stage and screen play for Killer Joe felt?? I don't think I could post any of my stuff here since I don't skimp on the violence and language at times because to be honest if your going to be true to the character and violence is part of the character why skimp on it or tone it down. My assassin character is pretty despicable as well I would call him sadistic in some respects he doesn't mind collateral damage and has killed innocence
One of Martin Scorcese's trademarks were his anti-heroes. I love anti-heroes. I don't like real life anti-heroes but anti-heroes can make us aware of our own negative attributes. Everyone has a dark side even your most sanguine, positive and good-hearted people. It's just that many people refuse to get into touch with it or they ignore it. It is not good to let out your dark side but to privately get in touch with your dark side and work on it is a healthy thing.
Well I think you can write darkly comic situations with them even their acts can be darkly comic in nature then again my idea of genre like southern gothic is black comedy and decrepit settings and depraved situations.
A few villains here and there are always fun! Although I tend to go overboard with anti-heroes. I used to get really tired of writing about a bunch of goody-two-shoes, but then that was before I realized that all my characters didn't have to be carbon copies of myself. What I think is so awesome is when you come up with a character who is nothing like you and get good enough at writing him or her that not only can you convince yourself to agree with them, you can convince your readers, too.
