I love films and stories where the protagonist is someone you'd probably not like very much in real life. Maybe they've done a lot of people wrong, they have terrible secrets, that kind of thing. Obviously this is quite a hard thing to write into a screenplay; you want the audience and reader to remain engaged.
So my question is, how would you portray them? Through a single act that shows their good side? Would you go all-in and make the audience want to see their demise?
I'm curious, and currently writing a character like this. I would love to hear your thoughts.
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Hi, Nikita Simpson. Since all my protagonists have positive character arcs, I would have the protagonist do things that show their good side instead of going all-in and make the audience want to see their demise. I would also show why the protagonist is the way they are so other characters and the audience will understand why the protagonist is that way.
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This is a great question Nikita Simpson and I've never done it. But the best example I can think of is Walter White from Breaking Bad. I wasn't a fan of the character because it glorified bad choices - kinda plays with the mind a little. Even so, I watched it to the end.
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I have written protagonists I can't stand, it's like splintering my own personality to write for them.
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I have a "bad" protagonist in the screenplay I'm working on and he's absolutely my favorite character to write. The style I write him in is akin to if Justified's Raylan Givens were evil. He's always the coolest dude in the room, so even when he does terrible things, he's hard not to root for. I think the key, though, is in grounding your bad protagonist's actons in an internal logic that, to the protagonist, isn't "bad." Silco from Arcane was a great example of this. He's every inch the bad guy, but you understand his motivations and even sympathize him. I think that's what keeps an audience engaged and why the best bad guys are people you love just a little bit despite what they do wrong.
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I wrote a script about an ex-convict who examines his life while running a marathon. He's not a very likeable guy, and we learn about his bad choices during flashbacks. But what I tried to do was bring out his humanity. No one is perfect , and we've all made bad choices. Explain why he made those bad choices. Show his regret. Mine is a story of redemption. But sounds like maybe your character doesn't seek to redeem himself. So, yes, find some way to tap into his humanity. We have to see some part of ourselves in him in order to care what happens.
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I've written a few scripts were people said "I don't like her very much" at first but end up rooting for them as the show goes on. These characters often have ambiguous moral centers, and they make some flawed decisions, which leads to consequences, and they have to deal with the fall out. People get caught up watching the journey of what she does next to fix it and the outcomes, which might lead to discovery, realization or tragedy.
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The closest I have to a villain protagonist is my comic Conviction's Swithun, but you don't see him committing any evil acts; his entire arc is about leaving Hell to reunite with his lover, and he's in Hell in the first place because he went against The Natural Order of Things by taking control of his fate (which is considered a big sin in-universe, especially if you're simultaneously from a magically gifted bloodline as well as a disciple of the time god, not to mention all the times he's eaten The Forbidden Fruit). And naturally he's a victim of fate first, so you can argue that he's in Hell for taking revenge on fate. All in all, that doesn't make him entirely unrelatable, even if the entire nature of his story is fantastical/surreal.
My own material aside... I'm watching The Sopranos for the first time and just like in Breaking Bad, I find myself captivated by the villain protagonists lol with Walter White obviously I feel bad for his situation but at the same time, the show takes great pains to show everyone as people, so the bad characters have endearing points and the good characters have moments that piss us off (Skyler, anyone?). Walter is highly intelligent and it's fun watching him get out of situations that he really shouldn't have survived. In The Sopranos, I love Tony because despite him being a mob boss, he's a flawed man with some morals about him, and he's quite likeable and charming. He knows when to tell someone to stay out of the mob life.
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I often make my protagonist with a good side no matter how evil they may actually be. I’ll show them doing something kind, but the rest of their scenes will definitely paint their evil picture.
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A good character can turn himself in so called bad protagonist, when he will decide to take justice into his own hands, because he doesn't have any other choice,when he's tricked by the law. I intend to write a script for this kind of character. How man can be forced to do awful things, despite the circumstances.
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I think the most compelling portrayals are where the villain leans into their mentality and psychology out of a sense of honor or obligation or 'doing the right thing'. Especially as we become ever more cognizant of how the use of and application of 'evil' is being watered down to mean much less than what we are used to it meaning, I think showing a 'nice side' for the purpose of sanitizing the character for the audience risks making your villain inauthentic.