Creating an unlikeable but compelling character is perhaps one of the most difficult components of crafting fiction. How do you hit that sweet spot of unlikability without turning the audience off them? Read an excerpt from Marianne Delacourt's Too Sharp! As with any well-developed character, revealing their motivation is usually the key. We all know…
Some of their fans may protest, but Milady de Winter (of The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas) and Armand Chauvelin (of The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy) are not true antiheroes. Certainly, they are sympathetic villains, and it might be interesting how those tales would have been told absent their titular characters. That premise—the missing…
Why do we love heroes with a bit of bad in them? Antiheroes are popping up more and more in novels, TV shows and movies. Here's a look at why:
Billy Joel said it best: “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints/the sinners are much more fun.” For me, the same is true for protagonists. Although they’re called “antiheroes,” I don’t see them that way. They are simply flawed people, and in that way, much more realistic and much more like…
Certain television protagonists are not always the most honest, upstanding heroes that good-guy-always-wins Hollywood has trained us to expect. Some shows feature outright criminals and monsters, and manage to build a story around them that causes the viewer to sympathize with, and even root for, the antihero. Not all of these shows hit the mark,…
Certain shows’ protagonists are not always the most honest, upstanding “heroes” that the good-guy-always-wins Hollywood has trained us to expect them to be. Some shows feature down right criminals and monsters and somehow build a story around them that causes the viewer to sympathize with, and even root for, the antihero. Not all of these…
Not to be outdone by the titans of industry that Marvel Studios has become, DC Comics is set to release two blockbuster films this year, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad. While I'll reserve judgment for the Bahstan Ben Affleck Batman for when it actually comes out, the star-studded antihero/supervillain movie, Suicide…
The Devil's Only Friend by Dan Wells is the 4th paranormal thriller featuring a teenaged sociopath who fights demons for the government (available June 16, 2015). John Wayne Cleaver is a teenaged sociopath. A fact he's pretty open about. He also has a driving urge to kill, which is why it's a good thing he…
The premise of The Americans, which is set in the early 1980s, is that Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, a suburban Virginia couple who seem as American as apple pie and the Fourth of July, are actually a pair of ruthless KGB sleeper agents whose marriage was arranged by spymasters in the Kremlin. The show returns…
Ever wonder how you might have to dispose of a body? Hide evidence? Plan the perfect crime? ABC’s latest TV show has, and it isn’t being coy about the fact: it’s titled How to Get Away with Murder. The show opens in media res: four law students are in the woods at night over a…
