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Balancing Sympathy, Severity, and Morality

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randomdude4 Since: May, 2011
#1: Feb 28th 2019 at 9:49:50 PM

Sorry if the title seems weird; I just couldn't come up with a better way of phrasing it.

I've got a conundrum coming up that I would like some advice for dealing with, one that largely deals with tropes like A Lighter Shade of Black, Token Good Teammate, and Start of Darkness, and how those in turn relate to the tropes The Atoner and Unintentionally Unsympathetic.

My story (which is fantasy, btw) has followed the life of my main protagonist Razimarr Quartz, beginning from his childhood growing up in a broken home in poverty to the point I'm at now where he's a runaway teen living as a Street Urchin in a city near the town he grew up in. At one point that is rapidly approaching Raz joins the criminal underworld as a member of a powerful Thieves' Guild. Admittedly they're more than that, running all sorts of criminal operations ranging from smuggling to prostitution to racketeering, just to name a few. While there are some sympathetic members of the gang, they are on the whole portrayed negatively, most either greedy or sadistic, sometimes both. They are meant to be bad people.

When Raz first joins he's a dumb 17-year-old kid who's grown up in abject poverty, lived on the streets, and feels abandoned by everyone he's ever loved. He's looking for a group to feel connected to, looking past or even joining in on a lot of their criminal activity because it's earning him wealth and acceptance unlike any he'd ever found.

After about 10 years, though, three events fracture his faith in the gang, with the third causing him to have a Heroic BSoD and contemplate his own suicide before realizing that he needs to leave. There's a fallout from that and many more events occur, but eventually he becomes The Atoner as a vigilante trying to make right by hunting the very same sort of people he used to be. That last bit is less important.

Here's my concern. I want people to understand that while he's a member of this group he does some bad things, and that he associates with bad people, but I don't want people to lose sympathy for him; I want people to understand that he's just a desperate person trying to get by the only way he knows how. Criminally he mostly just sticks to stealing, smuggling, and conning, but he does kill people on occasion, though primarily in self-defense or as the result of a fight between rival guilds. Additionally he also forms a drug habit during this time and frequents brothels, but these activities are meant to evoke pathos, the former showing just how desperate he is to not deal with the reality of his situation and the latter meant to show his futile attempts to fill his loneliness with meaningless encounters.

If I make the group too evil, and/or if I don't provide enough effective Pet the Dog moments for Raz, then I'm worried I'll invoke Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy and his ultimate redemption arc will seem insincere, either due to his own actions or overlooking the severity of others'.

On the other hand, if I don't highlight that these people are in fact bad, then I'm worried his Heroic BSoD and pursuit of redemption come off more like Informed Wrongness mixed with Wangst.

Pretty much I guess I'm just looking for advice or tips. This is definitely a plotline I'm doing, but I want to make sure I do it well.

"Can't make an omelette without breaking some children." -Bur
Millership from Kazakhstan Since: Jan, 2014
#2: Feb 28th 2019 at 10:16:05 PM

Look at the bigger picture. The problem you're facing is a matter of worldbuilding. Where does your story stand on the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism?

You need to show the reader that Razimarr simply had no choice but to live his life the way he did. Perhaps the country where he lives in has no social services that would take care of the poor and their children. Perhaps the government is so corrupt it's more beneficial for the common people to liaise with the Thieves' Guild and other criminals. There are many possibilities. Justified Criminal is the trope you're looking for. You need to show that sometimes there's just no other way.

Hope this helps.

Spiral out, keep going.
DeMarquis (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#3: Mar 1st 2019 at 9:54:37 AM

The novel "Ender's Shadow" by Orson Scott Card provides an example for you. The main character, Bean, grows up in a street gang, and even though the gang leader is depicted as being pretty brutal, the rest of the gang members are just trying to survive.

I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.
ArsThaumaturgis Since: Nov, 2011 Relationship Status: I've been dreaming of True Love's Kiss
#4: Mar 1st 2019 at 10:48:15 AM

[up][up] I'm inclined to somewhat disagree. It doesn't have to be true that there is literally no other way for the character to survive (which I doubt, but that's a separate matter). More important, I think, is that the reader is shown why the character is behaving as they are.

What I suggest, then is making a point of showing the character's perspective and feelings on the matter: If the character feels that there's no other way, show that. (Do they try anything else? Do they see things that indicate to them that there's no other way? How do they feel about all of that?) When the character visits a brothel, look for some way to show that they're grasping for an emotional bond. (For two possible examples, perhaps they try to talk with the prostitutes, even to the point of being kicked out; perhaps they leave feeling more empty than when they entered—but keep being drawn back, even if they themselves don't know why.) If the gang is so bad, show how they either justify or find ways to ignore the gang's activities.

In short, take all of the stuff that you've told us—their desire for escape from the harshness of their life, their desire for those bonds that they seek in the gang and in prostitution, and so on—and show these to the reader.

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Millership from Kazakhstan Since: Jan, 2014
#5: Mar 1st 2019 at 1:47:52 PM

It doesn't have to be true that there is literally no other way for the character to survive
True, but letting everything hang on the protagonist's POV is, storytelling-wise, short-sighted. The world does not revolve around one person's thoughts and feelings, even if they'd like to think so. As the story would progress, the protag is supposed to gain understanding of himself, the world around him, and his place in it. And with them, the reader would also gain similar understanding, but from an impartial position, about the character and the world they live in. And the further this knowledge would unfold, the more the actual reality of the situation inside the story would factor in. Both the protagonist and the reader would draw conclusions from the events of the story, but the reader's conclusion would be different, by the virtue of the impartial nature of their position to the events of the story and their wider knowledge about the world.

The reader always has a picture of the story's events bigger than that of the characters who participated in it. And in order to convey what they're trying to say through the story, the writer must have the biggest picture of them all.

Edited by Millership on Mar 1st 2019 at 3:50:40 PM

Spiral out, keep going.
ArsThaumaturgis Since: Nov, 2011 Relationship Status: I've been dreaming of True Love's Kiss
#6: Mar 2nd 2019 at 4:56:04 PM

[up] I disagree. I think that one can still effectively show the character's feelings and perspective without losing a broader perspective, too.

For the sake of clarity, what I'm advocating for falls well within a "third-person limited" perspective, I feel.

Even if I did agree with your general premise, if occurs to me that the development of the character's perspective, and especially those elements that lead to the character deciding to part with the gang and then oppose them, may well take the reader with the character.

The reader always has a picture of the story's events bigger than that of the characters who participated in it.
I'm not sure that this is true, save for the element of the reader carrying knowledge from outside of the story. (See some works written in first-person, perhaps.)

But even so, as noted above, what I was suggesting doesn't necessarily imply so great a limitation.

Put another way, what I suggested above is to "show, don't tell". Give us access to the character's thoughts and feelings, and show us why they act as they do.

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Millership from Kazakhstan Since: Jan, 2014
#7: Mar 2nd 2019 at 10:08:49 PM

Put another way, what I suggested above is to "show, don't tell".
Well, I'm not arguing against that.
I'm not sure that this is true, save for the element of the reader carrying knowledge from outside of the story.
Well, the reader is always carrying the knowledge from outside of the story. It's called life experience. What I'm talking about is that there are things that are shown through even the third-person POV that the character won't be able so see or even will willfully ignore due to their own limitations - lack of knowledge, life experience or the simple fact that they're seeing them from a limited perspective. They will be interacting with people who would offer different perspectives on the situation they're in, and they could not accept it or even understand the significance of what they've heard. But the reader can. And what has actually been shown to the reader will appear different from what is seen from the POV character's perspective. What I'm saying is that you should always take into account the audience's perspective and own life experience that they bring with themselves into the story.
I think that one can still effectively show the character's feelings and perspective without losing a broader perspective
P.S. The point is not to simply show the character's feelings, the point is to make them sympathetic to the reader. And for that you need to take account as broadest a perspective as possible.
P.P.S.: I get the feeling that we're talking about the same things, just from different (again) perspectives. For the record, I'm not talking about how to present the situation the protag has found himself in. First-person POV, third-person omniscient - whichever works, works. I'm talking about setting the situation up the way that will make the reader think "If I were him, I'd do (more or less) the same".

Edited by Millership on Mar 3rd 2019 at 6:11:39 PM

Spiral out, keep going.
ArsThaumaturgis Since: Nov, 2011 Relationship Status: I've been dreaming of True Love's Kiss
#8: Mar 3rd 2019 at 9:27:03 AM

And I suppose that I'm arguing, to some degree, that you don't have to have the reader feel that they'd do the same. All that's called for is that the reader understand and sympathise with the character's reasons for so choosing.

I doubt that I would act the same as many of the characters that I've read, but that doesn't mean that I didn't feel sympathy for them. As long as I can see their perspective, sympathy may be found, I think.

Thus, as long as we're shown, ideally in a suitably resonant or affecting manner, how the character perceives their world, how they feel and think, then even if the broader perspective contradicts their viewpoint we may still sympathise with them, I feel.

Or put another way, I suppose: as I see it, dramatic irony doesn't preclude sympathy.

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