7 Tips to Make Your Antihero Stand Out

When it comes to story heroes, there are many kinds, from reluctant to tortured to tragic. But the one that’s getting a lot of airtime these days is the antihero.

Heroes get the moniker because of the qualities they embody: they’re honorable, courageous, selfless, and good. They’re people of high integrity. These characters make good protagonists because readers value and admire those qualities. We’re eager to walk with them on their journey, and we naturally end up rooting for them.

Antiheroes, though, lack many of the traditionally heroic traits—or they embody the opposite. As such, they really shouldn’t work, because why would we root for people who stand for things we don’t like? But many readers do get sucked into their stories and end up on this unconventional protagonist’s side, wanting what’s best for them. Authors make this happen with a few tried-and-true techniques for writing these characters:

• They’re complex, with complete backstories
• They’re well-rounded characters with a mix of positive and negative traits
• They adhere to a strong moral code
• They struggle with internal conflict

But with all the villain origin stories and other antihero offerings on the market today, we’ve got to move beyond tried-and-true if we want our stories to stand out. So let’s look at 7 additional techniques we can use to make our antiheroes more compelling and memorable.

1. Make Them a Reluctant Antihero

Getting readers to fall in love with an antihero can be tricky if, in the reader’s mind, their undesirable traits and habits outweigh the good. So start these characters out as the good guy.

Walter White (you knew we’d get there eventually, so let’s get right to it) starts out as a barely-getting-by chemistry teacher with a physically disabled son and a baby on the way. And then he’s diagnosed with terminal cancer. We like Walt straight off because he’s an honorable person in a crappy situation with a relatable goal of just wanting to provide for his family. In the beginning, he doesn’t want to resort to making meth. He doesn’t want to become a criminal. He’s just doing what he has to in a desperate situation.

The reluctant antihero works because they don’t start off bad; they start as a protagonist people can relate to, ensuring that readers are fully drawn into the story as they see the hero being pulled to the dark side.

2. Show Their Full Tragic Arc

These stories can start one of two ways: with the protagonist as a fully actualized antihero, or with a character who will become an antihero over time. Each approach has its merits, but the latter highlights the protagonist’s entire journey from start to finish. Readers will often stick with the character because they’re already invested, and by the final page, they understand why the character is who they are.

Estella Miller is the star of Cruella, a young woman who dreams of being a fashion designer and is doing her best to get along in a society where she doesn’t quite fit. Over time, her need to succeed grows, turning her into someone who is controlling and disloyal, someone who will manipulate others and be downright mean to get what she wants. Then she discovers that her mother was murdered by her mentor, and her desire for revenge turns her into the full-blown Cruella we’re all familiar with. As a kid, I never empathized with Cruella, but I do after seeing where she came from and what makes her tick.

3. Make Them Sympathetic

Reader sympathy is often a byproduct of a show-don’t-tell character arc—another benefit of letting the whole arc play out in your story. But even if your character is an antihero from page one, you can still engage reader empathy through the character’s vulnerability or weakness, as we see in the following examples.

• Tony Soprano: the ruthless, hardcore mafia boss whose panic attacks land him in therapy, where he must look at himself honestly and analyze his actions
• Lisbeth Salander, whose history of extreme abuse makes her violent and antisocial nature seem almost acceptable
• John Rambo: the Green Beret war hero who is mistreated and misunderstood and finally pushed past his breaking point by a bigoted small-town sheriff
• Michael Scott, the neediest, most desperate-for-attention, most annoying office manager ever, who you still can’t help but feel for…

Revealing your antihero’s weakness or internal struggle is a great way to get readers empathizing with them, which will encourage them to overlook the habits and traits that would normally turn them off.

4. Make Them Unusual

When it comes to creating unforgettable characters, never underestimate the power of a unique premise. Sometimes, giving an antihero a twist or fresh idea that hasn’t been done before is enough to make them stand out. It’s Sherlock Holmes’ almost-extrasensory powers of deduction. Or Dexter Morgan, a high-functioning sociopath and serial killer who satisfies his compulsions by killing bad people. And who can forget Johnny Depp’s Keith Richard’s-inspired version of the dishonest and egocentric Jack Sparrow?

To make your antihero stand out, give them a twist via an unexpected character trait, quirk, hobby, skill, or job.

5. Give Them Good Intentions

The most questionable of methods can often be overlooked if the character’s intentions are honorable. I really like Scarlett O’Hara for this one. She’s a despicable person—manipulative, a liar, completely self-serving. She should be universally disliked, but so much of what she does is to save her home. Author Margaret Mitchell is a master of making the setting a character, and readers come to love Tara as much as they love the cast. They don’t want to see it fall into enemy hands and be destroyed. And they recognize that Scarlett’s identity is so wrapped up in her family’s land that if she loses it, she’ll lose herself. Readers almost can’t blame her for doing what she does to save it.

Give your antihero a strong goal and meaningful purpose for doing what they do, and in the reader’s eyes, the end will often justify the means.

6. Establish Limits

Writing an antihero requires us to walk a fine line between remaining authentic to who the character is while still keeping them likable. One way to maintain that balance is to set limits beyond which the character won’t go.

In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, The Man’s purpose is to protect his son in a brutal post-apocalyptic world. It’s a noble and relatable goal, and he’s an antihero because of the things he must do to keep them both safe. But there are lines he won’t cross that many of the other survivors have already embraced—namely, kidnapping and killing people as a food source. Readers may not like a lot of what The Man does, but his adherence to certain ideals, even when doing so puts his goal in jeopardy, keeps us in his corner. 

7. Keep Readers Guessing

Let’s be honest here; it’s a lot of work, trying to make your antihero sympathetic and relatable. So maybe there’s another way. With the right circumstances, it’s possible to write a story that disguises your antihero as something else.

<Warning: spoilers ahead>

In the first full half of Gone Girl, we think Amy Dunne is innocent, that her husband is the horrible person and she’s his victim. But it turns out she’s as antihero-y as any antihero ever was.

Flip the scenario, and you end up with everyone’s favorite antihero, Severus Snape, whose good qualities were deliberately downplayed to make readers think he was simply a villain. When the curtain’s pulled back, he’s revealed to be one of the most awesome examples of all time.

Antiheroes aren’t new. They’ve been alive and kicking since the time of Shakespeare, Greek mythology, and the Bible. But their recent revival has created a slew of them, and you don’t want yours to get lost in the maelstrom. Use these tips to create a new—dare I say, Snape-worthy?—antihero that will top readers’ lists of favorite and most memorable characters of all time.