Writing an anti hero

Writing an anti hero

Who do you think of when you hear the word “anti hero?”

For me, it’s Bojack from Bojack Horseman. This protagonist isn’t exactly what you can call heroic; he’s selfish, makes bad decisions, and leaves a trail of misery and even death everywhere he goes. Oxford Languages defines an anti hero as “a central character in a story, movie, or drama who lacks conventional heroic attributes.”

Anti heroes are tricky to write because they are difficult to root for. In Bojack Horseman, the audience spends the entire show hoping that Bojack will make different choices, will prioritize other people, and will truly confront his demons. At the same time, as you watch, you have a sinking feeling that he’s not capable of that type of growth. You watch as the people around him get hurt, time and time again, and find that when they’re angry at him, you’re on their side. 

Anti heroes often have good intentions, or at least they claim to. Maybe they seek to accomplish something positive, but have a cloudy moral code and are willing to accomplish their goal through any means necessary. Maybe, like Bojack, they’re a deeply traumatized person (well… horse) who ultimately is looking out for themselves. Regardless of their intentions, they’re an ambitious type of protagonist to take on. When creating an anti hero, you have to make sure they’re complicated enough that the audience doesn’t write them off as a villain, but morally gray enough that they blur that line.

Here are a few tips for writing an anti hero that your audience will find compelling.

• Make sure your anti hero is deeply conflicted. Without internal conflict, your anti hero is just going to appear to be a bad person doing bad things… AKA a villain. You would be surprised with how much your protagonist can get away with if they have an internal conflict around their actions. 
• Give your anti hero a strong backstory. One question people are going to ask is what made them this way? While you don’t have to spell it all out for the audience, as the writer, you should have a clear idea of what happened in your character’s past that gave them this cloudy moral compass. If you do want to share with the audience, it can be effective to dole it out throughout the story, using flashbacks or little lines of dialogue to imply that maybe your character wasn’t always this way.
• Make them complex. Like any character, an anti hero should have strengths and weaknesses. What about them keeps the audience rooting for them? All heroes have a fatal flaw, but they also have positive attributes. With anti heroes, the scales are just weighted differently.
• Utilize other characters. It can be helpful to have other characters surrounding the anti hero that humanize them or give the audience someone else to root for. In Bojack Horseman, even when Bojack is being cynical or cruel, Todd is there for the audience to cheer for, and when they share moments of kindness, it makes you want Bojack to be better. Likewise, when Todd gets pissed, you know that things are serious.

Have you ever written an anti hero before? Drop your best tips (or your favorite anti hero in media) in the comments below. Happy writing!