Sympathy for the Doomed: Developing Doomed Characters, Part II
The natural alternative to the aggressively unsympathetic or purposely underdeveloped horror protagonists is, of course, the sympathetic character who may not make it in spite of their appealing qualities (although the audience doesn't know this). So what are the traits that go into a likable horror hero? Personally, I think there are three key items:
1. Has a moral compass. This doesn't mean the character is a saint-- it's more interesting and more realistic if they're not. It means that they have a sense of right and wrong and stick to these values under duress. They make a genuine effort to 'do the right thing' over the course of the story.
2. Is ordinary. No, I'm not advocating populating your story with the Generic White Protagonist Guy. Rather, the character or characters do not have superpowers or exceptional abilities (rocket scientist, survival expert, etc). Whether it's family on a camping trip, or children of vigilante parents, the audience can seem themselves as the characters-- just a slightly different circumstance, and that could be me.
The exception to this is sci-fi flavoured horror, which often requires a set of specialist characters as part of the setting. However, the 'ordinaryness' can be reclaimed by scaling up the source of the terror so that the character's cool skills are helpless against it. Also, establishment of the characters are human first, skill set second allows the audience to feel the 'it could be me' connection.
3. Has 'realistic' reactions. None of us really know how we would respond when faced with, say, a shapeshifting, body-snatching monster, but we like to think we do. While real people do panic in a crisis or make seemingly bizarre decisions for any number of psychological and neurological reasons, we expect fictional characters to conform to our fantasy of how we'd act in an emergency. (Nor do we want to see characters hide and wait it out, even though that's a solid survival strategy for all kinds of disasters, because it's not an exciting one). We'll tolerate some level of panic from a character, as long as they pull it together and take what seems to us a sensible action.
1. Has a moral compass. This doesn't mean the character is a saint-- it's more interesting and more realistic if they're not. It means that they have a sense of right and wrong and stick to these values under duress. They make a genuine effort to 'do the right thing' over the course of the story.
2. Is ordinary. No, I'm not advocating populating your story with the Generic White Protagonist Guy. Rather, the character or characters do not have superpowers or exceptional abilities (rocket scientist, survival expert, etc). Whether it's family on a camping trip, or children of vigilante parents, the audience can seem themselves as the characters-- just a slightly different circumstance, and that could be me.
The exception to this is sci-fi flavoured horror, which often requires a set of specialist characters as part of the setting. However, the 'ordinaryness' can be reclaimed by scaling up the source of the terror so that the character's cool skills are helpless against it. Also, establishment of the characters are human first, skill set second allows the audience to feel the 'it could be me' connection.
3. Has 'realistic' reactions. None of us really know how we would respond when faced with, say, a shapeshifting, body-snatching monster, but we like to think we do. While real people do panic in a crisis or make seemingly bizarre decisions for any number of psychological and neurological reasons, we expect fictional characters to conform to our fantasy of how we'd act in an emergency. (Nor do we want to see characters hide and wait it out, even though that's a solid survival strategy for all kinds of disasters, because it's not an exciting one). We'll tolerate some level of panic from a character, as long as they pull it together and take what seems to us a sensible action.
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