When people talk about antiheroes, I often note that they are just discussing a moody hero that likes to dress in black clothing. Tip 3: An antihero does not have to be moody. Despite his usually being a villain, his actions in protecting others and fighting a greater evil give him an antiheroic role in the story. If you have a story where Lex Luthor is the protagonist, fighting to keep humans safe from alien slavers in order to protect his own business interests, he becomes an antihero within the context of that story. An antihero is simply a villain who incidentally happens to find themselves acting for the general benefit of others or the destruction of a greater evil. The same character could work just as well as a villain as an antihero. Now you may say that this character sounds a lot like a villain, and for good reason. Tip 2: Understand what separates an antihero from a villain. On the other hand, a dark or gritty hero, even if they do things that aren't particular heroic like murder or treat others cruelly, is ultimately fighting for some greater good. In other words, they can push a child out of the way of a moving car, but their ultimate goal will still be to torture and murder the terrible villains who did them wrong. Now that isn't to say that everything they do is selfish, but their core motivation regarding the story as a whole will definitely be so. Whereas a hero's goals will be altruistic (even if they go about it in a rough, dark, or brutal way), an antihero's ultimate motivations will be selfish. Just like with a hero or a villain, what truly makes an antihero is motivation within the context of the overarching plot. Tip 1: Understand what separates an antihero from a dark/gritty hero. In other words, your character does not have to be the hero to be the protagonist/main character. Please note that I am discussing heroes, antiheroes, and villains in terms of how they work as character archetypes I am not discussing general protagonists and antagonists as plot devices. Using that definition, I will give some tips that I have found useful in working with this archetype. This is not someone who starts out neutral but becomes good along the way, but someone whose self-centered goals push them to the end. For our purposes, the antihero will be defined as a protagonistic force who, with ultimately selfish motivation, inadvertently finds themselves helping others or fighting a greater evil. But in the interest of clarity and conversation, I will be speaking about the antihero in specific terms that I find most clear and distinguished from other archetypes. As with most fictional conventions, people have different opinions about what constitutes an antihero-ranging from a hero who is dark and brooding, to a villain who is the main character of the story. One of the most trending and most debated archetypes in modern storytelling is the antihero.
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