The Irrelevance of Irredeemability, or: No One Cares About Your Feelings, Becky

Here’s a secret about yours truly: I’m kind of a shy writer. Not like the “No, I can’t bear for anyone to look at my work!” way but more the “Maybe other writers won’t like me so I’ll just kinda sit over here,” way. I’m a lurker. I’m a creepy perverted lurker and I’m in your forums, judging you and keeping myself out of it. So I’ve been creeping and lurking, as I do, and the thing that really has come to my attention is this new obsession with redeemable characters.

Ugh. And who knows if it really is a new obsession; it could be I’m just behind the times which happens more often that I’d care to admit. But I’m seeing this from people who don’t write a lot, like maybe they only do it at Nano or they’re working on their first stab at a book or something like that. They seem to get caught up in asking people, “Is this character still redeemable?”

And people (of the same type) have the nerve to tell them, “No!”

No?!

Okay, first of all, I’ve seen this asked about the villain, which, if you want your villain to pal up with the hero at the end after many a hardship and battle (channeling Pokemon, I suppose) then… okay, that can be hot too, I guess, but then these aren’t typically the villains/rivals who are mass murdering people or setting off on raping sprees or hurting animals. Typically they steal something or like, I dunno, call the hero a naughty name.

Villains, real villains, don’t need to be redeemed. The best book villains I can think of off the top of my head: King Haggard, Humbert Humbert, Patrick Bateman, Leland Gaunt, Annie Wilkes, none of them needed redeeming to be satisfying, and two of those are also protagonists and this brings me to my next point!

If you’re asking if your protagonist is redeemable, this tells me two things:

Your protagonist has done maybe some bad things while also trying to make his way in the world and get what he wants in the novel, which makes him cool and hopefully well-rounded and go you, babe, go you.
But you’re trying to nuke him by possibly watering him down the first time some person who may not even be your prospective audience tosses a bitch fit.

(Sidenote: Yes, your prospective audience matters. Your stories are not for everyone. Mine certainly are not. Nor should they be. When you pick people to look at your story for mishaps and pink gaping holes, you have to pick someone who’s aesthetic lines up at least a bit with your own or else they might tell you to lose necessary parts for the story you want to tell. At the end of the day, who are you telling this story for? Who are you telling it to?)

So, your protagonist has done some nasty shit, but haven’t we all? Haven’t the people who’re looking down their noses at your protag in the forums? But, okay, for the sake of exploration, let’s give this some leeway.

Your character is irredeemable.

To who?

There’s only two answers; he could either be deemed irredeemable by the characters in his story or by the reader. If it’s the characters, that sounds like it has branches. His best friend can’t forgive him for fucking his grandmother? For quitting his job, ditching responsibilities just as the economy collapses, and joining a tribe in Papua New Guinea? For stealing his winning lottery ticket? Sounds good to me. Then if you want them to fix their friendship by the end, how does he make up for being a colossal douche? Or if you want them to go separate ways and live to be terrorized by the memory of what happened, that’s great too. You could do almost anything with characters who can’t or won’t forgive or want to forgive but don’t really know how.

If he can’t be redeemed by the reader… uh. SO?!

I mean really, who gives a fuck? As long as the reader is entertained and moved in some way, who cares if it doesn’t fall into this hippy-dippy we-are-the-world redeemable and everyone lives happily ever after schlock? I’ve had it! Officially!

…

Zen.

Okay, okay, okay. Look, here’s the thing. I just get so worried. In a forum the other day, I saw a girl describe her main character, and he was a total dick. He was a blond twink dick who thought the world owed him everything and was a bit ditsy to boot. And that sounded magnificent. I was literally salivating. But then you have these people popping up who are literally just random assholes telling her, “I dunno, he may be too unlikable.” Or, “Well, okay, but how’s he going to be redeemed at the end?” Filling this young girl’s head with NONSENSE.

And I wished I could take her aside and tell her her story is good and her character is boss and as long as she writes well, as long as each sentence makes me want to read the next, and as long as her blond dick of a protagonist fights like hell to get whatever his spoiled little heart desires, then those people in the forums can redeem this dick.