In
Praise of Anti-Heroes
One
thing I noticed in the world of Young Adult fiction is that a character has to
be likable and sympathetic within the first ten pages. Editors and agents at
writing conferences have told this to me. And you can see this in all the
flavors of the week like David Levithan, John Green, and Sarah Dessen, Alyson
Noel, etc. With the help of a good marketing focused editor who has read Robert
McKee, the writer will give the reader what they need. I reader needs to know that
this is clearly the good guy beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
And
I get it. No one likes to root for the bad guy. Unless you have anger problems.
Plus, in this day and age, a parent doesn’t want their child to be reading
about anti-heroes. God forbid the character influences their child the wrong
way and makes them do drugs, have sex, or kill someone. (Because if my bad
reading habits as a child I am now writing this essay in jail.)
A
good character in YA will only influence a young adult to disobey their parents
when it comes to dating or picking a school or job, how to sneak out of the
house at night, how to go on a cross country road trip, and how to listen to
classic rock and watch old black and white movies.
Some
have explained that books should be written this way to start an emotional
connection between character and reader. After all, all kids are just
homogenous by products of the perfect parental system. (I mean that in the most
positive way.) Young adults do not relate to bad kids who screw up. In real
life, kids don’t screw up. They know everything. Just ask any kid.
To
me, I feel this is a cop out and unrealistic. As a teen I was miserable and
surrounded my drugs, racism, violence, and classism. I was angry and depressed.
If I picked up a book back then by John Green and his geeky middle class
protagonist that falls in love with a quirky artsy girl and has to take a road
trip or a book by Sarah Dessen where the middle class preppy chick deals with
the death of their parent and sits around and waits to be a victim while
falling in love with the bad boy, I would have killed myself.
Sure,
I had S.E. Hinton who added some honesty to the genre, but mostly I had to
gravitate to authors like Bret Easton Ellis, Jim Thompson, and Barry Gifford.
(See how I ended up in jail?)
In
the real world people are not instantly likable. We have shells, smoke screen,
and costumes. Those are horrible things to like off the bat. We can never show
our true selves…at least not right away. It takes time. Like dating. That girl
or guy is hot, we want to bang them, marry them, but after time we see that
they’re off their fucking nut. They like to kick puppies or take your money.
Storytelling
should be the same way. Yes, I know. Storytelling is not supposed to be
realistic. It is supposed to help us forget our problems and create an
alternate world where we can live out problems in the safety of our head. Or at
least make us want to sing and dance.
But
so can anti-heroes. (It’s true. Every time I read The Killer Inside Me,
I want to boogie.)
There’s
nothing more beautiful than hating a character the first time you meet them, or
getting a weird feeling about them and keeping a safe distance, but still have
that attraction to their costume that you want to follow them into danger and
just take a peek at a life you’re glad you’re not having.
Another
benefit is that it exercises our ability for compassion. We learn to have
sympathy for the anti-hero. At least if you’re an emotionally well-balanced
person you will.
People
are complex. The secret of creating a brilliant character is placing them in
different situations, especially getting them out of their comfort zones. When
you see that anti-hero who was just smoking pot, beating the shit out of a kid,
and stealing a car go down the street and save a kitten from being burned in a
trash can from a bunch of preppies, you get this weird feeling that there’s so
much more to this person than you thought and it increases your attachment to
them, exercises your compassion. You yearn for them to be better than they
appear to be in that first meeting in page ten. Sometimes they do succeed and
you want to cheer and sometimes they don’t and you’re left with this sad
feeling.
Getting
the picture? When done right, a great anti-hero can make you FEEL SOMETHING.
Anything which is more than what those safe and likable protagonist who go
through life by the numbers.
So to help celebrate the Young Adult anti-hero, here is a small list to see what I mean:
Thief by Brian James
33
Snowfish
by Adam Rapp
Queen
of Cool by
Cecil Castellucci
Almost
Home by
Jessica Blank
Out
of Order
by A.M. Jenkins
Burn by Suzanne Phillips
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