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The Moral Question

Morality... Every book ultimately has to decide the morality of their story. In children's books, one might ask, "What's the moral of the story." That can confuse us. Those who grew up in US schools might treat "morals" as "lessons", and then ask themselves what does this story teach me? Most children's books have a lesson. They try to teach you to not bully, or to not swear. Thus, in a lot of minds, "moral" and "lesson" become the same thing. Then you grow up, your books grow up too, and morality becomes way more complex than a single lesson you can take away from a book.

The 6 levels of moral development kind of come into play here too. These are the "reasons" we make good choices, or bad ones. At level 1, a person only makes a choice to avoid punishment. If I talk one more time, mom will send me to my room, so I won't talk. At level 2, a person makes their choices for reward. If I act good, maybe I'll get something. Level 3 is appearance. I want to be seen as a good person, so I act good compared to societies standards. The 4th level is maintaining social order. This is the first level that where you act unselfishly. You act in order for the mutual benefit of society. Most people will never go beyond level 4.

Level 5 gains a better understanding of order. They understand why laws exist, and work towards the betterment of those laws. And level 6 is the development of universal principles. You have desires that don't necessary fit the law or societies standards. You have your own ideas on human rights, justice, and equality, and you're willing to follow your own beliefs. These people form the revolutionaries, the changers of this world. You all probably just thought you're level 6 didn't you? Sorry bub, you're probably not.

So why am I going on about morality? Mostly because I think it's important for you to think about it. A lot of people just write their characters to fit certain archetypes or meet certain goals. Every once in a while, it's a good idea to take a step back and think about why your character is doing what they are doing. That's the difference between a 2 dimensional character and a good one. If anyone said your characters don't have dimensions, chances are it's because you haven't thought about their motives, their goals, and their internal morality structure!

However, morality has its own set of pitfalls. The most popular characters these days turn out to be the most detrimental for new writers to emulate. Characters like Walter White.

Walter White is a badass. There. I said it. You were thinking it; I just put it into words. Game of Thrones is a fantastic series. I love how those characters are just so grey. No one is the good guy. Everyone is complex. Awesome. The current trends is to create characters that are bad, but do good things, or characters that are just neither good nor bad. I'll talk about some of the clichés, such as the anti-hero who is really just an arsehole hero, the nice guy who turns rapey, and the polarization of them versus us. These are the most common moral character types, and how they horribly go wrong.

The Moral Switcher

There is nothing a story needs more than some good character development, and there is no easier way to obtain character development than to have a formally good guy go bad... or a formally bad guy go good. I've already mentioned Walter White's decent into evil. You also have Buffy the Vampire slayers "Spike" redemption story. Let's just say, the moral switcher is a common thing. Sometimes it's a permanent thing, sometimes it just occurs for a single episode, chapter, book, or whatever. You have to team up with the bad guys to fight an even bigger bad guy, and actually get a long a bit (X-men 2 for example).

Besides acknowledging that the moral switcher is sort of cliché, the real reason this can go wrong is the result of failing to find a suitable reason for the character to make their moral switch in the first place. Spike took several seasons slowly turning into a better person as a result of a chip in his brain that prevented him from acting on his impulses. Still, even then, after he had convinced himself he was good, it took a scene where he nearly sexually assaulted the woman he loved before he truly attempted to change himself. However, after all that, there was still some bullcrap about a soul and those with souls = good and those without souls = bad that completely undermined the idea that people with souls can be awful.