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The Writing Process: The Morally Ambiguous Character
Morality is a slippery slope, even for fictional characters.
Five years ago, I discovered a sci-fi convention not quite 2 hours from home. Farpointcon is certainly Trek-centric, but open and welcoming to a wide range of sci-fi. They’ve gotten some pretty cool celebrities since I’ve attended. This included Jess Bush and Ross Marquand this year; Tawny Newsome, Billy West, Sam Witwer, Tim Zahn, and a host of others in the past. They tend to hold interesting Q&A sessions (and sometimes mingle and interact with everyone).
Beyond the celebrities, they have a wide range of panels covering sci-fi and fantasy fandom, cosplay, science, and literary pursuits. As such, they include more than two dozen authors, ranging from the well-established to new and independent. This is what drew me to Farpoint in the first place. It provided me an opportunity to mix and mingle with other authors, and a chance to sign and sell books for an hour or two.
What I like most about participating as an author guest at Farpoint is the panels. The discussion panels can be a lot of fun and provide interesting perspectives and insights. I’ve sat on panels on AI and its impact on creative writing, plot and character development, and more. This year, I even created and moderated a couple of panels.
Apart from those, however, I got to sit on a panel exploring morally ambiguous characters in fiction. This was a fascinating panel, and I thought it might be fun to share some insight about the topic with you.
What is morality?
Wiser, more established philosophers than I have asked this question. What is morality? This has long fascinated me because it’s such a broad and individual topic.
From my perspective, morality is the code that each individual uses to drive their life. Moral code is how you, as an individual, define right from wrong, good from evil, justice from injustice, and the like. It’s a high-minded concept that frequently gets shunted to one end of the spectrum or the other. Ergo, black and white, good and evil, and so on.
The biggest challenge with morality is its individual nature. My moral code is likely different from yours. Yet society frequently sets moral codes for how its citizens are to behave. This influences the law quite a bit.
Moral codes are often focused on being inclusive to a wide number of people, but wind up becoming exclusionary. This is how you get a minority set in their ways, demanding that everyone follow their moral code, even when large swaths of it won’t work for anyone outside their group.
Then, as if that’s not enough, morality tends to get boiled down to what’s right vs what’s wrong, and inflexibility about this complicates things. That’s because what’s considered right and acceptable today can become wrong and unacceptable tomorrow. Segregation and the notion of separate but equal is a perfect example of this.
What’s more, morality is frequently lumped together with religion and spirituality. All three tenets, however, are utterly separate. Religion is a community of like-minded people holding a similar belief system tied to a god, gods, or the like. Spirituality is individual and might be your belief in something beyond description. Morality is your coding for right/wrong, good/evil, and so on.
This is where ambiguity comes in.
The morally ambiguous
For starters, you can be religious but not at all spiritual and amoral or immoral. Likewise, you can be spiritual and moral, but not at all religious. All three tenets are separate, but not, frankly, equal. That’s because all three are intangible and have variable importance.
This is where ambiguity can easily start. We all know, or know of, people who are good and who are bad. Everyone can point to historic and not-so-historic figures and assign where they are morally.
When you write fictional characters, you tend to create their psyche. What drives them? Why are they doing the things they do? That’s where you insert their morality.
Sometimes you create a hero who is an example of morally good. Superman, in the majority of his iterations, is here. Likewise, you can create a villain who is an example of morally evil. Emperor Palpatine is here.
These characters can be interesting, but can also become rather one-dimensional. You know what they’re going to do in a given situation because you know their moral code and how they perceive right and wrong, good and evil, and ultimately, power.
What about a character who is morally ambiguous? Sometimes they fluctuate between what one might consider good and bad. Maybe they operate in the shadows. For the most part, they follow a code that’s their own, but it might be questionable where their morality lies. Examples of this include Batman, Han Solo (specifically, the A New Hope version), and Gollum.
Why are morally ambiguous characters so interesting?
Morally ambiguous is you and me
No matter what extremes of morality you care to consider – positive and negative, good and evil, right and wrong – almost nobody exists on one end or the other. In real life, most people are morally ambiguous regarding one topic or another.
This is tied to a combination of environment, outside influences, education, subconscious beliefs and values, and other factors that make you and me you and me. Life and how you perceive it is not the same for me as it is for you. Because of this, our experiences are wildly variable.
My moral code might have similarities to yours. However, there will be variances that change how each of us approaches life, the universe, and everything. For example, I believe it’s morally wrong to steal from others. However, I’m not inflexible in my definition of wrong here, depending on the why. Stealing money to make yourself feel more powerful and wealthy is, in my morality, way more wrong than stealing bread to feed your starving child.
Hence, moral ambiguity. Almost everyone has lines they draw for moral, immoral, and amoral. Because most people are morally ambiguous, fictional characters who are morally ambiguous resonate with us and come across as more interesting.
Balancing morality
As an author, you get to choose what characters are moral, immoral, amoral, or morally ambiguous (which, arguably, is amorality). Frequently, the challenge is making a character interesting without becoming preachy.
Moral high ground can lead to an overdeveloped sense of right. This is how and why many vocal pro-lifers push to make laws against choice when it comes to abortion, but support the death penalty as a punishment. This reflects their certainty of holding the moral high ground.
Even the person whom you might consider morally wrong believes they are right and holding the high ground. Let’s stay fictional here and look at Saruman or Thanos. They’re certain in their morality and hold to it as such.
Morally ambiguous characters tend to be more open to change. And that’s really what makes them so interesting. They have their beliefs, values, and the like. But in being morally ambiguous, they can shift their stance. Before you know it, they’re doing the right thing.
You, as the writer, determine the morality of your characters. Finding and striking a balance can make a good story great and keep the reader engaged. Which is why, often, the most interesting characters, even those overall not ambiguous morally, have some small amount of flexibility. Sometimes, that’s where the strength is found to redeem them, or the weakness emerges to defeat them. It can even be both.
Morality in and of itself is complex, varied, and fascinating. Applying it to fictional characters and finding balance is all part of the ongoing process.
Thanks for reading. As I share my creative journey with you every week, please consider this: How are you inspired and empowered to be your own authentic creator, whatever form that takes?
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