Making A Morally Grey/Unlikeable Character

Writing Desk Archive
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This story is for episode btw

So I’m trying to make a morally grey/unlikeable character. It’s gonna be like that for the beginning of the story but near the middle or the end she’s gonna have learned and be a better person by then.
In the beginning, she’s a typical kinda “popular” teenager cliche. Usually, don’t put these things into my writing but I liked it for this one. Like, I want her to be this person that is very sociable and extroverted and nothing without her friends sort of deal.
The thing with this is that this is a kinda dystopian/scifi story. In this world the government controls everything and everyone but the public doesn’t really know it. And um there are people with powers that the government tries to contain. Nobody knows these people exist. The government will eventually bring it to light and fear people into thinking that these people are monsters/dangerous.
The main character is one of them but her abilities don’t show up until her entire family is killed causing her to almost instantly switch personality wise into this more reserved person who tries to just fend for herself.
I don’t want the viewers to like her in the beginning. Like I don’t want people to hate her, but yk- type of character where you know the things they’re doing are messed up.
Like I want her to be the type of person who only “cares” about her friends but kinda uses them for popularity, who is so absorbed into being popular, dating, and ignoring bigger issues for this.
I don’t think I achieved that. I made her have one friend in the beginning and at that point she’s been invited to hang out with the popular girls and her best friend isn’t invited. All she does at this point is complain about school and her brother and is nice to her friend at that point.
I guess I’m asking how to make her unlikeable and make it realistic, but still pointing to details that will be relevant later to the plot, like the powers thing. Like foreshadowing.
Anyone got any ideas?

If anyone has episode here’s the link:

@Helpers
@RealisticWriting

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Like in the beginning I want her to be kinda weak as well and not giving into her potiental strengths… One of her strengths later down the line will be her fighting abilities which in the beginning she doesn’t think she has and is horrible at anything physical.

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Added some tags :sparkles:

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Imma tag writers- forgot to do that before lol
@Writers

I changed the plot a bit so the MC is already in the “popular group” I’m gonna make a script in a sec for those who don’t have episode.

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Oh yeah is there an episode tag you can add cuz this is specifically an episode story?

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I am so glad you tagged me. opens up a book

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There definitely is :eyes: It has also now been added

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Maybe show some more interactions with her family. Like, they’re extremely important people in her life so when her family dies so it’s a bigger shock to the reader. That way the transition to this nicer person isnt as noticeable.
As for the morally grey character, well, high schoolers arent that morally Grey. In a sci-fi thing there could potentially be more laws that are morally Grey so the reader can kind of see that she isnt evil, just… morally Grey.

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Yeah when after her family dies she goes off to find those who murdered her family. She kinda hides her past identity from the government and also doesn’t try to do anything about the issues present- like the government just taking people with powers and stuff. She’s more into self-preservation.

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Then I think you’re doing an amazing job at portraying a morally Grey character.

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Yeah, I have the hope that the viewers really don’t like her in the beginning because she has this obsession with being popular and stuff and then they see her family literally get taken away from her like that and she has to deal with that… hopefully she’ll become likable then but at that point she isn’t really a good person. She just no longer cares for popularity.

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I think the idea is great, but something that could cause a problem is that many people (especially on episode) don’t want to read about unlikeable characters. So while showing how unlikeable she is in the beginning, did you think about anything that keeps people reading? I’d say the world they are in seems pretty interesting, so that would be my reason to keep reading!
And to your question on how to make her unlikeable, maybe show her be a typical mean girl in school to other students? And add her thoughts while she’s being mean to someone

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Yeah, I had this idea where she bullies this friend she used to have. I will make her have reasons for doing what she does because it’s hard to read an unlikeable character with no reasons for doing what they do.
The character is going to go through a lot of character development. Even though she mostly tries to fend for herself she does have friends (a little later on) that she does care for and kinda looks after them. She doesn’t tell them about her powers that will come up later on or who she really was but she does this to protect them from “her world” where the government is after her and anyone she’s friends with. But yk, if anything happens where her identity is revealed or she’s in a situation where she puts her friends in danger she will abandon them to both protect them and herself.
So she’s not completely bad but also not completely good.
A major flaw of hers is that she has no trust for the people around her, except for one person that she works with that knows her abilities. And even then, she doesn’t completely trust him.

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If you show during the story that the actions of this character are wrong or not well received by the people around them, then that could be a good way of showing the consequences of their actions, so the reader isn’t happy with them but they route for the people around them to the extent they also want this character to be better.

On Episode I once read a story about a woman who was literally horrible so she gets cursed to keep changing bodies until she learns her lesson. It gets frustrating because the changes are quite gradual but you fall in love with the kindness of everyone around her and she gets to see her actions from the point of view of others.

In terms of morally grey, you can do it so that while her intentions are actually good, she doesn’t achieve them in a “good” way.

Obviously character development is a huge part of all of this, showing the reader why they act that way without justifying her actions is a good idea.

@Episodians

Anything to add?

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Passie! Happy birthday!

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Alright now I need help with another character and I thought I’d just reuse the thread :sweat_smile:.

Alright so I’m making an Episode parody where the first Episode is like just as close to an Episode trending story as I can get it. I want the main character to be as annoying as possible in this one Episode without anyone suspecting (except like people who are good at detecting these things) that I’m intentionally making her so. I want the readers to be completely over and done with her by the first Episode, because after that I’m gonna move onto another MC. Basically it’s this idea of present people with one MC but it’s actually not the MC.

So a few things about the cliche plot (feel free to suggest things that would go with this but I already wrote a rough draft so I’d like to keep the basic structure):
The main characters name is Storm and she’s turning 18 soon.

Her father is Davon “Dark” Cloud and her mother is Rain Cloud. She has a brother named Thunder. (Ik this is obviously a joke and might lead people to think this is in fact a parody but this will be like one of the hints lol, it’ll be kinda serious aside from this. But there will be little things like this to clue people in, without making it too obvious or obnoxious).

My purpose is to basically make it seem like a typical story from the start, then by the end of the Episode I’ll have the viewers questioning whether it’s a parody or not.

Anyways… so the plot starts off with her best friend, Selene, waking her up to take her shopping to get a party dress. They go downstairs, have a conflict with Storms dad because he thinks it’s a bad idea for her to go alone because they have a lot of enemies. (Needed to push that daddy issues plot in there lol)
Anyway they end up going somehow and at the mall they encounter a group of mean girls.

Then they go to school, and have the typical thing where it’s hardly school and they do nothing there and it’s only to show and introduce characters. There, there will be new boys who all the girls fall for. She also has a boyfriend lol. He’s dry and such, of course.

After school is the party where the MC encounters the LI and things go down like in every one of these stories with the LI rescuing her. Then there’s a cliffhanger at the end with something really dramatic happening.

Anyway, does anyone have any ideas on how to make her annoying with this structure in mind? Like I would really like everyone to hate her and want her dead by the end of the first episode :joy:. Like what is annoying that characters do that I should include?

@Writers
Thank you sorry to those who don’t wanna be tagged but I thought this would be interesting!

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  1. Nobody should call her out on her behavior (except her enemies). That could help trick the readers into thinking she is meant to be likable while being thrown off when the villains pinpoint what she’s doing wrong

  2. I think you can’t go wrong with major “pick me girl energy” . It’s annoying while still being done ironically often enough in other stories that people will just see it as is.

  3. here is an idea: what if there is a genuine, justifiable reason that the mean girls hate the mc so much? It’d be a cool deconstruction of mean girl tropes where the MC is the one in the wrong

  4. I think the cloud surname is too obvious

  5. Make sure to keep chapter 1 in her perspective, utilize the unreliable narrator to make it seem like she is the hero. Maybe use narrator boxes and never show scenes she is both not present for/ unaware of. Keep it strictly in her head, but hint that there is more to the story than her worldview

  6. A part of me is kind of worried that people will drop after episode 1 because of said MC.

  7. Maybe introduce the real main character , during the party and show hints of both her story and personality. Almost to make the readers go “Why isn’t this story about her?”

  8. make the fake MC stupid short, even compared to the other female characters

Here are some Ideas for character designs I came up with:

Fake MC:

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Selene:

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LI:

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Head mean girl:

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I love it! I was thinking of giving the fake MC (rain) big lips but I didn’t know if that would be insensitive for me to do/comment on.

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I think if you acknowledge its problems it could work. Then again, I’m not a POC so you should probably ask someone else on that area.

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lmao oops I meant Storm, lol already mixing them up XD

But anyway here’s the design I have for her currently:

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