Writing a redemption arc is tricky business. Building empathy in a character is crucial to making them likeable but making them pitiful is a hole in and of itself which teeters on the edge of annoyance and sympathy.
It's a balance of making sure the character is worthy of empathy but also ensuring that their positions in life are justified. But this isn't really the hard bit—no, instead its the road the character walks down that gets muddy with the rhetoric. Because whether a character is justified—aka the tragic backstory—is a matter of taste, or rather common sense.
Accidentally murdered your father because you got upset over a game of monopoly? Yeah I'm gonna go life imprisonment... But what if the father was a rapist murderer. Violence beget violence? The lines a little more blurry.
But walking the road of redemption is a matter of creating self awareness. How do you keep the consistency of a character's self awareness? It's trickier than I thought because a character's self awareness is tied to all parts of their being. Cracking a joke? Making an observation? Discussing a plan?
Oh man it's tough. Self awareness is one of those character traits that go past a lot of people during planning but I think its one of the most important.
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