A protagonist who lacks traditional heroic qualities like nobility, idealism, or moral courage - yet still carries the story.
An antihero is a central character who defies the conventional expectations of a hero. They might be selfish, morally ambiguous, cowardly, cynical, or outright criminal. What makes them work as protagonists isn't virtue but complexity - readers are drawn to them because they feel real, unpredictable, and honest about the messiness of being human. The antihero has become one of the dominant character types in modern fiction because readers increasingly crave moral ambiguity over clear-cut good-versus-evil narratives.
Antiheroes let you tell stories that traditional heroes can't. They give you permission to explore the gray areas of morality, to write characters who make terrible choices for understandable reasons, and to challenge readers' assumptions about who deserves their empathy. If you want your fiction to feel honest about how complicated people really are, the antihero is one of your best tools.
Jay Gatsby is a criminal who built an empire of lies to impress a woman. He's vain, delusional, and self-destructive - and he's also one of the most sympathetic characters in American literature.
Alex is genuinely monstrous, yet Burgess makes us question whether stripping him of free will is worse than the violence itself. The antihero as philosophical provocation.
Lisbeth Salander is antisocial, violent, and operates entirely outside the law. But her fierce intelligence and refusal to be victimized make her one of the most compelling protagonists of the 2000s.
Kaz Brekker runs a criminal gang and shows little mercy, but his buried trauma and fierce loyalty to his crew make readers root for him despite everything.
Dark traits without depth are just posturing. Your antihero needs genuine vulnerability, clear motivations, or a worldview the reader can understand - even if they disagree with it.
An antihero isn't just a jerk. They need to be compelling. Give readers a reason to follow them - fascination, sympathy, dark humor, or a code of honor that makes sense on its own terms.
If your antihero becomes a conventional hero by Chapter 5, you've written a hero with a rough start, not an antihero. Let the moral complexity sustain.
Create an antihero who does something genuinely wrong in the opening scene - steals from someone vulnerable, lies to a friend, walks past someone in danger. Write 300 words that make the reader understand (not excuse) why they did it. Your goal is to end the scene with the reader thinking, 'I get it, even though it's wrong.'