#WordWeavers 2026.02.02 — Do you enjoy writing "good", "bad" or morally grey characters more? Why? CW: Morality vs Ethical behavior.
In that "morality" is subjective—based on a set of rules that a powerful person or organization, generally religious, has set as good and just—my characters are to a large degree amoral. For example, women who act independently upon their desires and ambitions, especially without the "guidance" of their father, brothers, or husband are amoral by definition and therefore branded as bad by one or another religious standard. Such things are not considered negotiable. Except by the hypocrisy of bribes or raw power.
If we substitute "ethically grey," the goodest of good characters I depict display ethical flaws. I don't write fairy tales, and my princesses are not of the Disney persuasion. I enjoy making my characters wrestle with their ethics and principles, or to act with limited or misdirected ethics and principles, to contrast the good, the bad, and the ugly in people and society. I enjoy highlighting how morally bad women can be seen as ethically good women defying oppressive authority. If I could not write about the oppression of women and about the abuse everyone, regardless of gender, suffers thanks to the social and moral gender roles indoctrinated into us, I would not be writing at all.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
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