Sympathetic Characters Part 5: Betrayal

One of the sharpest pains we feel on behalf of a character is when they are betrayed. In order for the reader to feel this pain, they need to know who the betrayer is. The closer the relationship between the character and the betrayer, the greater their pain and the greater our sympathy.

A story that focuses on finding out who the traitor is—a mystery—usually reveals their identity near the end of the story, at which point the reader and the main character discover the truth together.

In terms of creating sympathy you can use to draw the reader into the story, that's too late to be of much use. 

When it comes to sympathy, the sooner you reveal the betrayal and who's responsible, the better.

It can also be tempting to just show the effects of betrayal—the guy who won’t trust anyone, the girl who won’t love again—and only reveal the cause later, but again, that’s veering towards mystery. 

You will generate a lot more sympathy if the readers knows up front that the character has been betrayed and by whom (assuming the reason is a valid one). The betrayal doesn’t have to be the central focus of the story, it can just be something that informs a character's development. 

If you have a situation where the reader knows someone is being duplicitous, but the character doesn’t, then seeing the character being duped by someone he trusts can markedly increase sympathy for them. But it can also work if both reader and character know from the start. A child abandoned by its mother is a betrayal that can still be seen having an effect many years later without much need for explanation.

The kind of betrayal can be wide-ranging, from a double-agent in a group of spies to a cheating lover to a kid who tells on another. However, because this kind of situation is most effective when it’s someone close to your MC, what you end up with is a lot of stories where it’s the same person doing the backstabbing. The wife, the best friend, the boss... And because it’s obvious, for example, that a man would be close to his wife, the relationship is just sketched in on the page. They’re married, you know what married people are like, I don’t have to paint you a picture do I?

And so you end up with a lot of clichéd representations of what a perfect marriage is like.

In order to maximise the pain of betrayal, it helps to emphasise the positive sides of the relationship. Show how well a couple get on, how cool a best friend is, how important the boss is. But what often happens when a writer knows a scene has a specific purpose (e.g. to show a couple are close and loving) is that they’re so busy making sure they get the message across, the scene ends up being direct and simplistic. They forget to make the scene interesting and entertaining in its own right.

Betrayal is about being lied to or cheated on or swindled in some way. These sorts of moments have all the ingredients for a great, memorable scene. The important thing isn’t that a character is betrayed, it’s how they’re betrayed. How can you use what happens to show the kind of people we’re dealing with? How can you make it interesting and unexpected?

Because even though a man coming home early and finding his wife in bed with the gardener gives us the information, it does so in a flat and pedestrian manner.

It’s also very easy to settle for clichéd reasons for the betrayal. She doesn’t love him anymore, he wanted all the money for himself, the company had to downsize... 

Betrayal is emotionally affecting, but don't let the hefty weight of the concept take away from making the scenes where it occurs, where it's discovered, where blame is handed out, obvious and on-the-nose. You still have to make it inventive and engaging for the reader. 

The bond between betrayer and betrayee is key to creating maximum sympathy for the MC. This isn’t always possible. The betrayer might be a corporation, or they might be dead. But getting across a sense of what they meant to the character before the betrayal will intensify sympathy. Seeing it for ourselves is the best way, but flashbacks, exposition or narrative summary can all do the job, too.

If the MC is/was especially kind or generous towards the person who turns on him, that will also intensify sympathy. If the reader doesn’t know this is the betrayer, they’ll be all the more hurt when they do find out. If they already know, then the greater the outrage at seeing the MC being taken advantage of.

The act of betrayal itself can come in many forms, but the character you want to come across as sympathetic needs to be as blameless as possible. If he was planning to double-cross the other bank robbers, and they double-crossed him first, that isn’t going to generate much sympathy.

Betrayal hurts the most when it isn’t provoked, when the victim’s actions deserve a medal not a knife in the back, and when the betrayer is someone the victim cares about. Give the reader all three and they’ll be on the character’s side no matter what.

Throughout this series on Sympathetic Characters, the more unfairly a character is treated the more sympathetic the reader feels towards him. This is one of the most effective and versatile ways to increase sympathy in any situation, as we shall see in the next post—Sympathetic Characters Part 6: Unfairness.

***

If you found this post useful, please give it a retweet. Other posts in the series can be found here:

Forcing Readers To Like Characters

Sympathetic Characters Part 1: Danger

Sympathetic Characters Part 2: Suffering
Sympathetic Characters Part 3: Noble Soul

Sympathetic Characters Part 4: Outcasts 

And don't forget to check out the latest posts from other top bloggers at The Funnily Enough