: Re: How unadvisable is it to flip the protagonist into a villain? Essentially, I have a protagonist who I set up as a 'main' good guy in one of my series. However, in my final series, I intend

@Sarah872

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This is great if done well, but it's often done poorly. In Star Wars Anakin goes from good guy to bad guy without much subtlety or believability. And in Harry Potter, Tom Riddle is always a bad guy, he just hides it at first.

A better example is The Good Earth where the main character starts off as a poor, hardworking peasant, and ends up as the same kind of wealthy, dissolute landowner he used to despise. Similarly, the central character of Michael in the Godfather Trilogy starts out as an idealistic youth shielded from his family's criminal activities, but is drawn by family loyalties deeper and deeper into crime and corruption. Yet another example is Bastian Bathalzar Bux in The Neverending Story (novel) whose story arc in the second half of the book goes from hero to villain and back. Finally, a good real-life example is Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta who gradually transitioned from freedom fighter to dictator. Using those as models, you should take a complex character, with both bad and good traits, and show how his early successes give way to corruption and arrogance once his circumstances change. Remember, however, he should continue to think of himself as the hero. His actions will always seem justified to himself.

Even these examples, however, are more properly hero-to-antihero transitions, where the ambiguous figure retains the role of protagonist. It would be an interesting but worthwhile challenge to transition the reader's sympathies entirely away from the original hero. It's worth noting, however, that most readers will want to see this character at least partially redeemed at the end. If he isn't redeemed, then the overall arc of your series is a tragedy, and should be approached as such.

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