The Honorable Obsession… What can Batman teach us about writing great characters?

All characters want something. It’s what drives conflict. Or at least that’s what we’ve been told. A truism spouted over and over again. But still writers often find it difficult to sustain a steady flow of conflict throughout their novels. Why? Because just wanting something isn’t enough, our characters have to need, no deeper than that, they have to obsess.

Enter the iconic character of Batman. Everyone knows his origin story. After watching a faceless mugger gun down his parents in front of him, young Bruce Wayne dedicates his life to avenging their deaths by waging a war on all crime. An unhealthy obsession for sure but also an honorable one we can empathize with, maybe even idolize. Thus the persona of the vigilantly known as Batman is born, Bruce Wayne’s alter ego and superhero identity.

A victim of a senseless crime, Batman has no single person to bare his hate and revenge. The mugger was a nobody, a common criminal, a product of the larger corrupt society. So Batman is forced to focus his yearning for justice on Gotham City itself.

Batman doesn’t simply want to stop crime, he has no choice. The memories of his deceased parents’ haunt him like tormented ghosts. His crusade consumes his every waking thought. But it doesn’t stop there, because in order to honor his parents’ memory Batman cannot kill. If he did cross this line he would be no different than that mugger, someone justifying the taking of life. He is driven by his code and a slave to it. So much so that it becomes a belief. And remember belief is the root of all conflict.

The best villains in Batman’s rouge gallery challenge this belief. Enter the Joker, Batman’s yin to his yang, his polar opposite in every way. The Joker has no rules, no motives, and no moral compass. He is pure chaos incarnate. The Joker’s suffocating nihilism threatens Batman’s code because he exposes it for what it is, an irrational belief. The unstoppable force meets the unmovable object. How easy it would be to just kill the Joker, how many lives would be saved if Batman gave in and broke his code for the greater good? What’s the right thing to do? Is there such a thing as right and wrong, black and white? Or is everything just another shade of gray? You say moral dilemmas I say juicy conflict.

Obsession drives characters to the brick of insanity. Pushes them to their limits and forces them to confront who they are and what they stand for. It makes great characters.