We love a good revenge story.

The entire journey of a character from victimhood to avenger is one that almost guarantees audience engagement and their rooting for the character on the path of revenge.

The reasoning for that is easy: the character suffered a great grievance that is unlikely to be punished in any satisfactory way by the authorities of the story's setting (if at all), so the character sets out to deliver justice in the measure that is satisfactory to them. It's important to establish that either the perpetrators are evading punishment or the punishment is so light it can't even come close to be considered punishment. Often, the perpetrators will be living their best life until the character comes to them as a harbinger of justice.

Or isn't it justice? It may be that the revenge is multiply worse than the crime, and yet still we tend to cheer for it. John Wick is a great example of exactly that:



One can argue that a dog's life isn't on the same level as a human's. Or that it is- but how about the life of one dog vs. that of about a thousand humans? Is that still okay?

It depends on the way the crime that then kickstarts the revege is framed. For John Wick, the dog wasn't just a dog. It was his last connection to his wife that he loved, and his lifeline out of the rut of deep grief. The movie takes its time to show- not just tell- how attached he is to this dog, and how it is invaluable to him.

Now, with that emotional value attached to the dog, perhaps it is worth the lives of a thousand men. It certainly is for Wick and we have no issue rooting for him. Besides, everyone he kills is bad. Right?

Another element of revenge stories is that most of the times the target as well as the collateral damage of the character's revenge is directly or indirectly culpable for the crime spurring the revenge.


We'd be less inclined to root for the Bride if she went to slaughter random people in a supermarket rather than Bill and his underlings that directly caused the destruction of her family.

Of course, this is a fairly ‘clean’ way to have a character exact revenge, with a relatively minimum of moral ambiguity.

What if it's messy? Perhaps a character's revenge hurts a lot more people than the intended targets, innocent of the crime.



In Blue Eye Samurai (highly recommended by the way), the main character Mizu is a master swordsman set on a revenge path to kill all 4 of the white men that still exist in Japan, because one of them is her father and all of them have brought strife in the country. But mostly because they are the reason she is mixed race and therefore a social pariah that has been raised to be disgusted with her own self, unable to embrace who she is. So her only way to define herself in a manner she can tolerate is to be a sword of revenge that will cleanse Japan of what remains of the white race that was, at the time, outlawed.

But on her way to do that she demolishes a dojo and its students, upends a town and a variety of other things that would be spoilers if I listed them. Most of those people are innocents. They aren't white. They have nothing to do with her revenge.

And thus she's portrayed as a character that is very morally ambiguous, flirting with villainy even, in her cold, unyielding effort to kill those men or be killed in the process. (Personally I think she's anything but cold and unyielding, but that would warrant a deep dive and isn't the point here)

This is where things can get interesting. One thing is that while on revenge, your character's journey may have extra nuance. They may have to learn that they need to be considerate of others, or that their revenge isn't as important as some other thing that should take precedence. They may even be convinced to stray from the path of revenge in return for a better life.


This may or may not work.

That doesn't mean that they won't end up back on the path of revenge but if they do, it will be drastically powerful, and will definitely change the character significantly.

But back to the innocents. Are they, really?

Again, it depends. In some stories they unambiguously are. People that are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. If that is the case, then the weight of the story is on whether the character can, is willing, or will put their safety above the revenge, and that is going to be one of the issues to resolve in the character journey.

But sometimes they aren't quite innocent. In Blue Eye Samurai, one could argue that a big part of the problem that has created Mizu as she is, is society itself. The average people that are only too eager to subscribe to the marginalization of the weak or whoever is deemed socially acceptable to be everyone's dog to kick. People that would still mete out the same treatment if they could. So are they really innocent when they stand in her way? That is an interesting debate to have, and one that I think is somewhat at least, addressed in the series.

The bottom line is that a revenge story is a fascinating thing. It can be a window not only to the character's psyche but also to the society that has made whatever situation occured happen. The obstacles and the progressive wins the character has as they advance in their revenge (and of course the setbacks) can tell a lot about the character themselves (how they react, what they learn, what ethical choices they make, etc) but also what society produced them and their perpetrators.


The Glory is another great example of that


Revenge is never a happy tale. It has to involve terrible trauma and loss, and then it will be followed by more trauma and loss, with the hope that some of it is cathartic to the character- and the audience. How that pans out is up to you, the author.

Have you ever written a revenge story?

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