I am writing a novel in which characters do bad things to one another. For example, I have recently been struggling over a scene of domestic violence.
Essentially, a husband hits his wife, after the wife had provoked him, and intentionally tried to make him angry. I feel very strongly that verbal provocation NEVER justifies domestic violence (or any sort of violence, for that matter), and I have been worried that this scene could appear to either make an argument to justify abuse or that I believe that provocation justifies abuse.
I tried to resolve the potentially poor messaging by having a character act as an Author Avatar, and give a long speech about misconceptions about abuse, and strong moral guidance, but this didn't really seem to fit.
I write a lot of characters who do a lot of bad things, in a narrative that can seem morally ambiguous. How can writers ensure that their characters' bad actions, or their structuring of events that lead to bad actions, do not read as endorsements or arguments for bad behavior?
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