It is absolutely clear in my mind that virtuous characters cannot be meat for writing. I am really talking about fictional characters here.
A book full of virtues is no longer a story, it becomes a treatise in Ethics and Morality. And treatises of that sort, are not what novels are made of.
Surely, if one restrains oneself from delving in the underworld of the bad and the ugly, who will give birth to anything - for is not birth made of tearing, blood and pain ?
Virtuous characters cannot be redeemed, there is no redemption for them. They are born saints, forsaking all their human aspects - they are fit to be icons of worship.
And is not tapping into the dark, and willing to plunge in it, a way of expiating oneself on one's way to Sainthood, to Virtue ?
Surely when the pages are blackened with the human element in all of its decadence, impulses, bestiality, shadows - can the flip side be revealed.
