When your character building for a particular story, what shade of morality do you prefer to have your characters?
I used to design protagonist that were initially unlikeable, but would try to show their likeable traits throughout the story. Yet I never quite put change into the equation.
I used to have a character profile for each age the character transitions to, with here is what they are like at 10, here is what they are like at 12, here at 14, et cetera. Until they turned 28, that was sort of when the story would peter out.
Yet latelly have only really had the energy for a streamlined profile I made, and focus on the first pinch point to second pinch point with shades between the first profile and second profile. Something basic like: character strengths and liabilities, weaknesses and concealed gifts (where they take advantage of the sympathy they get from other characters), a backstory synopsis, and a plot catalyst. Then a resolution for that particular character.
I'm not really sure I'd have the energy to develop a caste the size of an epic fantasy. I used to have castes of like ten, but now can barely manage two characters.
Trying to make myself believe the policy of less is more.
In real life, I tend to like people less and less as I get to know them (even my friends). They start with a clean slate, a perfect score, and points get deducted over time. haha
If they're the first character we're riding along with, there's going to be an instinctual sympathy for your protagonist, even if they're not a good person. Look at Walter White. Yeah, it took him a while to break bad, but even once he did, most people rooted for him until way late in the series, many even when he was the full-on villain.
Whether their morality ascends or descends with the story (I think either can work as long as they're both being tested all along), they need to do something heroic by the climax. Sometimes that's a hitman saving a child's life, and sometimes it's a vampire priest who fights the increasing urge to kill in his thirst, only to eventually do so because his victim is an abuser. Maybe they're Dexter Morgan (who has a pretty terrible arc if you look at the totality, so I sugest quitting after the Lithgow season), or maybe they're Travis Bickle.
I'm not certain there is an actual definitive answer to the question. I want characters like I want real people, both have strengths and weaknesses, with the tilt one way or another by story's end. Building characters through an initial biography is helpful, but I'm not sure you can have complexity and subtlety until you've written at least a rough draft of a story. An instructor at the Iowa Writers Workshop said that's it's the third or fourth draft of a story that these things emerge, that's when you're biography is ready to be written. Revisions are really the place where characters emerge and develop and you can deepen them. By living with them in your story, you get to "know" them and their potential growth within the story arc. I think I'm on to something when characters surprise me.
I think every author must draw upon attributes of people they know if not use complete characters. This is primary source material and it would be foolish not to utilize it, yet we shouldn't be reliant on our own circle of humans to create believeable, in-depth and compelling characters.
IRL, what makes people interesting to you? Use that as a springboard to imagine.
After all, a few people even liked Hitler, especially his niece. It's a matter of perspective.
I go more for the question who am I writing about and what are they facing? If the story is about a super hero in a hyper violent world, she'll commit more immoral acts because it comes up more. If the story is a child's book about two buddy robots trying to find their owner, they will tend to be much nicer 'people' who don't have conflicts that bring out those kind of flaws, even if they have them 'off page'.