Author Hilary Layne recently published an incisive video essay dissecting why most modern heroes feel hollow despite having a veneer of moral complexity. She rightly points out that contemporary writers have been trained to conflate moral ambiguity with mere emotional confusion.
These days, the height of heroism is a character feeling bad about his misdeeds. And maturity means never taking a side.
Hillary makes a convincing case that lionizing feelz is nonsense. Strong feelings don’t necessarily signal a real ethical dilemma any more than the absence of feeling means your story has moral weight. As she demonstrates, a character like Benjamin Martin from The Patriot remains compelling, not because he’s racked with guilt or because the script manipulates the audience’s emotions, but because the movie measures his actions against an objective code.
This alone is a valuable insight, and it’s one most critics never articulate so precisely.
But it doesn’t go far enough.
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Removing emotion as the measuring stick doesn’t give us an objective moral standard by default. Even dry-eyed Vulcan morality has a logical foundation. For a story to engage the reader’s moral imagination in any lasting manner, the author must not only avoid making emotion the arbiter of good and evil but also positively establish the moral standard by which acts in the story are judged.
Put plainly: It isn’t enough to say, “Morality isn’t subjective feelings.” You also must say—and show—what the moral standard is.
Consider The Patriot again. Martin’s struggle to restrain his temper is not compelling just because it’s an inner conflict. It matters because the film—and the world it depicts—has a clear sense of moral law. Martin believes that losing himself to rage makes him less than human, and that protecting innocent life is an inviolable duty. When he hesitates to act out of fear that he’ll become a beast, the story doesn’t leave the audience in limbo. The moral framework is explicit: Failing to defend his family is wrong, letting vengeance consume him is wrong, and the hard path is to act without becoming a slave to rage.
And the audience is left with no uncertainty about how Martin knows that succumbing to vice is wrong when he prays to God for pardon. On the other side of the coin, the movie uses the same standard to show that Tavington is evil when he burns down a church with the congregation inside.
These are not vague intuitions or personal feelings. They’re articulated standards that the film invites the audience to recognize as grounded in universal principles of duty, justice, and charity.
Hilary also discusses First Blood, which is even clearer. Rambo’s actions are measured against a code instilled by the same military tradition shaped by men like Martin. He doesn’t attack out of malice or impulse. He defends himself because he is under assault and refuses to kill when he can avoid it. Whether or not viewers share Rambo’s experiences, they can see that his morality is consistent: survival without unnecessary cruelty. The story gains power precisely because this code is recognizable and coherent.
Contrast Martin and Rambo with the so-called heroes of the Marvel films Hilary references. In Captain America: Civil War, the inciting incident is Wanda Maximoff’s unintentional civilian casualties. The response is not “Did she violate a known principle of justice?” It’s “How does this make everyone feel?” The film never defines a clear moral standard, so the ensuing arguments collapse into sentiment. Is the UN oversight good because it soothes public anxiety? Is it bad because it makes Steve Rogers feel uneasy? Who can say?
When your story’s entire ethical architecture depends on characters feeling sorry or afraid, you leave the audience with nothing but raw reaction.
That is why many modern attempts to craft morally complex heroes fall flat. The problem is not simply that writers lean on emotion. It’s that they have no positive moral truth to offer in place of it.
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If you’re a storyteller, here’s the hard truth:
You must know, and show, what your story’s moral standard is.
You can’t get away with just refusing to say that morality is subjective. That’s necessary, but not sufficient. If you don’t anchor your story in a coherent moral framework grounded in a reality that transcends your characters’ feelings or the audience’s reactions, your conflict has no real stakes.
Which brings us to the other example Hilary mentioned: Attack on Titan.
When Eren first transforms into a Titan, everyone is terrified. But the story doesn’t stop there and wallow in “How do we feel about this?” navel gazing. Instead, it asks:
Can he control it?
Is he dangerous to his allies?
Does he intend to defend humanity?
Those are objective questions. The answers determine whether Eren should be executed or given a chance to fight. His friends defend him based on his actions. Even as the larger conflict raises harder dilemmas, the survival of humanity, not people’s feelings, remain central to the story’s moral calculus.
If AoT’s writers had indulged in “Maybe he’s bad because he makes us feel unsafe” emoting, the story would have collapsed into the same vacuous sentimentality as so much Western media.
However …
I’d go a step further than Hilary: Not only should you avoid basing morality on emotion, you should identify the source of your story’s moral framework in the text.
Don’t expect your readers to guess it from the vibes. If your hero is justified in breaking the law, make sure the reader knows why beforehand. If he refuses to kill, what principle restrains him? If he does kill, why is the action not merely expedient, but right?
That side of the equation is where Attack on Titan falls short of the mark. It conflates questions of morality with matters of utility while operating on crude standards of ends-means proportionalism that are taken for granted.
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The old myths never made that mistake, which is why they’ve lasted. In Beowulf, the titular hero’s actions are measured against the standards of loyalty and sacredness of kin and kingdom. Grendel is evil because he breaks the bonds of hospitality and attacks the innocent. Beowulf’s courage is admirable because it fulfills a duty to protect. The reader never has to wonder what makes Grendel’s slaughter wrong or Beowulf’s vengeance right.
In the Iliad, the Greeks and Trojans live under the divine law of honor and retribution. When Achilles withdraws from battle, it’s not mere petulance; it’s a violation of his duty to his comrades. The story never suggests that Achilles’ feelings are the measure of justice. His anger matters because it clashes with an objective, transcendent code.
Modern writers shy away from portraying objective transcendent moral standards because, frankly, they’re terrified. They’re so worried about coming off as preachy that they run headlong into the opposite error of moral relativism, just camouflaged in emotional turmoil.
But readers are not fooled. If anything, they’re starved for stories wherein right and wrong have real meaning and actions can be judged against a known measure.
The irony is that when you set clear standards, you can create more nuanced conflicts. If the audience knows exactly what your characters believe is good, they can see the tragedy when those characters fail. They can wrestle with the implications when the hero compromises. But if you never define the good in the first place, any failure or compromise is just another arbitrary event.
Think again of Benjamin Martin. His struggle is powerful precisely because the story spells out what is at stake: his humanity, his integrity as a father, and his duty to protect his family. Every time he takes up arms, the question is not “Does this make him sad?” but “Has he surrendered to sin?” That clarity makes his conflict gripping.
Let me break it down for new authors:
Stop relying on your emotions—or your audience’s—to supply the moral weight of your story.
Identify the moral law that governs your world.
Spell out the moral standard in dialogue, narration, or action.
Show how your characters strive to uphold it, fail to meet, and struggle to understand your story’s morality.
Let the consequences unfold naturally from their interaction with that standard.
If you can go beyond Vulcan morality and show why your characters believe what they believe, they will feel real. Their struggles will matter, and their victories will inspire or horrify.
And your readers will walk away not just moved but changed—because they encountered a reality more lasting than fleeting sentiment.
Modern storytelling has forgotten this discipline. But it’s not too late to reclaim it. If you’re serious about writing stories that last, start here: Know what is good. Know why it’s good. And never be afraid to say it out loud.
If you want your book to compete in the 2025 market, you must be your own best editor before you hire one. Know what makes a book worth reading and what to cut.
And if you need professional eyes on your manuscript?
I edit books. Drop me a line. Let’s make your story sharper, tighter, and worth your readers’ time.
Brian Niemeier is a best-selling novelist, editor, and Dragon Award winner with over a decade in newpub. For direct, in-person writing and editing insights, join his Patreon.
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Yep, the once-heard "moral of the story" has been removed.
It's up to us to put it back. It's the right thing to do.
Lane's channel only recently popped up on my YT feed. Having listened to a few of them, she seems remarkably sensible in her approach to writing for publication; more businesslike than driven by any particular ideology or belief system, good or bad (I'm too old to know for sure what "based" means, but this would seem to fit that description).