Even if you’re the world’s most cynical misanthrope and your story expresses the ultimate futility and pettiness of the human race, you need a heart.
You can’t make anyone care about characters who don’t really care.
There is a cheap shorthand you should avoid, which is assigning motive. I’m killing him because he killed my mama. That is understandable, but it’s not the same as heart.
Loki doesn’t go to war because of revenge or daddy issues, he does it because his heart was smashed into tiny little pieces.
Caring is what you see them do, not what you hear them say. How it affects their decisions, what corner it forces them into. A guy loses his girlfriend to another guy. Does he handle it pretty well, considering? Are his actions based on the principle of the thing? Then who cares?
