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Realizing that your protagonist is basically incapable of being sympathetic.
I started sketching out a short story/novella based heavily on Mitadake High.
Basically, it goes like this: At some high school in America, 20 students will stay after school on a Friday, to take some "special" standardized testing. Rick, the main character, is one of these 20. During that day, he gets 2 "passes" from his principal. After school, he is told to go to the library.
Then the entire school undergoes lockdown. A voice over the school PA says that 2 people have 2 passes each. Their goal is to survive. The other student's goal? Kill the ones with the passes, and then survive until 6 AM the next day (anyone without a pass by then dies).
Given the circumstances, Rick is going to have kill someone to defend himself. Or, in true Mitadake fashion, come up with elaborate plans and basically twist things so much to get other people killed. When the people he's killing are high school students who were dragged into this against their will, how exactly can he be sympathetic at all?
I thought about this due to one part in the story. Rick comes across a girl named Thana. She finds out that he has his passes and therefore tries to kill him. After the two chase for a while, they come across a boy named Marko. Right then, Rick takes one pass and slips it into Thana's pocket, and then lies about how she's the one with the pass. Marko believes it, and kills her, but Rick takes the pass back at the last second and runs off.
In other words, he lied to get an innocent girl killed. That's....not what protagonists usually do.
This seems like it could be a really interesting story, but this is a rather large roadblock...
Comments
Also your story sounds an awful lot like Battle Royale
Well, yeah. If he doesn't question the whole thing, then he's a selfish dick.
Have you played No More Heroes? There's a similar premise there, but the protagonist (arguably) becomes slowly more sympathetic as he realizes the implication of the whole premise.
"Your protagonist is incapable of being sympathetic."
Well, Brett Easton Ellis never let that stop him (e,g, American Psycho). They don't have to be sympathetic, they do have to be interesting - and the less sympathetic, the more interesting.
This one does sound a bit too much like Battle Royale though.