Xjyuk

Imagine a fantasy hero with a 'time reset' ability like the protagonists of Groundhog Day or Edge of Tomorrow: they can 'rewind time' up to a few hours, resetting their own physical state and the rest of reality to whatever it/they were doing previously while preserving their memory of events, allowing the future to re-play in the same or different ways. Unlike those films, however, the character is not locked into reliving the same day, this is just an ability that's always there for them in life. In my particular idea the character doesn't need to die in order to trigger the effect, they can do so 'at will', but the same question applies in both cases:

How can I avoid having this character sound like a psychopath completely bored all the time?!

It's completely reasonable that a person living with such an ability would develop a complete dispassion for death and personal injury. Yes, they can still be hurt both physically and mentally, and pain is still painful, but all but the most abrupt injuries are equally unthreatening. Similarly the character doesn't really need to fear the short-term consequences of their actions - they can just reset away from any bad experiences.

These are personality traits that I'm finding hard to express without the character coming off as having no real investment in the situation. Obviously it would be very easy for such a person to actually turn into a pretty unsavoury character, but assuming that they have enough moral Plot Armour to remain a vaguely likeable protagonist, how can I give their thoughts enough depth?

For example, my character stumbles upon a thug holding up a store. She would have almost no hesitation in diving in to try and save the day: any disparity in strength or situation is a fairly minor concern; her only real danger is if she gets shot specifically in the head, otherwise she can just replay the situation as many times as it takes to get her desired outcome. But whenever I try to write an internal monologue of such a situation, it either seems like she's not thinking at all (which is certainly not the case, in fact she's thinking furiously), or that she's just completely dispassionate and unfeeling. I want the monologue to still feel adrenaline-fuelled and emotional, it would just be emotional in a subtly different way to what a 'normal person' would be feeling in such a situation, and I'm struggling to get a handle on exactly how.

Psychopathy is characterised by persistent antisocial behaviour, impaired empathy and remorse. (source: Wikipedia)

Your character needs to care for others.

Watching a person get hurt, let alone killed, isn't easy. It should never become easy. That's something your character would respond to. That is what distinguishes them from a psychopath.

Now, how does your character respond? That's an interesting question. They can rewind time, sure. But can they protect everyone from harm, always? Do they accept some casualties? How do they decide when to keep on trying for a better result, and when this is as good as it gets?

Moral quandaries of this kind are interesting. Concern for others is a positive trait, it makes the reader see the character in a favourable light.

Your character doesn't fear their own death - that's hardly a new thing in literature. Look for example at Athos from The Three Musketeers. In his case it's depression rather than an actual ability not to get killed, but the end result is the same: he takes extraordinary risks without batting an eyelash. He's all but trying to get himself killed. At the same time he is a well-loved character - because he is principled, noble in his actions, and a true friend. That is, he is a good person in relation to others, even if he is not very good to himself. Which seems similar enough to what you're trying to describe.

What I suspect you're really asking here is, "How do I make scenes involving this character feel adrenaline-filled and emotional?" To answer that question, you have to realize that portraying this character's emotions is only half the problem; the other half is the lack of stakes.

It's one thing for your character to want to prevent injury or death to another person, which is a noble goal. Making the reader feel the same rush the character does is another thing entirely; they'll be spending the scene thinking, "Well, if it goes wrong, just reverse it and try again." Whether or not your character succeeds is essentially a foregone conclusion; eventually, she will. What you need to do is give both your character and the reader a reason to want her to succeed, on this try.

Maybe this ability can only be used a certain number of times per day? Maybe the fewer changes she makes the second time around, the harder it is to make changes on the third? When there's very little at stake, there's very little reason for the reader to care what happens. Even if your character doesn't need to fear her own death, she needs to be risking something when she jumps into a situation.

I would challenge her lack of fear, if her ability can't trigger automatically as stated in comments she should still have some fear of death, things can happen around her that she isn't aware of and there are many things that can happen before she can react to save herself.

We see in Edge of Tomorrow that Tom Cruise's character becomes extremely cavalier about danger because as soon as he dies he wakes up at the start of the day again and there is nothing he needs to do to trigger this. This is not the case for your character, your character is required to consciously reset time and she must still worry about whether she will be able to react. In the situation you described having a gunman hold up a clerk, she may worry there is a second gunman, she may worry she'll blink or look away and the gunman shoots her then.

She may be able to reset time but she still lived through whatever event she reset to avoid. This could lead to her having post traumatic stress from all sorts of events that never happened (have fun explaining that to a therapist).

Lastly, as an author you may know the exact extent of her power but does she? Without having died she would have no way to know if she could reset after that.

007 doesn't come off as a psychopath, but is singularly unafraid of death. In one movie he dives off a cliff, without a parachute, to intercept and land on the wings of a private plane. He's always got zero fear of heights, fights, guns, speed, whatever. Fearlessness is pretty much his central trait.

As Galastel says, you have the wrong notion of "psychopathy", psychopathy isn't about fearlessness, they lack empathy, sympathy, and remorse. Other people are just objects to them, obstacles or tools, they just are incapable of caring about the pain or fear or emotions of other people. (There is evidence now that this is due to actually faulty wiring in their brain, which would make it uncorrectable, not addressable by any therapy or surgery, and quite literally physically impossible for them to care.)

It is possible to be fearless without being a psychopath, other emotions can be intact. That includes love, sympathy, maternal feelings for children, etc.

I'd make it clear, on her first jump, that these feelings are present. For example, she comes across a scene in which a little girl on a bicycle has been struck and killed by car, driven by a young woman, that is now distraught and being arrested. She is asking everybody in the crowd, "When did it happen? How long ago? What time?"

She gets her answer, forty-five minutes. She jumps back in time, abandons whatever she was doing and sprints to the scene like her life depends on it, into the intersection, runs in front of the car to intercept bike and kid, snatches the little girl off the bike, as tires are screeching and the still moving bike, sans kid, is struck, tumbled under the screeching car and rolled into a mangled steel spaghetti.

There was no reason for her to make this time jump, abandon her task and sprint for the intersection other than to save the life of the little girl. You've proved her bona fides as a fearless hero and altruist, she used her time travel power to save a life.

Don't tell us what she is thinking or what she believes, devise a scene to show us what she believes. She is fearless, and will sacrifice her own interests to fearlessly prevent the death of an innocent child.