Given this premise, how do you handle situations where your main character isn't all that likable, at least not at first? I have a self-absorbed female MC who is a bit of a twit. The story arc has her coming off her high horse at some point, but it is well past the middle of the story when that happens (character-type story, her transformation will be the climax.)

But, a reviewer pointed out that it can be hard for readers to relate to a character who doesn't seem very nice or likable. I agree with this point, but believe it *can* be done, it's just harder. So now I'm wondering how I pull it off. Any thoughts?

Or perhaps you can give her a sense of humor. Audiences sometimes understand characters better when they're laughing with the character.

Hope that helps give you some vague idea of where to go!

~Chris
 

I think that this helped a lot, at least for me. People don't have to like your character, at least not right away, but they do need to be able to identify with them. We all have acted petty to another person at some point in the past, or at the very least we thought about it. Letting the reader experience your character's petty, small behavior to others will help to set up this identification. Getting into your character, really getting to know them, will give the reader an affinity for your character, even if they aren't immediatly likeable. Isn't that paraphrased from Ender's Game? The point where you truly understand another person is the point where you truly love them?

I think that this theory should be practiced with the idea of telling POV information up front - what your character knows at the first page of the story, we need to know as well. So, even though your MC is self absorbed we should see telltale signs that she has a redeeming side to her personality. A twinge of guilt when she makes her assistant cry for wearing the wrong shoes with that outfit. A wry sense of humor to casually defend someone from a verbal barrage directed at them. You dont'want a character to whip out their convienent deus ex machina at the end of a story. Similarly, you don't want to set-up someone as an absolute stone cold bitch and then suddenly turn them into a softie just because some key climactic moment passed in your story. Take The Devil Wears Prada for example (I can't believe I'm referencing this, but in my defence I never read the book, I saw the movie, and Anne Hathaway is sssssssmokin' hawt). Meryl Streep's character is painted very clearly as a driven, self absorbed, condecending person, but there are small hints through the movie (the fight with her husband, the smallest gestures she makes towards Anne) that indicate she isn't all the stone we've been setup to believe she's made of.

There we go. Two hints. Let us see inside your character to be able to identify with their actions, and let us know a little way in advance that they're not all the bitch they're written as. I hope this ramble answers your question.

Jayson Merryfield
 

Snape isn't a likable person but he's certainly a favorite character!

[This message has been edited by arriki (edited June 18, 2007).]
 

Also, if she's unlikeable and knows it, or is slightly over the top, the reader can still be engaged. There's a difference between an MC who is a snot, and one who is evil. As long as the MC isn't killing babies, I think we can like parts of them.

Matt
 

1. Redeeming features (very few people are wholly unlikeable)

2. Make her sympathetic. You can make a character sympathetic without making them likable -- especially if something horrible has happened to her that has caused her to be unlikeable.

3. Create an incredibly interesting premise -- if we're so caught up in the story arc we may not care as much if the MC needs some time to grow up.

4. Use more than one POV character. If you have another character, almost as important as the unlikeable one, with whom we can spend some time we may be more willing to stick with the book longer.

5. Make it clear that a change is coming -- this is the true character story. It helps if you use 1 or 2 along with this. Such a story starts with the character realizing that they need to change or starting out on a change.
 

I don't think it's necessarily easy for a reader to relate to a character who is likable. That presumes that all readers find the same set of traits in a character 'likable,' and that they look for likability more than anything else to make them continue reading.

The gage I use, while less concise than the adage you mentioned at the beginning, KayTi, helps me think about whether or not I need to change a character:

"Readers will read about interesting, three-dimensional characters who have comprehensible motivations in life. Bonus points if they just happen to be similar to the reader's."

So, are they interesting? And, conversely, not so 'bad' or *shudder* annoying that I won't want to see their story through? They don't have to be nice for me to want to learn what happens to them. On the contrary, I enjoy reading about 'darker' characters because I'm often interested to see if they do have a turnaround, or if they get their just desserts.

I think authors need to be careful with their addition of redeeming traits; unless you want them to fit the archetype of "bitch/bad boy with a heart of gold," subtlety is necessary. The traits really need to be worked in, not plunked in. My brain's scratching for examples, but I can recall reading a fantasy book or three where a perfectly interesting character, not particularly nice, suddenly developed a conscience that wasn't foreshadowed properly. It made me see the guy behind the curtain, and no one wants that.

I'm pretty sure I echoed most of the sentiments above. In short, don't stress about this concept of nebulous likability, and make sure they're 1. Interesting 2. Not too audacious that they're off-putting 3. In a situation that plays against their weaknesses and makes them evolve.

Hope my rambling five cents helps, nonetheless. Good luck! :)
 

1) Give her some likable or audience-relatable characteristic, like she honestly cares about cancer children and donates money to research for that. Something that hints that there is more to her than the obvious.

2) Make the main supporting character extremely likable so that people hang around for him/her. In contrast to other people's opinion, I don't even think that you have to switch to this person's POV for this to be effective. Keep in mind, though, that the readers likely hang around in this case because they want to see a completely unlikable character get their just reward rather than because they want to see them change. If you are going to change the character, make sure the process is believable rather than a sudden 'sees the light and is now pure and good' moment. Like Wolfe_boy said, we need to see indications that she has a redeeming side to her.

3) Can you think of any villains that you love to hate? Think about why you liked them and use that information to help you keep people interested in your MC until she starts to show signs of changing.

4) If the reader understands why the MC acts the way she does--even if it's just hinted at--then people are more willing to put up with her.
 

I like to think that every character is the hero of the story in his own mind. After all, does anybody really say to themselves, "Gee, I'm a villain"?

(In my Internet Fan Fiction days, where I worked with pre-existing characters, I managed to put some likeable spin on a character others usually used as a black-hearted villain.)
 

The POV character is the person your reader is escaping into, so you must make the reader feel her emotions. That means, you must give all the observations in her perspective. Other people don't like her but she doesn't understand why. The reader may understand why, but has to relate to her on her own terms. Later, she can have a revelation and make the change because she realizes what she had to change, and the reader should say, yes, this is the way you should change. This is what will make your life better.
 

The immediately unsympathetic hero:
http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum1/HTML/003438.html

The anti-hero: http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum1/HTML/003468.html

Slightly related:
Whatever happened to Evil?
http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum1/HTML/003426.html

Hopw these help.
 

I think it's wonderful when I, as a reader, can learn life lessons along with a story's characters.

JMHO,
~LL
 

That's kind of the idea I'm getting from my studies. We want to identify, sure, but to get actually reading, we want to be fascinated. It can be a sense of humor, it can be being played by Alan Rickman (whose voice is a gift from on high to all) , it can be a basic connection with the problem, but the best characters fascinate.

The workshop being done right now by the writers Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer (crusiemayer.com will direct you) talks about that.

Including the fact that your antagonist ought to be fascinating, too.
 

Jaime Lannister is a completely irreprehensible character in the first book A Game of Thrones, he is a POV character in the secodn book and you grow to respect and even like him a bit.

But Martin shifts POV from chapter to chapter and he starts with a likeable character before foisting the "villain" on us.

That said, I meant "REPREHENSIBLE"...so there was an error but I don't believe it was in the spelling or am I missing something?
 

Bah. Blech. But we all do it. The trick is tuning it out/turning it off/ignoring it. I try. But somehow I seem somewhat well informed about the various starlets' activities. Hard to avoid them when they're blaring from the grocery store checkout lanes, the morning radio talk-shows, and the evening news.
 

This has been done brilliantly by many writers. One famous example is the monster Grendel (in John Gardner's book by the same name.) Grendel murders and causes mayhem throughout the story--preying on people and eating them alive. Yet in the end, we feel sorry for him; he is a lonely outcast, he has urges he can't control, etc.

So if you're up for a real challenge, make your MC unlikeable... monstrous, even.

For hedonists Paris Hilton is quite likeable as a model pleasure lover.

Perhaps if she is truly reformed she has the potential for likability.

With all serious for some like her I can believe that 3 weeks of jail is enough to set her on a different path. The question is will she choose to stay on the straight and narrow.

No, all great monsters are likable, starting with Karloff's Frankenstein. A monster either looks gross, or does horrible things, but we can like, and even love, both sorts of monsters.
 

Good example, debhoag!

 

[This message has been edited by InarticulateBabbler (edited June 24, 2007).]
 

P.S. Okay, who are you and what have you done with the REAL Inarticulate one?

[This message has been edited by debhoag (edited June 24, 2007).]

[This message has been edited by debhoag (edited June 25, 2007).]
 

But as a character, he remains likeable in all but a few roles. (The abovementioned "Falling Down" comes to mind---I've only seen a few bits of it, so I can't be absolutely sure.) I think that's just what he projects as an actor---likeability. Some actors project warmth, some project intelligence, some project psychopathy...Michael Douglas projects likeability.

I wish I knew how to make use of that kind of skill on the printed page (or computer screen)...
 

A really great example of an unlikable character that is still a character worth reading about (actually there are several in the story) is the MC in Graham Greene's The Quiet American. I've only read a few of his books but he is pretty good about writing interesting sympathetic characters that aren't really good people.
 

I wrote a 4,400 word piece about an evil, sadistic thrill killer who made a pact with the devil to avoid hanging. The devil gave him power to live forever. In exchange he was to continue his sadistic murders. After awhile you really despised the guy hoping he gets justice, and finally he does.

After 500 years of evil doings he acquired a bone cancer that dissolved all calcified tissue leaving him a helpless blob of human flesh forever.

But the story wouldn’t work. Readers grew too disgusted to finish it. Unable to empathize with anything in this unredeemable character, they hated him so much they would not continue on.