With reference to the thread on whether a character needs to be nice (http://www.writewords.org.uk/forum/47_286434.asp) and also to my own personal inclinations...

I have a main character, she is all of strong, dynamic, intellectual and beautiful.

What she is not is charming, cuddly, emotional or warm-hearted.

Unlike Dr Brennan in Bones, she doesn't soften this with a secret wish to somehow understand the things she is missing. Given her upbringing, station in life and attitudes, I have written her 100% faithfully and accurately. She would recognise herself instantly. I feel I really know this person and the response from my writing group (I have silenced the room, in a good way, on a few occasions) is that I am writing her convincingly. However, the deeper I get into the story, the more people in my writing group are asking:

Is she likeable?

So that's my dilemma:

Should I be faithful to the character by writing her as is or generous to my intended audience by letting her rescue a cat for an old lady or something?

Which leads to sub-dilemma's c) and g)

c) Can I make her likeable without changing abso-bloody-lutely-everything?

g) What the hell does it mean to be 'likeable'? Surely everybody likes different things and I think she's fascinating, even if a little bit cold... ok, a lot cold... alright, maybe not 'po-faced' as one of my critics said last night, but certainly she is more likely to be organising the games than participating in them...

AAAAGH!!! HEEELLPPP!!! AIIIEEEE!!!! (etc)

WHAT IS LIKEABLE ANYWAY?

I struggle with writing likeable characters; I find them far more interesting if they are mean, bitchy, selfish etc.

On my first (as yet unpublished) novel I had a report from a consultancy - they said that the biggest problem with it was the fact that the MC wasn't 'likeable' and therefore it would be, in their view, unpublishable. My market was mainstream women's fiction, though, which I think is relevant.

In my current WIP I am struggling to make my MC more likeable in a way which doesn't extend to having her cuddle puppies and visit the sick.... What I am trying to do now is to make her more vulnerable, which may help with the empathy side of things.

I don't think I can be of much help, but you're not alone!

SG

make her more vulnerable

That's what they did with Doctor Brennan in Bones... and about a gazilliion other well-written bad characters.

Trouble is, I don't want my MC to be vulnerable, it is almost one of the tenets of the book that she is _not_ vulnerable.

I've a nasty suspicion I will have to rethink this...

Gaius, there has to be something about her that explains her lack of vulnerability that the reader can like. Otherwise, what's the point? She'll just irritate us.

strong, dynamic, intellectual and beautiful.

Come on, I hate her already! At least give her a club foot!


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No one, no one on this planet lacks an Achilles heel. Absolutely no one on earth. You just have to look for it.

Is that why Dr House has a limp?

The thing is, her "lack of vulnerability" is her biggest problem... she is socially isolated because of her position and her character, but she doesn't really understand that and while she might like to have friends, they would find it as hard to adjust to her as she would to them...

So, ok, I'll allow you to say she's not the kinda girl you'd choose to spend an evening with, but she is the kinda girl you'd want to have around if your world was collapsing in shards.

I need her to be that strong... but I admit it's not all that charming.

WHAT IS LIKEABLE ANYWAY?[/i]

No one, no one on this planet lacks an Achilles heel. Absolutely no one on earth. You just have to look for it.

Well, if you like, a good chunk of the story-line is about her deciding which way to go with her achilles heel - choosing between love and duty - her achilles heel is essentially the reason for this post.

She is the girl who has everything, absolutely everything, she is "next in line for the throne" if you will, with more of every conceivable luxury than anyone else in her society other than the current occupant of "the throne".

A lot of the story line revolves around her experiments to find "love", but even the fact that she considers them "experiments" should give you an idea of quite how little she understands it all.

So you see... etc.

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I won't beat around the bush; she is essentially somebody who is slightly damaged by having too much. She is not spoilt, though she can be manipulative. She is protective, but sometimes her "protection" is almost as scary as not having it...

There's a difference between 'would like to spend time with in real life' and 'enjoy spending time with on the page'. We've just been watching Andrew Davies' adaption of the 'House of Cards' series and Frances Urquart is a case in point - he's a liar, a meglomaniac and a murderer, but he's so fun. He wanders around the house of commons whistling Wagner and coming out with the most wonderful lies and thoroughly enjoying himself the whole time - so you enjoy spending time with him, even though he's definitely not likeable.

Similarly Tracy Beaker - I would hate to have to look after her, but she's a great narrator, because she speaks her own mind and does exactly as she pleases.

I think in order for an unsympathetic narrator to work, your reader has to understand them and sympathise with them enough to care about what happens to them and to want what they want. Take Humbert Humbert in Lolita - he's a deeply unpleasant man, but you get so into his head that by the time he finally has Lolita alone in a double bed, you're almost as desperate for him to get into her knickers as he is.

The unsympathetic narrators I struggle with are the ones that irritate me, or the ones I really don't care what happens to, I dislike them so much. The ones who do things which are so stupid or despicable that you just think 'God, why are you doing that, you know it's going to end badly?'

The best unsympathetic narrators are the ones who sweep you along in their wake, so that you're cheering them along even as they set fire to the building. I'm not quite sure how you acheive that - but if you believe in her and like her and want her to succeed, that has to be a good start.

The best unsympathetic narrators are the ones who sweep you along in their wake, so that you're cheering them along even as they set fire to the building. I'm not quite sure how you acheive that - but if you believe in her and like her and want her to succeed, that has to be a good start.

YES YES YES! THIS IS WHAT I WANT!

Which brings me back to the likeable question, but phrased differently:

What captivates you in an unsympathetic character?

If you buy into her motivation, then my MC already has the machiavellian skills that I would say make her interesting and fun to watch but if you don't... then she appears as a vicious little cold-hearted bitch who might benefit were I to:

At least give her a club foot!

Looking at the Lolitta examples, is it clearly expressed motivation that makes a character interesting on the page?

There's likeable, and there's compelling. An MC needn't be the former, I think, though if she isn't, you'll always have readers who don't want to read her, because who likes spending time with unlikeable people in real life? It has to be worth it for other reasons.

Is she truly invulnerable, or just well-armoured? If the latter, what's going on under the armour, and why and how did she toughen her outside? If she's truly invulnerable (and very few are), it comes from an inner core which can't be damaged, however much the outer flesh can be.

she is all of strong, dynamic, intellectual and beautiful. What she is not is charming, cuddly, emotional or warm-hearted.

When you say she's not emotional, is it that she doesn't show emotion easily, or that she doesn't, actually, have emotions? And if she doesn't seem to experience emotion, either she's totally lacking in emotional intelligence because for whatever reason acknowledging how she feels even internally is too dangerous and difficult to be allowed (which is interesting), or she's a actually flatfish. Maybe a beautiful flatfish, but nonetheless...

I dunno. It seems to me that the things you say she is are things you can see from the outside ('beautiful' is always an alarm bell, in my experience, for a character who's seen only externally). But and the second things, which you say she isn't, are products of what's going on inside her - which is where things for the reader get interesting. And since the unique purpose of the novel as a form, compared to the other arts, is to express consciousness, even if indirectly (read anything by Henry Green to see what I mean by that) it's very hard to get readers to bother with a character who is only seen from the outside.

she doesn't soften this with a secret wish to somehow understand the things she is missing.

I take the point that this could be about making an unlikeable character more likeable, but it's also, surely, about setting up a motor for the narrative drive, at the affective level, of the story. For any fiction to work well at all levels, there needs to be narrative drive - what will happen next? - both in external events and within the characters, which leads to change. The fundamental 'What does she want? - What does she do to get it? - What gets in the way?' question needs an answer at the emotional level, and I suspect that's what's going on with Brennan. I don't know, because I haven't seen it, but it's not just pandering to the sentimental masses, it's also about driving the drama of character-in-action.

Emma

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Crossed with Sally and you. I think it's absolutely right - you need to buy into the character's central motivation. Why is she how she is? Not necessarily at the pop psychology battered-childhood level, but so that we buy into the progression of her plans.

A lot of the story line revolves around her experiments to find "love", but even the fact that she considers them "experiments" should give you an idea of quite how little she understands it all.

I wonder if this is part of the problem? The fact that you know she's behaving like an idiot probably means that your readers do too, and there's nothing more irritating than watching someone make a fool of themselves. Or watching a character embark on a trajectory which the writer doesn't really believe in.

I'm not saying Nabakov believed in child abuse - but he definitely wants Humbert to get Lolita. So we do too. And, yes, we understand Humbert and we understand why he's doing it and what he wants - which helps. Actually, what he wants is very simple - to get the girl - and we can all sympathise with that.

I had to read 'Mein Kampf' last year for a book group. I didn't get beyond chapter three, but I did get to the bit where he's ranting about the jews, and it's fascinating. Basically, he says 'I started off liking Jews just like you did, but then the overwhelming evidence forced me to change my mind.' It's compelling because he doesn't present himself as 'a mad Jew-hater' which immediately loses your sympathy. He presents himself as 'a nice, ordinary person like you' who came to this plae due to overwhelming circumstances.

Similarly someone like Macbeth - he starts off as someone like you, and gradually you see how - by little, understandable decisions, he turns into a child-murderer.

Maybe you need to show us some of this woman's childhood, see how she developed from 'someone like you' into 'someone like this'?

And since the unique purpose of the novel as a form, compared to the other arts, is to express consciousness

Yes.

That, I think, is the key.

she doesn't show emotion easily, or that she doesn't, actually, have emotions?

Yes, of course she has emotions, but there are very very few people whom she is on a level to experience them with. Rightly or wrongly, she finds it hard to see most of the people she meets as her equal and deals with them as we might deal with a pet...

She likes to have them around, sometimes even to play with them, and she would try to avoid causing them actual discomfort, but she wouldn't hesitate to have them neutered or even put down if she considered that to be the best course of action.

The fact that you know she's behaving like an idiot probably means that your readers do too

But that's just it, I don't think she's behaving like an idiot, she is making considered rational decisions that stand up to close scrutiny. I think I can agree with Emma that there are emotional factors, but am quite certain they have been rationalised to a point where she would be unaware of them...

they have been rationalised to a point where she would be unaware of them...

I suspect you need to convey them to us, though, even if she's unaware of them. Then the tension of what she thinks is going on with her, and what we have inklings is actually going on with her, and our own abivalence about whether we want her to succeed in her evil aims, keeps us fascinated.

Emma

have you seen "Dexter" Gaius? I mean he's a serial killer but everyone really likes him, apparently. It might be worth while analysing just how the writers get us to sympathise with him.

I wonder if there's a difference too between a female and a male unsympathetic character? Readers - and agents and editors - still do seem to tolerate the Houses and the Urquharts much more readily than the female equivalents.

I mean, look at the furore Harriet Harman has caused this week, simply by saying an all male government shouldn't be allowed.