Flaws and addictions

I think if you make the reader understand why and how the flaws came to be and make them understand the character's motivation and make them feel for him, they will even be able to sympathize with bad things we usually wouldn't simpathize with.

Forbidden Snowflake said:

I think if you make the reader understand why and how the flaws came to be and make them understand the character's motivation and make them feel for him, they will even be able to sympathize with bad things we usually wouldn't simpathize with.

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I agree. I don't necessarily enjoy reading about people who are self-destructive or otherwise irresponsible unless A) the behavior is an integral part of the book and B) the author does a good job of weaving it in and explaining why the character exhibits these behaviors.

Most certainly I would have sympathy for them. No flaw is too big if you do it right. Emotional involvement and attachment to the character works.

To me, this is the whole creative drive behind writing fiction--to create a three-dimensional, sympathetic character who is, nonetheless, an imperfect human, and to put that imperfect character in challenging situations that allow him/her to rise up (or down) to expose some aspect of human character. Obviously, this will not apply to every genre, but elements of it permeate all fiction. In my opinion, or course.

Readers are a quirky lot. In my first novel I have two main characters, Jan (18) and Tim (30 something). In the first third of the book I present Tim as an enigmatic sometimes unpleasant man. Jan is a presented as vulnerable and naïve. The reader’s sympathy is with Jan.

By mid point in the story I reveal Tim’s past—not to excuse his behavior but to explain it. My hope was to have the reader least begin to soften towards him. It must have worked because a few months after publication I got scores of emails from readers asking if I planned a prequel detailing Tim’s complete story! Well I didn’t at the time but I have sketched out a novella for his early years which I’ll include with the first book if I ever decide on a second edition run.

So the short answer is yes. Readers will take to heart unsympathetic characters unless they are rotten through and through. It all depends if you believe in them.



Michael Halfhill

www.michaelhalfhill.com

As long as you are moved by people with these flaws, I think your readers will be, also.

Do you think a reader can still be sympathetic to a main character who has some sort of addiction or a bad habit, such as a problem with drinking, drugs, gambling, etc.?

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I think they can if they can relate to the emotions that drive that person toward the addiction. Also, if they can see it as an affliction that the character wrestles with. There is a limit, though; I think most readers (as in real life) will start to question their sympathy when it involves overt victimization of an innocent party--(eg. drunken driving, wife beating, etc.).

PastMidnight said:

Do you think a reader can still be sympathetic to a main character who has some sort of addiction or a bad habit, such as a problem with drinking, drugs, gambling, etc.? I know that flawed characters are more interesting than perfect characters, but I'm wondering if there are some flaws that are too big for a protagonist.

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I think the answer is yes, to a point. And I think that a character who has flaws is human and more believable than a perfect character. Who do you know who is perfect in the real world?

On the other hand, context is important here. What are the flaws, why are they there and what is happenening to mitigate or correct them?

Sometimes the flawed character, no matter how sympathetic to the writer or the reader, must be punished, because of the context of the story and the relationship to the other characters.

I have a character who has to die because of his sins. Many like him enough to let him live, but there are a few with sufficient reason and enough power to insure that he will die.

Flawed characters make for a much more interesting story because the flaws make for much needed conflict in the story.

We are all flawed - we all have feet of clay. To make your characters any other way makes them less likeable.

I think what you're asking is, should you make your main character HUMAN and would other humans relate.


I'd say the answer is yes.

PastMidnight said:

Do you think a reader can still be sympathetic to a main character who has some sort of addiction or a bad habit, such as a problem with drinking, drugs, gambling, etc.? I know that flawed characters are more interesting than perfect characters, but I'm wondering if there are some flaws that are too big for a protagonist.

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Many memorable literary characters have been notorious for having vices. I've lost count of how many ones are hard drinkers. Sherlock Holmes's famous pipe was for smoking cocaine and not tobacco.Dostoevsky wrote The Gambler when he was trying to pay off his own gambling debts.

There is one issue, though - don't give a main character a vice unless you have some degree of familiarity with it! I recall a story I'd seen in college - a girl I knew from the fencing team who was supposed to proofread and edit a classmate's story for a literature class had been stuck with writing that was almost as bad as Atlanta Nights. So she wound up showing the story to almost everyone on the fencing team.

It was a story filled with sex, booze, and drugs that may very well have been written by a teetotalling virgin - except it was so bad in places that even that wouldn't be a good excuse. It had two kids drink enough vodka that they should have been passed out and they convinced their parents they were still sober, someone who used codeine to stay awake at night (uh, that isn't a normal side effect), and several equally bad goofs. Not to mention some of the worst mixed metaphors I've seen.

While that is a pretty extreme example, if you give a character a vice that you don't have personal experience with, you will need to do enough research that you won't have someone nitpick your description.

I think most people naturally have a soft spot for initially unlikable or even bad characters whom ultimately reveal themselves as being disfunctional and/or misunderstood people whom deep down are not happy with themselves and secretly want to change. I think its when the character shows absolutely no conscious or interest at redeeming themselves that people have a tough time having any sympathy.
I'm fleshing out a couple of characters for a story I'm working on where the male protagonist is a recovering alcoholic with a traumatic past whom in a twist of fate finds himself paired up with a cold, seemingly hostile and arrogant woman who is generally disliked by all around her. As it progresses he discovers its all a facade and she is in fact an extremely lonely and disfunctional person unable to deal with her own terrible past, I'm trying to play on the whole 'redeemable bad guy/girl' scenerio and touch on the life long damage that childhood trauma can cause, injured people being drawn to each other and the idea that ultimately it is up to ourselves to get beyond such things.

PastMidnight said:

Do you think a reader can still be sympathetic to a main character who has some sort of addiction or a bad habit, such as a problem with drinking, drugs, gambling, etc.?

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I hope so, because I've written three novels, in two of which the main characters have either drug or alcohol problems.

Their troubles are put into context, and they can both see the error of their ways, but not a reason for fighting their addictions. They're both very different characters. One is an army veteran living as a vagrant in a large metropolis, and the other is a genius who's having a problem coping with the adulation she receives.

Sometimes I wonder how they'd get on if I put them in a room together.

MadScientistMatt said:

Sherlock Holmes's famous pipe was for smoking cocaine and not tobacco.

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Where did you get this idea? Holmes did inject cocaine (probably subcutaneously, not intravenously) when he was bored-- cocaine at that time was also used as a local anaesthetic by dentists--but nobody "smoked" it in the nineteenth century.

See Leslie Klinger's 3-volume "New Annotated Sherlock Holmes" for more information. (We must not make Sherlock's faults worse than they were. )

Depends on the flaw imho. An addiction, possibly, but something like pedophelia - nope...never

MadScientistMatt said:

Sherlock Holmes's famous pipe was for smoking cocaine and not tobacco.

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No, his pipe was for smoking plain old tobacco. He injected cocaine.

Characters

Characters not only do not need to draw reader sympathy, it's often a mistake to have protagonists be sympathetic. The real word is not sympathy, but empathy, very different things. You first need to use the right word.

Empathy can be a good thing in a protagonist. It means that whatever horrendous deed he does, the reader can say, "Under teh same circumstances, faced with the same problems, I might do the same thing. I might react in the same way. I may not think what he's doing is good, but I understand why he's doing it."

Protagonists do not need a reader's sympathy, they need a reader's empathy, and if you make them fully human, give them justifibale reasons for behaving as they do, the reader can then put himself in the protagonit's shoes, no matter what he does.