Asshole main characters

NoirSuede said:

Thanks for the help guys !

So at the start my MC who never had a friend for the past 10 years has killed his family so that he can finally see the world by himself, and as a result he can't take nonsense lest he gets caught, which combined with his antisocalism
makes him seem like an ass to the other characters.

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Dude, you said you want to make him a "bit of an ass" and now he's killing his family? I am interested in your response to the questions above.

Edit: I'm still analyzing your post. So he's acting like a bit of an ass because he can't take nonsense or he'll be caught? Were you including the killing thing as part of what makes him an ass? Or is that something different for you?

Also, if someone's antisocial, they don't just seem like an ass, they are one. It's not like a social phobia, doesn't just mean they're not social. It means a sociopath, someone who doesn't care about right and wrong, or the rights/feelings of others. Not sure if you meant it as in actual antisocial PD or you meant not being social.

CJSimone said:

Dude, you said you want to make him a "bit of an ass" and now he's killing his family?

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Makes me wonder what he'd have to do to be a full-fledged ass. I'm going with "turn his entire family into a Human Centipede".

Marian Perera said:

Whereas, when such MC have qualities that make them fascinating and relatable, as amergina said, this works so much better. It's all the difference between your POV character being Jaime Lannister or Gregor Clegane.

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Or the difference between Gregor Clegane and his brother Sandor. Gregor Clegane is a beast, more of a force of nature than a person. Sandor, the Hound, when you hear his story, well, it's hard not to feel sorry for him. He's certainly a better man than the king he served. Sure, he's a killer, but a loyal man, even to a bad master, and he went out of his way to help Sansa Stark.

NoirSuede said:

Thanks for the help guys !

So at the start my MC who never had a friend for the past 10 years has killed his family so that he can finally see the world by himself, and as a result he can't take nonsense lest he gets caught, which combined with his antisocalism
makes him seem like an ass to the other characters.

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I think perhaps you're going beyond 'ass' here.

Marian Perera said:

Just curious - do you mean "killed his abusive parents who kept him a prisoner" or is it more like "killed everyone from his grandparents down to his infant niece so he could inherit the family fortune and travel the world"?

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This can work, because a variation of it has been done: older movie 'Kind Hearts and Coronets', in which a character, believing he was cheated out of his rightful inheritance, sets out to kill all the relatives who stand between him and the title and fortune he thinks he deserves. (All the relatives are adults, all played by Alec Guinness.) A dark comedy, as I recall.

Marian Perera said:

Makes me wonder what he'd have to do to be a full-fledged ass. I'm going with "turn his entire family into a Human Centipede".

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NoirSuede said:

The former.

I'm sorry I didn't made it clear before, but the deal with my MC is that in the beginning he's very self-centered and very pragmatic (which led him to kill his family so that he wouldn't be held by his abusive parents anymore), and later on he learns what morals are and why people make friends.

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Ok, so given this, it's possible to make him sympathetic - showing it as self defense (and he's afraid he'll get in trouble anyway), or if not exactly self-defense (he could've just left) showing how horrible the abuse was.

But then you have your hands pretty full making him sympathetic as a murderer, and if he also then acts like an a-hole to people because he doesn't want to be caught and all, you're going to make it really hard for readers to sympathize him. I get that you want him to go from someone without morals and friends based on his past to a new person, but it's going to be tricky. I think you'll need to make it clear that he's struggling with all this. For example, right from the start you might want to show the internal struggle between his callous feelings / hardening based on the abuse, and his desire to form relationships and transform into someone moral.

NoirSuede said:

Say I want to make the MC a bit of an ass at the beginning (to start his character development), personally how would you make sure that the reader isn't annoyed by the MC's assness and leave at the beginning without reading through and seeing the character development

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My character started as a jerk in the beginning, but he had PTSD, so it made sense. I think if your character is going to be a jerk, then there needs to be a reason why. like he's insecure, or scared, or has a personality disorder. People are jerks b/c they are hiding something. If you show why he's a jerk, then the reader will realize he's not just a plain jerk, but that he has issues. It helps.

I know, probably shouldn't revive this thread, but I had been mulling over this discussion, when it suddenly hit me. You could pull this story off, if it turned out that Character X's family was horribly abusive and he felt the only way he could escape, was by killing them. Maybe put in a bit about how he knew if he left, they would just start abusing his younger sibling instead. Either of those would make your character a lot more likeable.

Though you could go the Nabokov route. Lolita is narrated by Humbert Humbert, who constantly strives to paint himself in the best possible light and explain how it wasn't really his fault, because that twelve-year-old girl was just so irresistible. Of course, Nabokov was only able to pull this off through some genius-level prose skills. Doing something like this is basically like performing on a greased tightrope with no net: so many ways things could go wrong and you have no real room for error. That and while writing this, Nabokov knew very well that Humbert was full of shit. When writing an unreliable narrator, it only works of the writer is aware of the gap between what the character believes and what is actually true; if he or she is as wrapped in delusion as the character, it turns into a godawful mess.

So you might really want to think on this.

jjdebenedictis said:

A few people have already touched on this, but an asshole who is funny will keep the reader around far longer than an asshole who isn't. Or, as Jim Butcher has his (occasionally assholish) protagonist retort after being told that no one likes a smart-ass, "In my experience, everyone likes a smart-ass as long as he's not picking on them."

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Dr Evil from the Austin Powers movies come to mind when I read that.

"Throw me a frickin' bone here! I'm the boss. I need info!"

My favorite YA series are the Gone books by Michael Grant. In them, my favorite character is one of the main antagonists for most of the series, and is an undeniable megalomaniac. But despite all of the terrible things he's done, including murder, he still manages to be entertaining, somewhat relateable, and has redeeming traits.

Now, another YA book I read had a character that didn't do things anywhere near as bad, was basically a racist bully from a bad household, but I disliked her so much that I didn't bother reading beyond the first book. Even though she had more reason to be messed up than the character from Gone, she had no real charm.

jjdebenedictis said:

A few people have already touched on this, but an asshole who is funny will keep the reader around far longer than an asshole who isn't.

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One of my favourite funny assholes from recent years is Dr Cox from Scrubs - SUCH a complete and utter asshat, but goddammit, I don't think I've ever laughed so hard as I do at some of his scathing put downs. Par example:

"I don’t know if they taught you this in the land of fairies and puppy-dog tails, where you obviously, if not grew up then at least spent most of your summers, but you’re in the real world now. Nnnnn-kay?"

I'm trying to think of a literary example... nope. Not coming to me. Comedy is harder to do in a novel though. I can't really remember reading ANY truly hilarious characters, come to think of it.

The easiest way to make an asshole relatable- other than to keep their assholery to a minimum (my God that word is versatile)- is to pit them against bigger assholes; i.e. use their asshole powers for good against even BIGGER assholes. Everybody looks like a hero when they're punching a Nazi.

NoirSuede said:

The former.

I'm sorry I didn't made it clear before, but the deal with my MC is that in the beginning he's very self-centered and very pragmatic (which led him to kill his family so that he wouldn't be held by his abusive parents anymore), and later on he learns what morals are and why people make friends.

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If you haven't read Stienbeck's EAST OF EDEN. One of his character murders her family. And yet throughout the novel we want to see what happens to her eventually One of the ways Stienbeck does this is by introducing his MC--a thoroughly likeable man--to the murderer. And we wait and read and see what harm will come to the MC, or will he escape her.

Richard III.
Sammy Glick in What Makes Sammy Run
Sweet Smell of Success (Burt Lancaster).
Any number of old west heroes who murdered Native American Men, Women and Children.
And movie starring Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and a whole host of wannabees.
Any book about the guy on the $20 bill.
Any book that gloats about the Americans stealing Hawaii and downplay American Sailors arresting the native ruler without proper authority.

I read the first trilogy of Thomas Covenant, but stopped midway through the second one. He just never evolved as a character. He was ALWAYS so passive and dejected. That really annoyed me.

As a reader, if I don't like the MC, or can't relate to his situation at all, the book isn't interesting to me. Reading is an escape, a chance to live another life, but if that life is as a butt head making bad decisions, I'll stop reading.

It's possible to relate even to a murderer. To do that though, the crime must be justified in the MC's mind.

I have a complete asshole of an MC in one of my books and in a test audience she was greeted exceptionally well, it might work out. She didn't kill her family though...

I would approach this from the POV that rarely are people assholes in their own mind - that determination is done by others. So your MC will have reasons behind his actions / words which may be offensive to others but are justified in the MC's mind.

The "ass becomes less of an ass" character arc is pretty standard. Take just about any popular mainstream book or Hollywood film and you'll find a flawed hero becoming less flawed by the time the story has finished. That might be Hobbits learning to be brave, Mr Incredible becoming more of a family man, Batman deciding that he really does like Superman after all, Anastasia deciding that she does want her botty paddled, Han Solo finding a moral conscience, Romeo and Juliet transcending their families' feud, Dicken's Pip becoming less arrogant. The list is endless.

The big question is how much of an ass can we make the main character and still be able to redeem him or her by the end of the book. I've written about zombies and witches as heroes, and even a "Dr Evil with a heart" style MC. Part of the answer, I think, is to make the plot interesting, surround the assy MC with spikey characters and give the MC some redeeming qualities. Rescuing a total ass would be harder than a medium-rare ass.

Oh, and a plot to drive the story on. Give the reader a question or a mystery at the beginning, to draw them into the rest of the story.

The one thing I personally couldn't do is to start with a totally repugnant MC. Others may be able to, but I wouldn't attempt it.

Most asshole characters I have a hard time with are those with no redeeming features. I have a similar difficulty with 'Mary Sue' characters who are good at EVERYTHING and should be sanctified.

All people are a spectrum of good and bad characteristics, attitudes, and reactions. Real people are three-dimensional. As long as your asshole loves puppies, or helps little old ladies cross the street, he should be golden.

I have seen too many of these kind of male characters who are "assholes" but somehow have redeeming qualities but yet, if you analyzed their behaviour they can actually be abusive. And abusive is not limited to only psychial. And such behaviour gets romanticized.

There are not many that have a side to them where they can be a bit of a jerk, but are not so awful that their behaviour is just plain abusive. Or that they are too stereotypical, lack depth. Are just jerks, and the writers and fans as well try and justify their behaviour.

I am fine with asshole characters, but it really dependa on how they are written. Don't make them stereotypical, watch out for behaviour that can be viewed as abusive. Make them three-dimensional, make them human. A lot of people can be a jerk sometimes, but there should be something there that makes them endearing, interesting.

greendragon said:

Most asshole characters I have a hard time with are those with no redeeming features. I have a similar difficulty with 'Mary Sue' characters who are good at EVERYTHING and should be sanctified.

All people are a spectrum of good and bad characteristics, attitudes, and reactions. Real people are three-dimensional. As long as your asshole loves puppies, or helps little old ladies cross the street, he should be golden.

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I think everyone has redeeming qualities... don't they?

A quote from Kurt Vonnegut:
“I think about my education sometimes. I went to the University of Chicago for awhile after the Second World War. I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody.
They may be teaching that still.
Another thing they taught was that no one was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died, he said to me, ‘You know – you never wrote a story with a villain in it.’
I told him that was one of the things I learned in college after the war.”

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