Writing flawed-yet-relatable characters

Ari Meermans

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When we strive too hard to write "likable" characters we can easily tip over into too-nice-to-be-believed territory. For our characters to be believable we need to portray them each as a whole person. That means characters with faults, characters who make bad choices for the right reasons (and pay the consequences), characters whose virtues can become vices in certain situations. The goal is to write characters who are recognizable, relatable, and can evoke empathy even if they aren't what one might call "likable". Those are the characters our readers remember.

"No More Mr. Nice Guys: How to Write Flawed Characters & Antiheroes" from Writer's Digest shows why writing fascinating and compelling characters, characters who can surprise your reader, is far more desirable than writing likable and agreeable characters.

Not so long ago it seemed every writer agreed: Protagonists must be “likable.”

Then something curious happened. Everyone began to realize that “likable” is merely a few degrees from “nice,” which in turn nudges perilously close to “boring.” People may not like spending 200–500 pages with a wanton wretch, but they don’t like wasting time with a Boy Scout’s shadow, either.

In truth, protagonists need to be compelling—better yet, fascinating—not necessarily agreeable. And what makes characters compelling or fascinating is their capacity to surprise. A character who is predictably anything quickly becomes a one-trick pony, incapable of maintaining reader interest for long.

You might want to take a look at the article if you are searching for ways to give your characters, especially your protagonist or your antagonist, some oomph to tip them from merely likable to memorable.
 
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ElaineA

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This is what makes the anti-hero so fascinating. Give me a delicious stew of character traits--the good, the bad, the neurotic, the unfathomable, the almost-perfect-but-not-quite--and you've got me hooked.

I'm looking at you, Deadpool. (I swear it has nothing to do with Ryan Reynolds.)

(Okay, maybe it does, a little.)
 

lilyWhite

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I really dislike the idea of conflating a character who is a "good person" with "flawless and therefore boring". Character flaws don't just mean "immorality". There's plenty of protagonists with strong morals who are beloved by many because of their strong morals and the lengths they go to do the right thing, and I doubt I'm the only one who's tired of stories that make everyone some flavour of "horrible" because the author thinks that's more "realistic".
 

Ari Meermans

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What makes someone a good person or a bad person? For that matter, what constitutes morality or immorality? Is it the act itself or the motivation for doing or not doing?

I think we all have a personal code we try to live by—those things we've told ourselves we will or will not do—and when we succeed it's because our limits have not yet been tried. It's within someone's motivations that you can find the hairline fractures that prove the testing grounds for trying that code to its limits. So, I don't subscribe to the notion that someone is always good or always bad; it's not realistic in life or in literature. ymmv
 

Kjbartolotta

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I'm fine with both the edgy grimdark antihero and the hero who tries to do good but has bags of sand around their feet, with the caveat that I like the second much better. To cite comic lingo, I always think of the difference between Peter Parker and Wolverine. Peter Parker is hella good, maybe the best guy ever, but his whole life is a mess and very frequently he's the cause thanks to selfishness, neglecting the people he loves, being wishy-washy, and so on. Wolverine is just kinda good at everything but kills people and is mean to everyone who's not a teenage girl. Perfectly fine, great even, but much easier to fall in a trap where the character becomes, in their own way, Too Perfect And Awesome to be compelling.

I like the point about contradiction in the article, people are, if anything, inconsistent. I remember reading Brother's Karamozov as a teenager and being blown away at the scene where the wicked evil father is at a monastery and is so moved by the monk's piety that he bestows them a big chunk of his fortune. It threw me for a loop because we're supposed to think this guy is all bad, and yet he's moved to do something positive with no ulterior motive. Dostoevsky tended to do this with all his characters, which is why I think he's still lauded as one of the masters of complex characterization.

ETA- tbh, Dostoyesky's men were great, compelling characters. Which is a shame, since he had some pretty fascinating women in his own life.
 
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ElaineA

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We're late-comers to Deadwood, but it's full of these kinds of characters. The doctor seems to me a good example of a decent human whose motives are almost never bad, but who is a raging substance abuser and enabler of other substance abusers. I could care less about Swearengen because he's just so unrepentantly bad. He's a cliche. I guess he's the "worse" for the benefit of all the other morally gray characters, but dang, doesn't that just make him a tool?

Give me someone with growth arc-potential. For me, I don't see how that happens with anyone all good, or all bad.
 

Marian Perera

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There's plenty of protagonists with strong morals who are beloved by many because of their strong morals and the lengths they go to do the right thing, and I doubt I'm the only one who's tired of stories that make everyone some flavour of "horrible" because the author thinks that's more "realistic".

Or because it's edgy to have the main character be a snarling, substance-abusing, misogynistic failure in life. I'm usually too turned off or bored to admire how far the writer is pushing the envelope.

That said, I love it when characters' morals lead them to do the wrong thing.
 

frimble3

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'Edgy' and 'envelope pushing' are the sorts of descriptors that put me right off a story.
Like 'dystopian', 'realistic', and 'gritty'.

All code for 'misery abounds.'
 
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PamelaC

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When I think of flawed characters, John Proctor is always the first to come to mind. He's one of my favorite characters in all of literature, even though his weakness in the face of lust is basically what set off the whole chain of events in The Crucible. But though we know his sin is coming home to roost, it's impossible not to like and even admire him. He is a good man, despite his flaws and past mistakes. He confesses his wrongdoing, and he will not give the lie to the courts that they want in order to spare his life.

Ugh. I love John Proctor. Definitely one of my top fictional crushes.
 

Ralph Rotten

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I try to avoid inoffensive characters, but making them bad is but one way to make them fun.
Sometimes I make them clever, or completely nuts, or just a regular working class bum who swears and has strange views.
Rarely are they angels, usually they have been smudged a little.

But in the rare case that I make them normal, it's so the reader can relate with them as a simpatico human being...then I kill them in the face! [spoiler alert]

I also try to avoid the stereotypical female characters. These days everyone makes the lead female a hottie bad-ass.
But why not make her clever, or talented, or stubborn?
 

talktidy

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I remember watching the first episode of Cracker, starring Robbie Coltrane, on British telly and being riveted. (If I recall correctly it was written by Jimmy McGovern?) The main character is a police profiler and a successful one. Coltrane's acting chops suffused the character with charisma, so that it comes as a bit of shock to discover he is a disaster at home, with a massive gambling addiction. He is married, but he is not above getting involved with a co-worker, either.
 

CalRazor

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This reminds me of "The Manhattan Hunt Club." Read it ages ago, and remembered liking the main character back then, who apparently lacked even the tiniest blemish on his soul. Now that I'm a bit older, characters like that fail to stimulate.
 

Bolero

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I think a classic flawed yet relatable (and still technically "good" - most of the time) is Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan. And if there is ever anyone you want to keep a safe distance from, it's him. Really bright, charming, hyperactive, overachieving - and so goal orientated he can be a menace to bystanders. One of the joys of that series is the reactions of some of his friends and relations.
 
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VVoltairx

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I only write antiheros because that's the best way for me to stay committed to a story. As a result, many of my themes are incredibly dark. I lighten it up with humor. I recently read a Mercedes Lackey Quora answer that said that humor was hard to work in, but I think it comes naturally from the author's sense of what's funny. I put two characters with interesting worldviews and personalities together and then it's a death match of banter in between battles or dark happenings.

My characters right now use a magic that's based in insanity. Thus, the more powerful you are, the more insane you are. This leads to comedy in its own right that mediates the darkness of struggling with mental health and being forcibly married to a mad king guilty of immorality (The king's a sweetie, by the way. He tends to blush).