I’ve read several book reviews lately praising the unlikable lead (which is not the same as flawed). The implication in these reviews is that the traits that make someone likeable are, in a word, dull. Mean people, selfish schemers, folks that can’t see past their own navels–these men and women are more interesting, the reasoning in these reviews goes, than those who are kind, invested in helping others, and working to do as little harm as possible.
Again, this is not the same as flawed. Flawed characters aren’t perfect. They make mistakes, misunderstand the situation, lose their cool. But they can still be likeable. They can still be characters we root for.
Current pop culture adores the unlikeable. Whether it’s the roster of sh*t heads on Succession, or the endless takedowns of other artists that seems to occur monthly in music, we seemingly can’t get enough of not very nice people.
In romance, this is less common. And, in fact, too often in the genre, the leads are so perfect that their very predictability makes them blah. But I am still seeing more unpleasantry than works for me. Heroines who take out their rage at the patriarchy on the men they claim to love. Heroes who belittle other men because they can’t get a grip on their jealousy. Leads who just aren’t very nice to others and whose change in attitude comes too little and too late to make me think they’ve really matured.
I feel different about mysteries–I will always love Gone Girl. If I know going into a book that this is a study in badly behaved people, I can dig that. But, in art where the point is not murder or mayhem, I struggle if the leads aren’t, to me, worth rooting for.
How do you feel? Do you need your leads, especially in romance, to be those you admire? Do they have to be likeable? Or do you enjoy characters whose flaws make them seem not very nice?
It feels unintelligent or unsophisticated to admit it, but yes, I do want my protagonists to be likable — or at least relatable. Where they’re flawed, I want to see some growth. Where they make bad decisions, I want them to face the consequences of those decisions. In romance, while I love a good enemies-to-lovers tale, in the end I want to believe the main characters genuinely like each other in addition to having sexual chemistry. I want to root for the happy ending and feel like it’s deserved.
Your sense that to want characters we can admire makes you feel unintelligent or unsophisticated makes me want to tear my hair out! I promise you neither thing is true about your wishes.
To me, the culture zeitgeist that prioritizes tragedy over joy and cruelty over cohesion is unintelligent!
I like that perspective! It definitely seems to be the case, though, as Amy describes below, that our current cultural moment sees evil as smart/interesting, good as stupid, and happy endings as passé.
Twice now, I’ve critiqued fantasy manuscripts where the heroine is a alcoholic with anger issues who constantly messes up her life. I did my best to be constructive, but it was difficult to suggest improvements when the problem was so fundamental. The heroines didn’t have any significant positives to balance out their flaws, and I got the impression that what the writers liked about the heroines was that they were alcoholics with anger issues who constantly messed up their lives. Granted, this was unusual, but it wasn’t something I enjoy.
I don’t need characters to be perfect, but I need them to have some good qualities and some degree of likeability. And if these aren’t present at all, then I need the author to realize that. If the author and I are so far from the same page that we’re in different books altogether, and so the author keeps favoring this character or setting up things so the character gets whatever he/she wants, it’s not likely to work for me.
Totally agree!
Not necessarily likable, but maybe redeemable or salvageable? I have no desire to spend time with characters who are unrepentantly bad and never get better. This is why I rarely read romances with criminal protagonists. One of the things that has horrified me IRL in the last decade is the normalization of evil in America by Grump.
I don’t think this phenomenon is recent. More than hundred years ago, Scarlett O’Hara was a thoroughly unlikeable character but everyone thought she should have a HEA. And fifty years ago, every Corleone in the Godfather movies (and the novel) was a murderous thug but the movies made millions and became all-time classics. And before Succession there was Breaking Bad that was hugely popular (my husband who is a brilliant chemist himself was deeply offended by the basic premise of the show). All of the above romanticized the idea of totally irredeemable characters as somehow heroic. So, it is not surprising that this trend is creeping into romance novels too. There must be a readership for these types of heroes, otherwise they will not be writing these stories. Perhaps, these characters are more true to real life than the perfect heroes that have populated romance novels until now.
I truly believe that this rise of evil characters who are selfish, poorly educated, and willing to get what they want is because people associate being a good person with being stupid. In some ways, bad people seem to have what it takes to get what they want: they are manipulative, they know who to trust and who not to, they know what they want and don’t allow themselves to be used. On the other hand, good people are manipulable, not very cunning (being cunning seems to be an evil character trait), they trust everyone and hope for the best even against what reality itself shows them They are naïve, stupid, and bad, cool people eat them alive.
I have found few books where the hero and heroine are good people and at the same time intelligent, cunning, cautious and capable of playing mental games. Intelligence seems to be associated with being morally gray to morally black.
You know that idea of ”a hero sacrifices you to save the world, the villain burns the world for you girl” or “the hero will tell you to sacrifice yourself and the villain will let you burn and kill everyone who bothers you.” Sorry but a really good guy would sacrifice himself to protect the heroine and the world she inhabits…or better yet both heroes and heroines would be smart enough to just get rid of the antagonists and villains…
On the other hand, I think it is something psychological, perhaps many people would just like to go through life crushing others and winning at all costs, but they are forced to be politically correct and “nice” people. I have met many people like that, for a reason they are capable. To love and admire such evil and selfish characters, they do not love them as villains or characters, they really adore and admire them.
Our society lavishly rewards a lot of bad venal and selfish people, so I think in some way it reflects genuine moral confusion in our society about what’s good and bad.
I’m definitely one who feels like some of the youngsters want MCs who are so sanitized as to have no interesting character traits and kind of no room for growth. And I do like Amy’s analysis about good = stupid or naive in the current day, although I loved Succession and the kids were sometimes not good people and not as smart as they thought they were.
I wonder if “bad” characters, especially the male leads, plays into a lot of women’s belief that they can change and/or save a man. I don’t love that either. It’s one thing if he’s a grumpy guy and she brings sunshine and joy into his life, it’s another if he’s an actual evil guy. I also do not have much patience for the messy female character. I used to watch a fair number of Hallmark movies and I could not deal with the women who were just yabbering all over the place. Just be a grown-up, please.
Mostly I read historical but I wandered into contemporary recently to read Annika Martin’s Billionaires of Manhattan series. All of them were enjoyable but one of them, I could not stand the MMC and had to abandon it after about 25%. I looked at the end and, of course, he was better but I just didn’t want to spend more time hanging around him.
In non-romance books or movies, I’m definitely more open to it. I also loved Gone Girl and Succession and Mad Men and The Talented Mr. Ripley and so on.
I need my characters to be likable. We started to watch “Yellowstone” and after about 4-5 episodes, we realized we didn’t like a single one of the main characters. We had no desire to keep watching. I’m the same with books. The MC can be the bad guy, but I have to like him/her. They can have flaws and make dumb decisions (to a point) and I’m okay with that. But if the main character is someone who I find despicable or annoying (selfish, self-centered, arrogant)…I wouldn’t want to spend real time with that person so why do I want to spend my leisure reading time with them?
I, at least, need one “anchor” character that I enjoy or I’m not continuing. I decided to try out that series Outer Range several months ago because I’d heard good things about it. I had to stop within the first episode because I didn’t like a single person I’d seen so far. Of course it didn’t help that I had no idea what was even going on.
I prefer the characters to be imperfect. A flawed character with a redemption arc often makes the plot more interesting.
A deal breaker for me is a big age gap, especially older hero with a young female. I find these really gross and makes the hero very unlikeable to me. Is anyone else bothered by big age gaps?
I struggle with them as well.
Big age gaps don’t bother me for the most part – one of my favourite series, the Thomas Elkin trilogy by N.R. Walker has an age gap of 22 years but the author makes it work spectactularly well. (I don’t count anything under 8 or 9 years as an age gap, btw.) The leads in Annabeth Albert’s At Attention (another favourite) have 15+ years between them, Theo and Auggie in Gregory Ashe’s First Quarto have a decade between them – and I could probably name loads of other favourite romances that feature large-ish age gaps – when done well, it’s one of my favourite tropes. I can understand, however, that it might not work as well in m/f romances, where the gender dynamics are different and there may be another significant power imbalance at work.
In historicals, though, large age-gaps were the norm in romances because it was often that way IRL – titled gentlemen often married much younger women, partly because they needed to be sure their heir was theirs biologically, hence the preference for virgins. Again, that didn’t bother me unless there were other imbalances that made it not work in fiction. And I always say, if the 16 years between Emma and Knightley is good enough for Jane Austen, who am I to question it?
An age gap doesn’t bother me either if the author makes it work and doesn’t emphasize it by, for instance, the man calling the woman “little girl” or being otherwise paternalistic towards her.
Agreed. I don’t do “Daddy” romances for that reason (mostly).
As Dabney says, I struggle with big age gaps as well. Part of it is because IRL all too often men discard their original, age appropriate spouses who provided the heirs for a younger model. If I’m reading romance to see women find love, respect, and an HEA, I don’t want to be afraid that the HEA will last only as long as her breasts are perky or that she was chosen specifically because her breasts were perkier than those of women closer to the hero’s age. And all too often IRL, if the man is older he’s viewed as admirably virile, but if a woman is older, she’s considered somehow a figure of fun and her younger partner somehow pitiable or idiotic or the assumption is that he will abandon her eventually.
“Again, this is not the same as flawed. Flawed characters aren’t perfect. They make mistakes, misunderstand the situation, lose their cool. But they can still be likeable. They can still be characters we root for.”
More than anything, this reminds me of the characters by my favorite romance author, Shelly Laurenston. Her characters are definitely not perfect. In some ways, they are the most human and therefore imperfect I think I’ve ever read about in romances. Which is really kind of weird considering most of them shift into some kind of predator. But that is the thing I love about her stories. She’s taken animal characteristics and given them to their human counterparts as personality traits, quirks even, that they, and everyone they interact with, just have to learn to live with.
Some of them are more likeable than others but another thing I like about her stories is that for all their flaws, they don’t usually change who they are all that much except with regards to the romance aspect of the story. Everything else in her stories is about the action. It’s not about whether the characters are perfect or imperfect. It’s about living life which can sometimes be downright messy. But a thoroughly enjoyable story at the same time.
The thing this also reminds me of is the perpetual question of which is a better character to tell a story about, Superman or Batman? Most people think Batman wins because he’s dark, brooding and usually just as damaged as the villains he faces. And Superman is perfection personified who never needs a character arc to begin with. But to me what they always seem to miss is that Batman never actually changes either. He rarely if ever has that character arc that everyone says is so important. Are there individual stories where he actually learns something? Sure. But overall he’s always going to be a dark, broody and antisocial character because that’s who he is. That is not going to change or he wouldn’t be Batman.
So I guess my answer would be, no, I don’t have to like a character. I do have to enjoy them and the journey they are on. Liking them is not the same thing as being interested in them. And that is up to the talent of the author. Make me interested enough to stick it out.
When it comes to romance, if you don’t like the characters how can you be invested in them getting a HEA? I don’t have to like the characters as I would people in my real life but I do need to be interested in the characters and want them to be happy. Characters can be good people as long as they aren’t boring. A lot of writers use bad behaviour as a substitute for sophisticated characterisation. One dimensional villains are just as bad as one-dimensional paragons.
Hear, hear!!!
It’s the “one-dimensional” that’s the problem.
I’m echoing what others have already said – but I have to like the characters and find them interesting. What I like about them might not appeal to others, but they’re likeable to me, which is the important thing. As oceanjasper says, why would I become emotionally invested in characters I don’t like?
I like flawed characters who own their flaws and work on them; I like complex characters where reasons for their perhaps-not-always-perfect behaviour are shown and explored.
Good or bad (in terms of their behaviour), as long as the characters are multi-faceted, nuanced and interesting, it’s all fine with me; what I don’t want are barely two dimensional cardboard-cut-outs with no personality (I just read a book in which the leads are exactly like that!)
I will say, however, that there does seem to be a tendency for authors to write “good” characters who are boring as hell – and one-note, cartoonish villains are just as unreadable.
Never, TBH!
Yes, in both books and TV, I want my main characters to be likable. They can be flawed but I want them to have a good heart and/or good intentions. If they have done bad deeds, then during the course of the story I want them to feel remorse and start changing their ways. For example, an MC who is an assassin (such as Lies by Kylie Scott) or who was a villain in a previous book (such as Sebastian in The Devil in Winter). On TV, I am not interested in shows featuring anti-heroes (such as The Shield or Breaking Bad). I have gravitated towards shows like Parenthood or Friday Night Lights, where characters aren’t “goody goody” and sometimes make poor choices but learn from their mistakes and want to do better. And in the TV shows I watch, I actually prefer that the majority of the characters be likable.
I want to be able to like the main characters, but I don’t want them to be flawless. Most of all, I don’t want them to be boring, characters I’ve encountered a dozen times before, distinguished only by their hair color or occupation. I don’t want to know all about the characters in the first chapter. Is he a powerful, take-charge guy, accustomed to giving orders and accepting ultimate responsibility?I don’t care if he’s a duke or a CEO, if that’s all there is to him, I’ve read about him far too often.
I just started rereading Jo Goodman’s A SEASON TO BE SINFUL, part of the package that was a daily deal a couple of days ago, and I’m enjoying the way she is gradually revealing the characters. I’m feeling as if authors used to spend more time developing complex characters in longer books.
I love Goodman for that. Her leads are so complex.
However, I do wonder where she gets her picture of subservient nuns.
If I remember correctly, she’s a social worker who deals with a lot of family abuse. So, not sure about the nuns!
My favorite in that box set is One Forbidden Evening.
Dabney, your opinion piece is horrifying, and I fear, accurate.
Any writer knows it is A LOT harder to make virtue interesting than villainy.
Manipulating audiences and readers to understand and then to root for criminals and even psychopathic murderers gives the audience novelty and cheap excitement. However, such novels, TV programs, and movies are like supplying cocaine to children: fun at first for the child, but ultimately destructive.
Characters who become abusive (verbally or physically) from frustration at injustice are not admirable, but abusive, themselves. Although such authors may be well intended, their failure to be wiser increases the justification of abuse.
It is not enough to know that often abusers were abused. Understanding the dynamic does not stop abuse. In fact, often, such understanding often serves as an excuse and a dismissal of the effects of verbal or physical violence. “Yes, my mate verbally and physically hurts me and the kids, but they were abused, themselves” is not good enough. Understanding the dynamic is no substitute for stopping abuse.
Abusive characters must be willing to change, if they deserve the position in novels and movies as heroes or even, as main characters.
To show abusers as sympathetic, justified, and ultimately, triumphant and virtuous destroys the foundations of our society.
Absolutely. Right now I’m working on a historical romance where one MMC is young, rich, smart, handsome and the son of a duke. Except… he’s the illegitimate son of a duke, raised by his doting father but never able to legally inherit because there’s a distant cousin who’s the actual heir. So he sets out to cause as much pain and damage to the cousin’s family as he can (yes, he’s the villain). I don’t think it’s at all fair that because of the law, he’ll lose his home when his father dies, but it’s not fair to make innocent people suffer either.
That said, I’m enjoying writing about him because he’s so willing to pull out stops to get what he wants, and because subverting the tropes is fun too. But he’s definitely not going to win in the end.
Many actors say they prefer villains because they are more interesting to play. But at a certain point I decided that villains are actually the shallower, flatter characters, and because their choices are so predictable, rather boring. Isn’t it easier to choose the easy way out, to put the responsibility to heal the world on others? To not report the crime or the bullying out of fear? To cheat when it means more money or power? OTOH, it can be hard to be good. Oskar Schindler was a flawed human being, but he choose to do good in the face of overwhelming evil and potential harm to himself. Robert Gould Shaw faced death and social opprobrium to lead an all black unit in the American Civil War. In fiction, Patricia Gaffney’s TO LOVE AND TO CHERISH had a vicar as hero, while her TO HAVE AND TO HOLD focused a man who began as a true rake and evolved into a hero; both were compelling even though moral opposites. The older I get, the more I find these the interesting although possibly flawed characters I want to read about and the less I want to spend time with the total bad guys. Real life is nasty, brutish and short enough.
Maybe actors prefer playing the villain because the villain is frequently a more interesting character, especially if the hero or heroine is a Dudley Doright type. I have to think it would be more fun to play wicked Mme. De Winter than sweet but dumb Constance in The Three Musketeers. And Michael Corleone in The Godfather series, as he slowly sinks into evil, is a great role. On the other hand, the obvious villain in the black hat, twirling his mustache, is probably not much fun.
I think that no matter whether the character is hero or villain, what makes them interesting is complexity.
Mme de Winter may be more interesting than Constance, but it is on Dumas who wrote them that way. If I were an actor I’d certainly prefer to play the former rather than the latter. But there are more interesting heroes out there: I’d prefer to play Rick rather than Maj. Strasser in Casablanca. I found Boromir one of the most interesting characters in Lord of the Rings precisely because he was tempted by the power of the ring and had to struggle to be a hero in the end. Sauron, OTOH, was as you note not much fun because he was such an obvious villain in a black hat.
First, thank you sooo much for mentioning “To Love and to Cherish.” As I was writing my comments, I was thinking of it, but couldn’t remember the title.
I have, over the years, heard actors talk about how much fun it is to play villains. But I also have heard them talk about ultimately, how difficult it became to inhabit such a character. Some people think that Heath Leger’s suicide was influenced by his playing (if I remember correctly) the Joker in the Batman movie, and I believe it.
It is not easy to choose virtue instead of what is profitable or easy. Such tension can make a wonderful novel.
I have been struck by how often in life, if you have to choose between two acts, it is usually the harder one that is the virtuous one. Should I steal?” The easier choice: sure. Should I explode in anger? Easier not to control yourself. Should I cheat, even though I’m sure I could get away with it? Should I, as the school principal fire the lousy teacher? Should I report what I suspect is child abuse, done by my boss? Should I take a harmless kickback?
It’s not easy trying to be a good person. I know. I frequently fail, but then again, it makes life intersting.
If I remember correctly, C.S. Lewis said that in Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan is more interesting than God because it is easier for us to imagine someone worse than we are than to imagine someone better. 🙂
I’d argue to have and to hold MMC is stunningly unlikable. But what you like is the struggle to become likable so there’s a journey.
Do you think he’s unlikeable by the end?
It’s been a while, but in my review I say he’s become a “decent human being” by the end. He may not be Mr. Congeniality, but that would mean giving him a total personality transplant, which the author, thankfully, doesn’t do!
He’s tolerable by the end. But mostly what I feel is just the sheer relief that he’s not torturing the heroine anymore, that she’s safe.
But he’s meant to be unlikeable, and has been somewhat redeemed by the end – which is the point, isn’t it?
I think there’s been a shying away by many authors of creating these sorts of characters – possibly because they fear it will drive readers away if they don’t immediately like them, possibly because some just aren’t able to write the kind of redemption those characters need.
Honestly, I’d prefer to read about a character with serious problems who works to become a better person than to read about a “rake” whose worst flaw is that he claims he’ll never get married (and meeting the heroine cures him of that right quick).
That is Sebastian in TO HAVE AND TO HOLD – he is a true rake, not simply someone who declares he doesn’t want to get married, and he has to work at becoming a decent human being. The scene where he visits his family and understands for the first time how selfish and shallow they are is revealing about why he was the way he was and how much he’s changed since the beginning of the novel.
I think characters in contemporaries usually need to be a bit unlikeable because there are so few structural impediments to normal, nice people getting together in our modern day society that I find it unbelievable that a well-adjusted perfectly likeable person has remained completely single till age 33, with no serious relationships otherwise. But I don’t want the characters to be mean or selfish. Just kind of a hot mess. Or they can be likable but then they need to be like 25 or something.
That is interesting. I’m gonna think about this. A third of Americans say they are single.
It depends on the writing. Any character written with depth and sympathy will attract my attention, even if they are a person I would run from in real life. But they must have genuine love for their h/h and they must be written with depth. I have to be able to see what draws their beloved to them and to find something of worth within them as I read.
Right now, in a world where people who simply don’t have the same political viewpoint you do are painted as villains or where grown adults actually cut off relationships over minor disagreements in how a subject is handled, I actually find myself longing for these stories. It is good to remind myself of the long, often difficult journey people take on the road to becoming “bad” and to remember that relationships are meant to have a certain degree of disagreement/tension in them. Having people in our lives who help us view things from a different perspective, even if those people are in the pages of a book, can help us grow and empathize. Just my .02 of course but for me the question isn’t does the author make me like you so much as does she make me see you as a person worthy of the love you are about to receive?
I guess, for me, that is likeable.
I didn’t like the hero in Death Angel, but he loved the heroine and would do anything for her (including kill). I feared for any mom/dad of a kid who bullied their children, though. Or even a PTA argument that didn’t go their way. I disliked the characters on The Americans. They loved each other and their kids; they had some value from that, and I could understand how they had come to love each other, but I didn’t like them at all. But their story was sure interesting.
Well, I have different desires for romance than I do for my TV shows or even my other reading. I’d never read a romance with either Phillip or Elizabeth (from The Americans) as leads, but, damn, I love that show.