Five Ways to Write a Likeable Character
...and fix unlikable ones.
Whether you write fiction or non-fiction, you might feel your central character just isn’t coming off right. If you can’t root for them or if you don’t like them your readers definitely won’t. But even if you’re in love with the character, you need to make sure your readers will be too. Here are some ways to tell if your character is unlikable and how to make sure your character becomes the champion of the story.
5. Your main character must act and behave consistently. According to Robert Caldini in his book Influence, inconsistent behavior is one of the most unlikeable traits a person can have. We find people who act inconsistently to be untrustworthy, phony, or mischievous. For example, if your character has a fear of walking the street alone at night, readers might find it odd that he keeps going out alone for casual midnight strolls to admire the moonlight. If you designed your character to be this way, or if it’s just sloppy writing, your readers will feel disconnected from someone who is unpredictable.
4. Your character must be relatable. This seems obvious and broad, so let’s go a bit deeper. Here are some things that have caused my characters to be unrelatable and how I fixed the issues:
Too much focus on petty issues: I learned that the tension comes from raising the stakes, not just adding problems.
Unexplained/unwarranted anger: Anger is intense, and focusing on it for too long can suggest your character may be having a mental health problem instead of a bad day. This most often happens to me when I try too hard to “show, don’t tell” with a brooding character. I fix this by focusing on how other people in the scene react to the character instead. That sets a reliable benchmark for how big of a deal this person’s attitude is.
Disproportionate or unusual responses: One time I wrote about a woman picking up her daughter from jail. I wanted to show the mother as a sympathetic and loving person, but it came off as someone who just didn’t think it was a big deal that her daughter had been arrested. I fixed the problem by having the mother fly off the handle at the jail and then showing the motherly concern in a later scene.
3. Avoid making your main character a perpetual victim. There is a not-so-fine line between increasing tension and sadistically heaping misfortune on a character (see 5 above). When bad things happen to the same person over and over they are either very unlucky or they are partly to blame. Either way, no one wants to read a story set in Frown Town, and it’s hard to root for someone with no hope. Give your character a fighting chance or readers might start to actually root against them.
2. If your main character is just observing things, maybe they should be the narrator instead. If your character is in a café or at a bar listening to other people talking, the other people are the interesting ones. Your character needs to do things. Make them get up and get an ashtray, at least. Better yet, have them chuck the ashtray at one of the people who was talking for saying something offensive. Otherwise, consider turning the main character into the narrator and having them tell the story—that way you don’t have to ditch a character you probably love.
1. Give your character agency. To me, this is the root problem of all the others listed above. Your character needs to adapt and react to events in the world. More importantly, at some point they must become proactive. When your character just lets things happen, they have no agency. Give your character strong feelings, opinions, and beliefs to guide their actions and create interesting conflicts.
Let us know in the comments if these tips help bring your character back to life. Happy writing!