On Likeable Characters

The Falcata Times asked: "How do you create likeable characters?"

As authors, we're constantly told we have to create sympathetic protagonists. I don't subscribe to that school of character creation. Instead, I believe we have to create empathetic characters. What's the difference? A sympathetic character is pleasant or agreeable and is someone a reader can relate to. An empathetic character is someone we can understand, we may not like their choices but we get why they do what they do. In other words, an empathetic character doesn't have to be likeable, we just have to understand their motivations for why they do what they do.

I write about a half-mage, half-vampire assassin. In the first scene of RHSC, she buries the body of a human she killed and then turns around and kills a friend who's a vampire. Right there, I'm asking for trouble, right? I mean who wants to read about such a cold-blooded character? Well, as it turns out, lots of people do.

Here's the thing, if you're going to write a character that does bad things, you do have to make sure they're interesting. You can do this several ways. Two biggies: Motivation and humor.

Motivation is the lynchpin here. If you have a character who's doing shit randomly then you're going to lose readers. Your character can't be like a five-year-old.
"Why did you break your toy, Timmy?"
"I don't know."
If your character is a Timmy, you're going to have problems. But if you give that same character a reason to do those things, well, that's different, isn't it?
"Timmy, why did you break your toy?"
"Because the bad voices told me to."

See the difference? As humans we're very good at rationalizing bad decisions. Make sure you character has a damned good reason to do bad things and the readers will follow.

Now, on to humor. Anyone read Mark Henry? Of course you do. Mark's protag is a man-eating zombie with tons of attitude and a potty mouth. She's not snuggly or warm by any definition. But we love her. Why? Because she's effing hilarious. She also says things many of us think but would never voice in polite company. Make the reader laugh and they'll follow a psychopath into the depths of hell and even root them on.

Speaking of psychopaths, Dexter is another fabulous example of what I'm talking about. He's a serial killer, but we love him. Why? Because he's justified his blood lust by convincing himself he's a good guy. He's killling killers, so what's the harm, right? He's also funny. Ergo, we cheer him on. When he's almost caught, we're worried about him. Yet the fact remains he does things that should give us nightmares.

All that said, the truth is there are some readers who just don't like anitheroes. That's cool. But the most important point here is to be true to your character. I had someone tell me early on that Sabina couldn't kill someone in the first scene of the book. My response? "She's a vampire assassin. That's kind of her thing." If I shied away from her killing people in the book, it kind of defeats the purpose of having an assassin protagonist, doesn't it?

Any questions?