"Likable Characters"?

[AG31]

I don't think it's necessary for characters to be likeable. The do need to be interesting (if you chosen to write something other than simple erotica... )

 

[pink_silk_glove]

The only readers who do not like bad characters in any way are stroke readers. Now I'm sure there are plenty of stroke readers out there who don't mind less than savory characters here and there, but you will be very hard pressed to find a for-plot reader who does not want to see any evil or conflict whatsoever. Even the staunchest fluffy romance readers will welcome some sort of villain to stand between their two soapy saintly lovebird heroes, and even the most moralistic and judgmental readers don't mind a villain so long as the villain is brought to justice or otherwise ends up paying for their badness.

Bad characters will make your good characters (or even your less bad characters) seem more good. It is the human experience to judge and measure by comparison. If someone says "Gee, it's really bright out today," they are really comparing the sunshine today to the average day that usually has dull clouds. In fact, comparison is the only way to measure or define anything in this world. Your readers are constantly comparing things in your story and that definitely includes the characters.

Bad characters and even very bad characters can do good things and reveal depth. A great example of this is Tony Montana from the movie Scarface. He's a ruthless gangster and cold-blooded killer who will do anything to get ahead, build his empire and increase his wealth and power. He's an extremely bad guy. Late in the movie he accepts the job to assassinate the diplomat with a car bomb but when he witnesses two young children get into the car, he does everything that he can to abort the mission. Even this cold-blooded murderer draws the line at killing innocent children and in doing so he reveals a significant semblence of honor and suddenly becomes less bad (or at least less bad compared to the cartel thugs that he's working with who don't care about the kids) and the audience is able to actually draw at least some sympathy for this otherwise terrible and ruthless man. It's complex writing that adds depth to the character and lends very strong emotion to the plot as the audience (in that scene at least) can't help but root for Tony to save those kids.

 

[YDB95]

For a story to have any tension, I guess you don't need to have any unlikeable characters, but it certainly does make it a lot easier. That's why most of my stories do have one. I'm not one for ambiguity - if a character in my story is unlikeable, s/he is definitely supposed to be that way. Probably the best example of this is Christine from City Girl in the Desert, there is just about nothing to like about her, but she's a perfect foil for Katie, the protagonist. (She was also a ton of fun to write...almost every paragraph gave me an opportunity to think of something outrageously arrogant for her to say or at least think.)

I have run into a few cases of readers finding the "good" characters unlikeable. One was The Unwelcome Wedding Guest, where someone said the revenge against Audra was too harsh. Another was The Altercation Before Christmas, which to be fair isn't among my favorites of my own stories. Both are sequels to other stories where it's pretty well established that the "victim" was rotten to the core and had it coming to them, at least in my opinion. But hey, I welcome any interpretation of my work.

 

[AG31]

The only readers who do not like bad characters in any way are stroke readers. Now I'm sure there are plenty of stroke readers out there who don't mind less than savory characters here and there, but you will be very hard pressed to find a for-plot reader who does not want to see any evil or conflict whatsoever.

I find your generalizations ridiculous.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I find your generalizations ridiculous.

Agree. I'm 30K words into an erotic romance and so far, all the conflict is internal to the MC. There are so many sources of conflict, you don't have to have an outright villain. Frankly, I find that internal conflict is more moving than external. I make my readers cry all the time, and I could probably count the 'bad characters' on one hand.

You want a truly evil character, though, read The Emasculation of Henry Smith. April is a piece of work. Even in this story, she's a secondary character.

 

[Devinter]

Agree. I'm 30K words into an erotic romance and so far, all the conflict is internal to the MC. There are so many sources of conflict, you don't have to have an outright villain. Frankly, I find that internal conflict is more moving than external. I make my readers cry all the time, and I could probably count the 'bad characters' on one hand.

You want a truly evil character, though, read The Emasculation of Henry Smith. April is a piece of work. Even in this story, she's a secondary character.

Whilst I have certainly written a fair share of 'bad characters', I agree with this completely. The stories that have impressed me the most here on Literotica tends to be the ones where the conflict is internal. Maybe they're fighting a disease. Maybe they're old and want to have one last hurrah before their time runes out. Maybe they're in love with someone unobtainable. Maybe they're in love with someone that would be considered very taboo and forbidden to love. Maybe they are having a hard time coming to terms with their sexuality. These struggles can 'be the villain' just as much as a character can. It's all a story needs to be incredibly emotional.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Whilst I have certainly written a fair share of 'bad characters', I agree with this completely. The stories that have impressed me the most here on Literotica tends to be the ones where the conflict is internal. Maybe they're fighting a disease. Maybe they're old and want to have one last hurrah before their time runes out. Maybe they're in love with someone unobtainable. Maybe they're in love with someone that would be considered very taboo and forbidden to love. Maybe they are having a hard time coming to terms with their sexuality. These struggles can 'be the villain' just as much as a character can. It's all a story needs to be incredibly emotional.

Maybe their butt plug is just a little too big?

Emily

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Maybe their butt plug is just a little too big?

Emily

No comment. She fidgets in her chair.

 

[Devinter]

Maybe their butt plug is just a little too big?

Emily

That.. Is a conflict of sorts, I suppose. Or a blessing, depending on how you see it.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Bad characters and even very bad characters can do good things and reveal depth. A great example of this is Tony Montana from the movie Scarface. He's a ruthless gangster and cold-blooded killer who will do anything to get ahead, build his empire and increase his wealth and power. He's an extremely bad guy. Late in the movie he accepts the job to assassinate the diplomat with a car bomb but when he witnesses two young children get into the car, he does everything that he can to abort the mission. Even this cold-blooded murderer draws the line at killing innocent children and in doing so he reveals a significant semblence of honor and suddenly becomes less bad (or at least less bad compared to the cartel thugs that he's working with who don't care about the kids) and the audience is able to actually draw at least some sympathy for this otherwise terrible and ruthless man. It's complex writing that adds depth to the character and lends very strong emotion to the plot as the audience (in that scene at least) can't help but root for Tony to save those kids.

Depending on the character, it doesn't even have to be good things. Sometimes just "relatable" will do.

Paul Giamatti's character in "Shoot Em Up" is an awful human being. He'd happily detonate that carbomb. The only time I can remember him showing anything like a principle is that after killing an innocent woman, he's willing to haul the body himself rather than let his goons do the heavy lifting, and even there it's quite likely he just enjoys handling dead bodies.

But repeatedly through the movie, his phone will ring, interrupting the gunfight or whatever's happening at the time, and he'll have to answer it and tell his wife "I can't talk right now, honey, I'm in the middle of something". This guy is a monster through and through, but he's also a guy who gets phone calls at inconvenient times, and most of us can relate to that just a little bit. It doesn't make him a better human being - safe to assume his relationship problems are self-inflicted - but it makes him more interesting.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Agree. I'm 30K words into an erotic romance and so far, all the conflict is internal to the MC. There are so many sources of conflict, you don't have to have an outright villain. Frankly, I find that internal conflict is more moving than external. I make my readers cry all the time, and I could probably count the 'bad characters' on one hand.

You want a truly evil character, though, read The Emasculation of Henry Smith. April is a piece of work. Even in this story, she's a secondary character.

Internal conflict has nothing to do with two characters having guilt free happy sex as they indulge in (insert kink), which is the template for the majority of stroke material - no tension nor conflict internal nor otherwise whatsoever - and this is the most common and popular template on lit, regardless of cateogory.

So, yes internal conflict can be very effective, but we really don't see it in these stories, so it's quite irrelevant to this particular debate.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Internal conflict has nothing to do with two characters having guilt free happy sex as they indulge in (insert kink), which is the template for the majority of stroke material - no tension nor conflict internal nor otherwise whatsoever - and this is the most common and popular template on lit, regardless of cateogory.

So, yes internal conflict can be very effective, but we really don't see it in these stories, so it's quite irrelevant to this particular debate.

Yeah, we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this. My highest rated stories are not strokers. they have hot sex but are primarily romantic dramas, and internal conflict plays a major point in all of them.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Yeah, we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this. My highest rated stories are not strokers. they have hot sex but are primarily romantic dramas, and internal conflict plays a major point in all of them.

I just checked your submissions page and all of your stories score the same. You ave 61 submissions and all but 6 score between 4.65 and 4.9 with the vast majority between 4.7 and 4.8 so you hardly have any outliers at all - not enough to make a mathematical difference. Your highest rated stories are barely higher than your average so the difference between your best stories and any of your poorer performing 'strokers' would be so nominal that it does not support your argument.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I just checked your submissions page and all of your stories score the same. You ave 61 submissions and all but 6 score between 4.65 and 4.9 with the vast majority between 4.7 and 4.8 so you hardly have any outliers at all - not enough to make a mathematical difference. Your highest rated stories are barely higher than your average so the difference between your best stories and any of your poorer performing 'strokers' would be so nominal that it does not support your argument.

Or perhaps it means that even a stroker like Three Days That Changed My Life contains some inner conflict with no 'villain', and that makes it a better story, which pulls the score up. Still going to agree to disagree with your hypothesis.

 

[RetroFan]

It's a good question. There's a screenplay-writing book called "Save the Cat" that advocates for having your main character do something admirable early on, e.g., "save a cat," to endear them to the audience. It doesn't have to have anything to do with the main storyline. The book is way too formulaic to my taste, but I think this is a good point.

An important principle in erotica, IMO (not all the time but most of the time) is you have to make your readers WANT your characters to fuck. The standard arc of a romance story is that you establish early on that two characters are meant to be together, but there's something keeping them apart, and you keep your readers turning the page because they are eager to see the obstacle resolved so the romantic characters can end up together. An erotic story is basically a romance, but with fucking. I think for most of us, it's more pleasurable to read about two characters that we basically like heading toward a relationship than to read about two bad characters or one who's bad and one who's good. This makes the eventual sexual union truly satisfying on every level.

But here's the rub. You don't have to do a lot to establish a character's goodness and appeal. Do more with less. Just have them be nice to a neighbor, or say something good, or wish well toward someone, or care about the person for whom they have desire. The possibilities for establishing your character's "goodness" are almost endless.

And it's perfectly OK for them to be a mixed bag, a combination of good and bad qualities. But you're probably going to get your reader more deeply invested if there's at least something good about them.

That's really good advice Simon Doom about having your characters do some good deed to make them appeal to readers/viewers. Without realizing at the time I actually did this in my Christmas story a few years back 'Take Cover From Tracy' about the destruction of the Australian city of Darwin by Cyclone Tracy at Christmas 1974. The female lead character, a young Navy officer named Jessie we meet at the Darwin Airport, about to board a flight to her home city of Perth to surprise her family for Christmas. But after an older lady enters the airport, distraught that her own daughter and son-in-law have been injured in a car accident and desperate to get to Perth to take care of her grandchildren and with no available flights, Jessie gives up her seat on the plane, leaving her stuck in Darwin for Christmas. Male lead character Jake we meet on a bus into Darwin at a loose end, having been fired from his job on a Northern Territory cattle station. However the station seems about as a pleasant place to live and work as the ranch from 'Of Mice and Men', and Jake was dismissed after getting into a fist fight with bullies at the station who were making life hard for other workers. So Jessie and Jake's good deeds put them both in Darwin where they shouldn't have been and in the position to meet each other, but unknowingly (to them) in great danger.

Making characters seem nice and appealing to viewers/readers also works well as a subversion in crime fiction, for example making the bad guy in a mystery story initially seem like a really nice guy. The movie Ghost from 1990 is a good example of this.

 

[WeShallUnclench]

I don't think it's necessary for characters to be likeable. The do need to be interesting (if you chosen to write something other than simple erotica... )

There is definitely a balance to strike - I am a bit allergic to the type of readers who insist every character must be a cute role model they want/should emulate, "or else what will happen to my impressionable young mind?!"

The "sin" is only to make unlikeable characters that aren't interesting, because that adds up to "annoying".

Though I guess that is also a very specific itch you might want scratched - I know I enjoy annoying characters if I realize I - the reader - am essentially the butt of the joke. Good trolling can be an art form.

Though again the tricky part is hitting the right degree of masochism, and yours might be very different from that of other people. It's possible to feel the meaness and stupidity and pettiness of the characters is exactly what gets you off, but there is a risk nobody else agrees.