Accidentally writing an unlikable character

[RetroFan]

From reading the other thread of 'Intentionally writing an unlikable character' have you ever done the reverse of this and written a character that you liked and thought readers would like too, but received negative feedback about them from the readers when the story was posted?

This could be a main character or a side character, and it could be for any number of reasons. Obviously in some categories this would be more prevalent than others, like in Loving Wives some readers look at every letter of every word to see if there is any cuckoldry, and get extremely angry as soon as they see any conduct that they perceive to be cuckold and commenting accordingly.

As just one example from me, my story 'The Tale of the Too Close Twins' is narrated by a young guy named Andrew who starts to observe things about his friends - a twin brother and sister - that seem out of place and he begins to ponder just how close they really are, until seeing the evidence that proves his suspicions are correct. Andrew is not a 100% reliable narrator - and there is a twist at the end that reveals that - but I wrote him as an ordinary nice responsible guy who studies hard and becomes a vet, and from my perspective the things he does see and comments upon are real. However the IT fans hated Andrew and responded with angry comments condemning him and his actions, and saying that I should have written the story without him, which is kind of hard as he is the narrator.

Basically the idea for the story premise came along from thinking of times where we have observed family members (not our own family) where the dynamics seemed a little off - a brother and sister with a relationship more that of a boyfriend and girlfriend, a father and daughter where it seems like they are a couple with an age difference, or a mother and son where the son being a mama's boy is the matter of lowest concern - and while some did not like the story premise (and said so) - most negativity was reserved for the narrator.

What are your experiences with this? Have you ever written a male character who readers thought was boring, or a female character readers thought was a Mary Sue? Or have they ever surprised you with strong negative reactions to a support character?

 

[StillStunned]

I was surprised by how much readers disliked Sal in "A Fool Not to Fuck". To my mind, the trick she and Aisha pulled on Big Brother was just some harmless teasing - he's getting full of himself, so they remind him that he's lucky to have them.

But readers got angry, calling Sal (and to a lesser extent Aisha) manipulative, and describing the whole thing as "torture" and "mental pain".

Oh well. I suppose it means they identified closely with the narrator, which has to be a good thing.

 

[mildlyaroused]

The inverse is usually the way it goes for me: accidentally likeable. In those novels I've written which have "villains", I've never been able to stay on track and write someone who's truly evil. They never stay as villains. Not that they get redeemed; they are just never outright evil. They have motivations, humanity and backstories. I just find that avenue so much more interesting than wholly evil bad guys (at least when I'm writing. I can appreciate an evil foe in other peoples' fiction).

Anyway, audiences might complain, but I don't think having an unlikeable protagonist is necessarily a bad thing. If handled skillfully, we don't need to like someone to be invested in their story. We don't even need to relate to them. We just have to be drawn into their perspective on the world, one way or another.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'd put it this way. I've written characters who do edgy things, and readers sometimes react very negatively to their choices and call them names (e.g., "he's a rapist," "he's a criminal," "he should be in jail."). I have to admit that if the character did something like that in real life I'd think it was pretty cringey, but in the context of an erotic story I often enjoy characters being naughty so it doesn't bother me as a reader or writer.

 

[Voboy]

Sometimes I'll start with a character I don't think of as a "villain," per se, but I definitely intend for them to be flawed. Lo and behold, the next few thousand words reveal that they're a total asshole.

It happens.

 

[RetroFan]

Thanks for the responses. When I posted the thread though, I had in mind characters that readers were supposed to like, but for one reason or another did not.

As an example, Emily from Friends (Ross's English girlfriend who he briefly married) was meant to be liked by fans of the popular sitcom when added to its cast in the late 1990s, and looking back the writers, producers/directors and cast did everything right to this to happen, and Emily herself seemed sweet-natured and likeable and a good addition to the show. Except for one thing, nobody thought to tell Friends fans that they were supposed to like Emily, and reaction to her was adverse to put it mildly. It's lucky social media wasn't really around back then.

So if you ever wrote a character like Emily from Friends, this is the sort of experience I was interested in hearing about.

 

[Levorotatory]

As just one example from me, my story 'The Tale of the Too Close Twins' is narrated by a young guy named Andrew who starts to observe things about his friends - a twin brother and sister - that seem out of place and he begins to ponder just how close they really are, until seeing the evidence that proves his suspicions are correct. Andrew is not a 100% reliable narrator - and there is a twist at the end that reveals that - but I wrote him as an ordinary nice responsible guy who studies hard and becomes a vet, and from my perspective the things he does see and comments upon are real. However the IT fans hated Andrew and responded with angry comments condemning him and his actions, and saying that I should have written the story without him, which is kind of hard as he is the narrator.

I think what you encountered was a shortcoming of the category system used here. You wrote a story that is part incest, part fetish and part voyeur. You put it in incest, so readers came for the incest and got squicked by the fetish. The same would probably happen in either of the other categories.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I have written characters that were not universally loved or hated. I don't think I've written one by accident that was universally hated.

 

[MyBareTorso]

Unfortunately, I've never really received enough detailed feedback to formulate a response to this...

 

[Abbafan]

Thanks for the responses. When I posted the thread though, I had in mind characters that readers were supposed to like, but for one reason or another did not.

As an example, Emily from Friends (Ross's English girlfriend who he briefly married) was meant to be liked by fans of the popular sitcom when added to its cast in the late 1990s, and looking back the writers, producers/directors and cast did everything right to this to happen, and Emily herself seemed sweet-natured and likeable and a good addition to the show. Except for one thing, nobody thought to tell Friends fans that they were supposed to like Emily, and reaction to her was adverse to put it mildly. It's lucky social media wasn't really around back then.

So if you ever wrote a character like Emily from Friends, this is the sort of experience I was interested in hearing about.

Not a huge fan of the show, but I'm fairly familiar with it and the relationships. I think maybe she just wasn't what fans were wanting for Ross's character, so they turned on her, even though she wasn't doing anything wrong and she was a decent human.

That's a factor to consider in these kinds of situations. The character taking the story in a direction your readers don't like might lead them to dislike a good person.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Emily Waltham would have fit right in on Seinfeld... While we loved the characters, they were all shallow, self-centered, and somewhat detestable people. Emily was the poster child for unlikeable. After all, she ordered Ross never to see his friends if Rachel was there. While she didn't seem, at first, like she was a manipulative little bitch, she blossomed into one.

Not a huge fan of the show, but I'm fairly familiar with it and the relationships. I think maybe she just wasn't what fans were wanting for Ross's character, so they turned on her, even though she wasn't doing anything wrong and she was a decent human.

That's a factor to consider in these kinds of situations. The character taking the story in a direction your readers don't like might lead them to dislike a good person.

 

[StillStunned]

Emily Waltham would have fit right in on Seinfeld... While we loved the characters, they were all shallow, self-centered, and somewhat detestable people. Emily was the poster child for unlikeable. After all, she ordered Ross never to see his friends if Rachel was there. While she didn't seem, at first, like she was a manipulative little bitch, she blossomed into one.

She was likeable until the actress became pregnant and they had to abandon the storyline of her and Ross being a long-term item.

That said, Ross and Rachel didn't come out of the storyline with much credit either.

 

[madelinemasoch]

I've definitely done this before but only one example sticks out to me. I had a story on here about a woman named Eliza who was abused by her first husband, cheated on him, then eventually divorced her first husband and married the lover. Then, she ended up being neglected by the second husband and cheats on him with her first. At that point she just wanted to be wanted, and the first husband was totally obsessed with her, so she lets him back in. That's how she ends up perceiving his former abuse, as the result of intense all-consuming desire for her, which is what she needs by the end of the story. The abuse is in the past and she asserts power over him sexually. I thought that she would be, if not relatable, at least someone you couldn't help but empathize with given the brutality she goes through in the course of the story. Still, people said that not only was she unlikable, but all three of them were unlikable. I found this kind of baffling and asked the forums about it. What I think everyone was missing was the explanation behind her actions I just gave above. Also, there's a scene where he whips her with a silver rod until she bleeds, and nobody mentioned that, at all, so I felt like there was some kind of lack of empathy problem happening with the readers when it comes to her.

 

[MillieDynamite]

There is something in some women that attracts abusers. They fall for them time after time. Some of them grow to need the abuse (Hush your mouth, bitch!). It's very sad but true.

 

[alohadave]

She was likeable until the actress became pregnant and they had to abandon the storyline of her and Ross being a long-term item.

That said, Ross and Rachel didn't come out of the storyline with much credit either.

She got a lot of hate mail from Friends fans. She stopped acting for a while because of it.

 

[Abbafan]

Emily Waltham would have fit right in on Seinfeld... While we loved the characters, they were all shallow, self-centered, and somewhat detestable people. Emily was the poster child for unlikeable. After all, she ordered Ross never to see his friends if Rachel was there. While she didn't seem, at first, like she was a manipulative little bitch, she blossomed into one.

I wonder if the writers decided to have her do what they call in pro wrestling a heel (bad guy) turn.

Sometimes a character who's written as a good guy (face) will go over so badly that the fans love to hate them, so the writers just go with it and make the character into a heel.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

In my story Ted to Teddy, three short paragraphs on the last page that I thought I had changed, turned a loving wife trying to do what was best for her husband into a cheating bitch. I left it as was because the comments were so angry. It tells me the readers were vested enough in the characters and story that the flip pissed them off.

 

[MillieDynamite]

No, as stated earlier, she got pregnant, so they wrote her out of the show as quickly as they could. I don't believe they had a long-term plan for her; she'd be an additional season, and then it would end in divorce. But her pregnancy caused them to accelerate the discord about Rachel. I only saw this show in reruns.

I wonder if the writers decided to have her do what they call in pro wrestling a heel (bad guy) turn.

Sometimes a character who's written as a good guy (face) will go over so badly that the fans love to hate them, so the writers just go with it and make the character into a heel.

 

[RetroFan]

I wonder if the writers decided to have her do what they call in pro wrestling a heel (bad guy) turn.

Sometimes a character who's written as a good guy (face) will go over so badly that the fans love to hate them, so the writers just go with it and make the character into a heel.

Millie Dynamite is correct that the actress who played Emily on Friends, Helen Baxendale, did become pregnant while working on the show and that's the main reason she was written out earlier than planned, but I still wonder that given the negative reception to this character that she would have been written out sooner than intended even if the actress was not pregnant. Friends was immensely popular in the UK and Emily was meant to appeal to this market and for this reason I think she was intended to be a nice girl rather than a heel-face-turn bitch, but for some reason the opposite happened and the character didn't work out with Friends fans on either side of the Atlantic, nor in its many other markets either.

I had heard before that Helen Baxendale did get hate mail due to Emily's unpopularity on Friends; that's really sad, the poor girl shouldn't have been subjected to that. It's amazing though how much this character was despised while doing nothing wrong prior to the wedding debacle (again which wasn't her fault), even more than 25 years later.

There's some interesting responses from authors, Still Stunned having experiences similar to me. It made me think of another type of character, an antagonist that fans dislike, but not in the right way.

Kylo Ren from the Star Wars sequel trilogy would be a good example. Other Star Wars villains - Darth Vadar, Grand Moff Tarkin, Emperor Palpatine, Jabba the Hutt and Director Krennick as just five examples - are not likeable for their evil natures and ruthless actions, but fans liked them as villains because the characters were well conceived and compelling. However this wasn't the case with Kylo Ren - Star Wars fans didn't like the character but not because of his personality or actions, they simply didn't care for him.

 

[Abbafan]

No, as stated earlier, she got pregnant, so they wrote her out of the show as quickly as they could. I don't believe they had a long-term plan for her; she'd be an additional season, and then it would end in divorce. But her pregnancy caused them to accelerate the discord about Rachel. I only saw this show in reruns.

I wasn't talking about her leaving the show, though. I was talking about the turn her character took in the show, becoming kind of nasty and possessive and not letting him see his friends.

It sounded like she started on the show being someone the writers tried to make likeable and relatable, but towards the end of her time they went another way.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I don't think she was very well received. I believe it was because she came on the heels of yet another, almost romantic relationship between Rachel and Ross. None of his girlfriends were generally plotted to be around too long. It was always planned that they'd be together, but the writers determined to make it last as them not together until the show ended. And Monica and Chandler were never intended to be more than a one-night stand until they realized that fans had been rooting for the two since (somewhere around) the tenth minute of the first episode. Matthew Perry and Courtney Cox had the most amazing chemistry.

I wasn't talking about her leaving the show, though. I was talking about the turn her character took in the show, becoming kind of nasty and possessive and not letting him see his friends.

It sounded like she started on the show being someone the writers tried to make likeable and relatable, but towards the end of her time they went another way.

 

[soflabbwlvr]

Yes. My two-part story, "Fallon's Final Fling," contains an entire cast of unlikable characters. It is a story about a bride-to-be and her bridesmaids, set on the night before the wedding. I was going for a vibe similar to the movie "Bridesmaids", where the women were frenemies stabbing each other in the back in a humorous and sexy romp. Well, it did not work. It is my lowest rated story, and the most common comment was to the effect that none of the characters were likable.