Likeable Characters are Killing Fiction
In Defense of Spending Time with Terrible People
Somewhere in the Amazon reviews of almost every novel with a complicated protagonist, you’ll find it: “I couldn’t root for her.” “He was impossible to like.” “DNF because I didn’t care what happened to these people.”
Or the one-star review from someone who powered through the book anyway, furious that the author had wasted their time with a character who wasn’t nice.
This is the likability mandate, and it’s killing fiction.
“Likable” Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means
Sorry to steal the politician’s favorite stalling phrase, but let me be clear about what we’re discussing. The demand for likable protagonists isn’t about wanting well-drawn characters, or characters with interiority, or characters whose choices make psychological sense. Those are reasonable expectations. The likability mandate is something else: the insistence that protagonists be good—or at least someone you’d want to get a drink with.
It’s the reader saying: I will only spend time with fictional people I approve of.
It’s …