— Mark Paxson
One of the “rules” of writing that I’ve never paid much attention to is that your characters have to be likable. I’ve actually tried to make sure that my narrators, or main characters, are less than perfect. That they have qualities that are likable and some that aren’t. Because, that’s real life.
I really don’t like it when characters are perfect, and there are certain genres where that seems to be a requirement. I’m thinking Clancy novels are a good example of this. The U.S. spies or agents are always right, never wrong. Always hit the bad guy and never get hit themselves. It just kind of gets boring after a while.
But I’ve rarely read a book where the narrator or main character(s) got so unlikeable that I didn’t care anymore. I’m not sure I ever have.
Sure, I’ve had DNFs. Plenty of them. But I don’t think it was ever about an unlikable character. It’s just that there is something about the story that has left me uninterested in continuing. My best DNF came with a book I read around 10-12 years ago. I read it and read it and read it, and then about ten pages from the end, I decided I just really didn’t care about how it ended. Those last ten pages weren’t worth it to me. So, I stopped reading.
I believe I’m about to give up on my first book because the narrator has become so unlikable I simply don’t care. About the story. About him. About anything that is to come. And it’s a shame. This book is considered a classic. It takes place during the Civil War — one of my favorite eras of history to read about.
But the narrator of The Red Badge of Courage is just horrible. I’m about 2/3 of the way through the book and I’m 99% sure I won’t be going back to the book again. I’ve got plenty of other stuff to read.
What about you … as a reader, how do you feel about characters who are unlikable? Do you want perfect characters? What types of things cause you to DNF?
What about as a writer? What’s your objective with your characters? If somebody DNF’d one of your books, would you want to know why?
Writers Supporting Writers 
I’ve hear the same thing about the MC (or MCs) being likable and I think that’s a slightly limited perspective. Likeability is definitely a common, tried and true device, often allowing us to forgive numerable flaws, sometimes making us root for the villain, or giving us a mirror to what we flawed humans hope are out better qualities.
That said, I think an equally powerful, perhaps slightly more difficult, device is ensuring the MC is interesting. They can be egomaniacs, dull, violent, fawning – any characteristic that wouldn’t long be tolerated – but if they’re compelling characters who grab your attention, you’re often going to go along for the ride.
Off the top of my head I can think of a few things an author can employ to achieve this. I’m sure there are more. Depth of character is one, unpredictability another, obsessiveness that forces the plot (nod to the white whale guy) yet another. The key being you don’t have to like or care about them, but you do care about what they do and what happens next.
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Make the MC Interesting is exactly what I think it should be. And interesting to me, and I think many readers, does not mean saintly hero. It means being human, warts and all.
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There are 10 books in my official DNF “shelf” in Goodreads. As far as I can remember, my reasons for abandoning them are: a) awful narrator or pov character, meaning they have attitudes or express themselves in ways I find repellent or disgusting; b) incomprehensible plot or lack of plot; c) nothing but graphic violence in the first few pages; d) boring with no promise of becoming interesting and no redeeming features such as artful writing.
At least one reader has DNF’d one of my books, at 22%, their review says, and goes on to say exactly why. Really, I’d rather not have known. When I abandon a book it’s usually in the first ten or twenty pages, and I never review it. When I write a critical review with a low rating, I finish reading the book first.
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Ha, I looked up your DNF list and saw a book called “Awful, Ohio”. I’m tempted to read that just for the title. 😀
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I’d love to see what you make of it, Berthold!
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I’ve said for years that the easiest way to get me to DNF a book early on is to introduce 87 characters in the first five pages.
I rarely DNF a book and the only way I can describe why I do is that I just lose interest in the story. I wish I could remember the reasons I might lose interest enough to DNF, but …
I agree. If I don’t finish a book, I shouldn’t rate or review it. Other than to do what I did here. Use it as a topic for conversation.
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I’m with you, Audrey. I don’t review books I didn’t finish, and if someone DNFs my book, I don’t want to know why. I, too, DNF a book within the first 10 or 20 pages.
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The best characters are relatable, which is why they should have imperfections. It makes them believable, something that authors should strive for.
I seldom give up on a book unless I’m not enjoying the plot or it’s implausible. I can’t recall shelving something because a character was so unlikable it made me want to put the book down.
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With this book, the biggest problem with the narrator being so unlikable, at least to me, is that the book is 100% in his head. There is no escaping him!
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I’ve never read that book, so maybe I’m wrong, but isn’t the point that the guy is a coward?
Generally speaking, I’m in agreement with what Richard and Audrey said about this. As a writer, I’ve written some stories where the likability of the characters is key, and others where they are deliberately unlikable. It depends what I’m trying to do.
And yes, I would definitely want to know why someone DNF’d one of my books.
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I believe so, but I’ll never know for sure since I won’t finish the book. But it’s not his cowardice that pisses me off, it’s the mental gymnastics he goes through to justify his cowardice and to actually glorify his cowardice in his mind.
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Yes, I would like tot know why a readere stops reading my books. If I start a book, I always finish it. I think IT as a matter of personal discipline.
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I don’t care to spend time with unpleasant people, either in life or in books, so I avoid books that feature unpleasant people. I gather a lot of “grimdark” fantasy stories have a lot of morally “grey” and unpleasant characters, so I have no interest in them. However, a lot of readers don’t mind that at all. I may be in a minority here.
And well, I guess I don’t know anyone with flaws that would be worth incorporating into a character in one of my stories. Those flaws go largely unnoticed, so to go out of my way to give my characters flaws seems unnecessary. I make my characters normal and rely on the situation they are in to be interesting.
What bugs me the most is when, as a writer myself, I when I see the writer make his characters do dumb things just to drive a dramatic plot along. I just don’t like seeing the hand of the author in a story.
I’ve DNF’ed 10 books so far this year, in part because I’m reading wider than I used to read. Life is too short to waste time reading something I’m not enjoying. There’s a million books out there still to be discovered. (My wife doesn’t DNF books, so I have to listen to her complaining about all these books she’s ordered up from the library based on recommendations she’s gotten from Time magazine, or some other source of media, rather than a friend. She’s reading one now.)
I do “review” books, only on my blog, that I DNF. I explain why they did not work for me. My reviews are about me and my taste, and how the book aligns with them. Or not. From my remarks and how closely a reader aligns with my taste, a reader can decide to try the book for themselves or give it a miss. I just DNF’ed a book with 4.27 stars and nearly a million reviews on Goodreads. Readers can choose who they want to believe in.
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DNF count: hundreds.
I don’t look for reasons to keep reading, I actively look for reasons to stop.
There have been a few where I’ll get 2/3s or more down the line and the plot will twist in an utterly incongruous way and that’ll be it – done.
Most die within page one. Fewer die by page 5. And as mentioned, a fraction die by chapter ~30.
70 : 20 : 5 : 5 — I finish 5 out of 100 books I start, if that.
“Bad shit happening to good people” – right? As long as the bad shit is story-true. Without the “good people” the whole thing breaks down.
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There is one book over on Goodreads that I was never able to finish, even though I became friends with the author over on FaceBook. I think it’s very well written, but the subject matter turned my stomach, and that’s all I’ll say about it.
I had one review on Smashwords of The Termite Queen, where the reader quit reading the book because it had conflict in it. He specifically mentioned the quarrel between Gwidian and Kaitrin in the restaurant. ??? He wouldn’t even dignify it with 1 star. What’s a story without conflict? I can’t imagine there are many books that man ever finishes!
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A story without conflict is not a story.
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Coincidentally, I recently read a novel with two point-of-view characters, both of whom were not only unlikable but unpleasant to spend time with. I finished it because I was curious about how it would end with those two.
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Yes. Sometimes you need to see how it all ends regardless of who the characters are. I don’t feel this way with Red Badge of Courage.
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I don’t remember having trouble with the Red Badge of Courage. Maybe because I was very young when I read it?
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