Should a novel's protagonist be likeable?

Writing the Unlikeable Character (and Why You Should)

You might have heard that your characters need to be likable for the reader to be engaged with your story ... The novel could accurately be ...

The Dangers of Creating Likable Characters | Building a Novel

People read to see characters grow. They will enjoy a plot, but they read for the characters. Sometimes this means their quirks and ...

Why You Need to Write Unlikeable Characters | The Writer's Cookbook

There's a common myth in some writing circles that the characters you create must be likeable. That if they're not likeable, your audience will ...

What Makes a Character Likable? - Brendon Marotta -

One of the most common pieces of screenwriting advice is that your main character has to be likable. But what does that mean?

How to develop character & story - tips from Cal Moriarty

A character doesn't have to be likable they have to be real, believably real. Ideally, that realness will make them engaging and pitch them into challenging ...

How Important are Likeable Characters? - My Friend Amy

No, I don't think that we need to like a character. I read a lot of books where I hate some of the characters! I think that I must be invested ...

How to fix a passive protagonist | Rachel Rowlands, Editor & Author

Goals don't always need to be fixed. They can shift and change over the course of the book, but a strong, active protagonist will have something ...

Do You Have to Like the Characters to Enjoy a Story?

Do we have to like a character to enjoy a story? Of course not. There are so many stories with dislikeable characters and even protagonists, but ...

The Essence of Standout Characters - Storm Writing School

Protagonists need reader identification and allegiance, but that alone doesn't make them standout characters. A great character needs to evoke a strong ...

How to write a synopsis for a multiple-protagonist novel

For a novel with multiple protagonists to work, it must have an underlying unitary story — necessarily, unless the chapters and sections are a collection of ...

What makes a likable character? - Choice of Games Forum

I have played many games and read many books, what tends to irk me is stories that depend on me liking a character that I hate.

Do You Need to Like the Characters in a Book to Enjoy it?

... seen some people say that "characters don't need to be likeable ... But when there are characters I SHOULD like and root for, but I don ...

Constructing the Two Goals for the Protagonist in Your Novel

They need a spiritual/emotional goal that will bring passion and tension to the story. And then conflict and opposition must be positioned to ...

What makes characters sympathetic and unsympathetic

But a protagonist, particularly a narrator, just can't lose the reader before the absolute end of the book, and maybe not even then. It's ...

Writing Unlikeable Characters Readers Will Root For | Jane Friedman

Unlikeable characters work best the same way easy-to-like ones do—when we help readers to see themselves in the characters. Because a character ...

Can There Be Two Protagonists in Your Story? - The Write Practice

You've also found the character(s) readers will (likely) root for in the overall story. Have You Ever Read a Book With Multiple Protagonists? One year when I ...

Unlikeable Characters - BookEnds Literary Agency

That's something that goes a long way with me as a reader–if I see other "likeable" characters giving this person a chance, I'll be more likely to engage with ...

How to Write Unlikable (but still compelling) Characters: Yellowface ...

Often, unlikable characters are shown through the eyes of the likable character. They're unknowable. But it's through the knowing that people ...

Is It All About Likeable Characters? - Terry Odell

Characters should be interesting, and as a by-product, likeable. Interesting people generally are likeable, but when you get someone who is ...

Reading Flawed Protagonists: Relatability Versus Likeability

... likable, as if a character's likability is directly proportional to the quality of a novel's writing.” ― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist. If there's ...