Back to character likeableness

Number of entries received for the 2007 InnermoonLit Award for Best Short-Short Story to date: 93

A recent Time article (“Antiheroine Chic” from the 8/6 issue) got me thinking about the whole sticky subject of likeable characters again. The article’s premise is that Tony Soprano single-handedly changed television forever, opening the floodgates for more complex, unlikeable main characters.

It’s funny because Brian and I, having recently Netflixed all the back seasons of The Sopranos, were talking just the other day about whether an antihero as dark as Tony would be as popular in book form. We concluded that he probably wouldn’t. A novel is a much bigger commitment of your time and mental energy than a weekly television show. I’m not sure a mass audience would want to read themselves to sleep with Tony and Carmela every night.

A novel with a despicable main character is likely to generate the dreaded criticisms, “I didn’t connect with the character,” or “I didn’t care about the character”—if not from agents and editors who reject it, then from readers. It is a tricky road to travel. Like everything writing-related, it’s all subjective, and a main character that gives one person the warm fuzzies could very well make another’s skin crawl.

Let’s continue with the example of Tony Soprano. The Time article calls him a “good-bad guy,” a “villain with sympathetic qualities.” I’d call him a straight antihero with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Still, it was hard to stop watching the trainwreck, although I’ll admit I was never pulling for T. Which I think is why it would be a hard sell as a book. Mainstream audiences don’t tend to read about someone they aren’t in some way rooting for.

Of course Brian and I are lucky; as contest judges, we don’t have to concern ourselves with marketability, just with how intriguing and believable the characters are.