Raiden from Metal Gear Solid Series. (Crime of not being Solid Snake.)
This is a quick question for authors and readers out there.
What do you do when a character that is needed for the main plot simply isn’t working for the readers? They end up hating the character for not being a certain way or have issues with certain aspects. For example, the character comes from a culture of open relationships (this will be touched on in a post next week).
Do you ditch the character and pray the plot doesn’t suffer? Not sure I can do that without removing the climactic event of the entire series. Actually, I know I can’t do that.
So, what do you do when you run into something like this?
Legends of Windemere 
Your world, your cast… you can’t write for readers, only for yourself and then the reader is allowed a glimpse into your imagination.
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Good point. It’s rough hearing only complaints about a character.
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Not all characters are ‘nice’, nor are all people. The world, like a book, would be bland without those differences.
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The thing is that this is a ‘mean’ or ‘evil’ character. So, I’m a little lost on what went wrong.
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You can’t win ’em all, Charles… no-one is supposed to like the baddy anyway… maybe the flaws were too human? Too close to what people can see in their own darker side?
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It’s actually not the villains. The character in question is a supporting/love interest. I can understand people hating villains and one that is going to show up in a book or two is really going to get the lynch mobs going.
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I have noticed a couple of comments about that… but again, what attracts one will repel another. And sometimes we fall in love with the most inappropriate characters… ones others see only as a surface and tell us that we should leave well alone..
As Robert Browning wrote:
“God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with, One to show a woman when he loves her.”
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I’m looking over the various scenes that the character is going to have and see if there is something I’m missing. There is an alternate path I can use that makes things more exciting, but I need to look at the long game for it.
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I’ll be interested to see how you handle it.
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In truth, sometimes it is best to keep that character as they are. Not everyone in life will be likable.
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True. Though, I wonder what happens when the character has more plot focus. Not even sure exactly why this character is unlikable either.
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That is the moment when you slide sunglasses over your eyes and cooly proclaim, “Deal with it.”
Actually, I’m not sure what happens.
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It’s a roll of the dice, I guess.
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People will complain no matter what you do, anyway.
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True. Can’t win them all.
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Sometimes a character that doesn’t work for some works great for others. Also, I have grown to love a character who was flawed, just by seeing something, a weakness, a soft spot, that I did not necessarily see at first. Maybe they are despicable in every way and don’t conform to the society’s norm, but they have a fondness for animals which is remarkable. Or they smoke, drink are promiscuous and curse like a sailor, but they would give the shirt off their back or their last dime to anyone in need.
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I enjoy characters like that. I think the culture of the ‘hated’ character is one of the problems right now, but I can’t do anything about that. It is a kind of moral thing that is at the root of this, which I have a post going up next week about. Makes me fear for Sari actually.
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Not all people share the same morals so I don’t think it would be a character that must be scratched. People’s morals can also change over time, based on their own life experiences. Some ingrained indoctrinations will stay with you, even when you become more “open-minded”.
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The moral thing is going to be next week. I will say a reviewer said my moral code shows I spend too much time on adult websites. I find it amazing that sex is so demonized in a book where a few brutal deaths and violence occurred.
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LOL…demonized sex, now there is a thought, even sex, it is all about individual preferences/tastes.
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That is how it works though. Notice how few complaints you get about a Rated-R action movie compared to if a movie has a sex scene.
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I prefer the sex over the violence myself. That’s just my preference. Blood and guts never turned me on in an entertaining way. I like the premise behind Criminal Minds, but the gore and the violence of some of the serial killers annoys me. Guess being a nurse it reminds me too much of being at work.
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I’m okay with either as long as it isn’t over the top. I think I can handle more over the top violence than sex because it gets laughable in some movies. Not a big fan of the gore though. Still, it’s strange that we live in a country where people get squeamish about the act of reproductive and not the act of killing.
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so far from early feedback on my NaNo story I am going to have to go back and work on some of the characters… part of the problem is I have a host of characters and not one main character and some of them I am told feel a little weak or lacking depth… so it looks like I am going to have to edit… I am just waiting for the rest of the feedback so I know precisely what I have to work on…
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Most characters need an edit or two to get flushed out or lock down some consistency. The challenge of a story with no main character is that it means there’s no single figure for the readers to connect to. So the other characters have to have great depth and catch the readers to fill the void.
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When the character is unemployed, he really doesn’t work. 🙂 (Start groaning…)
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Ouch. Start ducking the flying produce.
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Like Fozzie. 🙂 (Sometimes you just can’t resist.)
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I know. I was going to say Fozzie too.
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I have to disagree with your premise. I think you are blaming the wrong character. It is the other character from the same culture that is causing the problems for the first character, and the hostility towards that culture.
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I agree that it is the second character. Much of the backlash has been directed almost exclusively at the woman. Honestly, you’re the only one to even mention the guy. A few people have pointed out society’s habit of slut-shaming the woman and ignoring the guy involved. This makes me think that the female character can earn some redemption as time goes on. Unless I have other plans for her.
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