Authors, have you really considered the risk it is to choose an unlikeable character as the lens through which your readers view your story?

Whether this character is a first person narrator or the character your third-person narrator most closely follows, giving access to his or her thoughts and plans, the choice to make this person your point of view character can work.

So many great tales have unsavory or odd choices as narrator. I don’t want you to  finish this post thinking that I’m saying, “Don’t tell your story through an unlikeable character.” That’s not at all my point.

What would American literature be without Holden Caulfield or Ignatius G.Reilly?

You can definitely make great use of such a character…. Just remember to contemplate this question first:

Is making this character my point of view character going to help readers understand and connect with him or her? Or is exposing the…