How to Make Your Readers Love an Unlikeable Character

Guest Post by Elisabeth Eaves

Elisabeth Eaves is the author of The Outlier, a novel of psychological suspense. Publishers Weekly said that it “skillfully infuses complex ecological and moral issues into a plot that never forgets to thrill.” Elisabeth is also an award-winning journalist and travel writer, and the author of two critically acclaimed nonfiction books: Wanderlust: A Love Affair with Five Continents and Bare: The Naked Truth About Stripping. She writes the newsletter Bad Directions about writing and travel. You can learn more at www.elisabetheaves.com.

How to Make Your Readers Love an Unlikeable Character

“Unlikeable” is a thorny term. For decades, cultural gatekeepers used it as a catchall for fictional women who rubbed them the wrong way–for being unsentimental, assertive, ambitious, or possessing other supposedly unfeminine qualities. Now we’ve entered the age of the antiheroine, with female jerks, frauds, corrupt officials, dictators, assassins and even the occasional cannibal running all over our pages and screens. The “unlikeable” slur has become ironic, in that, while it’s theoretically a negative quality, it’s one that editors, film producers, and audiences now seek out.

Of course, the “unlikeable” female character isn’t a new concept, even if the entertainment industry has periodically squashed her. Medea (fifth century BC) killed her children and got away scot-free, and Lady Macbeth (seventeenth century) goaded her husband into murder. John Steinbeck gave us East of Eden‘s Cathy Ames–madam, murderer, blackmailer, abandoner–in 1952. More recent examples appear in every genre from comic books to literary fiction to a slew of domestic-thriller hot messes, those women who do unpleasant things because they’re off their rockers on alcohol or drugs.

These characters can be thrilling to write, letting us release the id onto the page unconstrained by social mores. But that still leaves writers with a dilemma. How do you create an “unlikeable” character who readers want to be with for the length of a book? Making someone a vulgarian doesn’t necessarily make them interesting. And people aren’t going to love a gangster simply because she’s a gangster–like drug queenpin Griselda Blanco as played by Sofía Vergara in Griselda. They’ll love her in spite of that fact.

In my new novel, The Outlier, the main character is a psychopath. Cate’s not a killer, but she’s thrill-seeking and ruthless, fake in her interactions, and devoid of empathy. I didn’t want to make her “likeable” by traditional definitions of the term, but I definitely wanted readers to stick with her. I took cues from characters I’ve delighted in reading about, like the duplicitous Amy Dunne, antiheroine of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn; the deliciously psychopathic assassin Villanelle in Codename Villanelle, the basis for the television series Killing Eve; and the unnamed, slovenly, drug-addled protagonist in Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest of Relaxation.

Here are some ideas for making dark and disturbed characters compelling to the end.

Have them do one good deed.

This is hoary advice, but it still works. In the storytelling world, “saving the cat” is shorthand for a particular plot device: A deeply flawed character does something sympathetic at the beginning of the tale–like save a cat–so that no matter what kind of havoc she subsequently wreaks, readers and viewers remember her one kindness.

Give the character one or two redeeming traits.

In The Outlier, Cate is abrasive and bad with individual people, but she’s also determined to cure a disease and save millions of people. She’s protective of her few friends. Being in her company is an acquired taste, but there’s something there to admire.

Give them a mission.

It’s hard for readers not to get invested in a quest. Think about a book or show featuring a dreadful killer. You hate him. But in those scenes where he’s really trying to get something he wants, you, too, may get invested in his goal. At the very least, you want to know what happens.

Add a backstory.

When a character is a bummer to be around–because they’re depressed, self-defeating, caustic, or mean–dropping a hint about how they got this way can turn on the intrigue and help us see them in a different light. Now we no longer have an indecipherable bore, but a person with understandable weaknesses and contradictions. In my novel, Cate carries the weight of blame for a tragedy that occurred in her childhood, and it shapes her behavior and interactions as an adult.

Give your antihero some normies.

It’s hard to stay with a story that’s populated only with crummy and cruel people. Plant others around your unlikeable character who are more empathetic. They could be friends or family members who see the best in her. Readers may be persuaded to think that if these nice, normal people like the “unlikeable” character, then she must not be so bad. Essentially, the upstanding characters vouch for the mean one. In the book series and television show Dexter, about a serial killer, the title character’s sister plays this softening role. In The Outlier, psychopath Cate is close to her business partner, Jia. She has an amicable relationship with Gabriel, her ex-boyfriend. And she trusts her old mentor, Dr. M. These people all love her in their way, and readers get to see Cate from their points of view.

Add a character who’s even worse.

When your scuzzball goes up against someone scuzzier, we may come to appreciate his worst qualities. For example, a lout’s deep cynicism about new people might allow him to identify lowlifes before others do. And his particular knack for, say, blackmail or bullying can be deployed against the even-worse character–so that we find ourselves cheering our bad guy on.

Writing an “unlikeable” character takes a careful balance. We don’t need exclusively benevolent female personalities – that would be boring. . But we do need them to be compelling, with that spark of complexity that makes us want to follow them to the end.

The Outlier by Elizabeth Eaves

Cate Winter, a 34-year-old neuroscientist and entrepeneur, has developed a groundbreaking  cure for Alzheimer’s and is the brink of becoming incredibly wealthy. But Cate is haunted by her past as the only successful graduate of a facility for psychopathic children, a secret that makes her question her identity and actions. When she discovers another successful ex-patient who could be like her, she becomes obsessed with finding him, only to face suspicions that he is involved with a mysterious death