In a new post, Mary Carroll Moore offers advice on writing unsympathetic characters.
Everyone has bad days, but these characters tend to have more bad days than good. Importantly, they don’t learn, don’t adapt to new information, and don’t believe they need to change.
“Many writing books and many writing teachers have advised me to lean towards the more sympathetic character–if I want readers to engage in the story,” Moore writes. “Sometimes, this made them cardboard cutouts, unreal.”
The trick to writing unsympathetic characters, Moore says, is to dive deeper into their darkness, to discover why they act as they do. A little bit of backstory might not make your character likable, but it may help them be understood. “Authenticity may come late in the game (the story) to these folks,” Moore said. “That’s OK. They can keep us readers engaged anyway. We will love to be frustrated with them. We will hang in there just on the off chance that they’ll finally face themselves.”
