Writing flawed characters is extremely satisfying. An antagonist in my book The Mechanical Crown was convinced she was the hero, despite doing awful things and essentially .working for the villain. Readers really latched onto her: a case of loving to hate her, but also relishing in the dramatic irony of a character who is not self-aware and cannot see their own mistakes.
In my latest book, which I'm serialising on Substack, all the characters are flawed in some capacity. They all have contradictions to a greater or lesser extent. Many of them are quite unpleasant, while also doing 'good' things.
It' not unusual to see people disliking a story because there are no 'likeable' characters, though. Not just some of your work, John - films, books, comics, anything really can have a problem with some audiences if there are no clear heroic characters. I don't think this is necessarily due to a 'misunderstanding' on the readers' part; it just suggests to me that they're not the right audience.
I think these characters sound really interesting! I like when characters and stories reflect human nature as it really exists, not as it theoretically should exist in some perfect world. A lot of readers are probably given false expectations by lazy, made-for-tv style writing, but after a while, all those characters blend into one another. Perfection would make everything identical. Our unique combination of flaws are what make us individuals, and make us interesting :-)
Writing flawed characters is extremely satisfying. An antagonist in my book The Mechanical Crown was convinced she was the hero, despite doing awful things and essentially .working for the villain. Readers really latched onto her: a case of loving to hate her, but also relishing in the dramatic irony of a character who is not self-aware and cannot see their own mistakes.
In my latest book, which I'm serialising on Substack, all the characters are flawed in some capacity. They all have contradictions to a greater or lesser extent. Many of them are quite unpleasant, while also doing 'good' things.
It' not unusual to see people disliking a story because there are no 'likeable' characters, though. Not just some of your work, John - films, books, comics, anything really can have a problem with some audiences if there are no clear heroic characters. I don't think this is necessarily due to a 'misunderstanding' on the readers' part; it just suggests to me that they're not the right audience.
I think these characters sound really interesting! I like when characters and stories reflect human nature as it really exists, not as it theoretically should exist in some perfect world. A lot of readers are probably given false expectations by lazy, made-for-tv style writing, but after a while, all those characters blend into one another. Perfection would make everything identical. Our unique combination of flaws are what make us individuals, and make us interesting :-)