Who is the character you like the most and who is the character you hate the most in your novel?

[DaydreamingScribe]

My story has a cook that's based off the owner of a guest house I stayed in while on holiday. The irl person was the nicest old man I've ever met. Offered to pack me lunch, recommended his favourite walking trails, tried to lend me a scarf when I wanted to go on a walk before breakfast.

Then he cooked me the fanciest breakfasts, I expected toast and eggs not royal benedict. So I ended up writing him into my story as a cook that helps my mc though some hard times.

Least favourite is a pair of side characters that turn my antagonist into the antagonist. Basically, by just being bad friends at a bad time.

 

[DireBadger]

My story has a cook that's based off the owner of a guest house I stayed in while on holiday. The irl person was the nicest old man I've ever met. Offered to pack me lunch, recommended his favourite walking trails, tried to lend me a scarf when I wanted to go on a walk before breakfast.

Then he cooked me the fanciest breakfasts, I expected toast and eggs not royal benedict. So I ended up writing him into my story as a cook that helps my mc though some hard times.

Least favourite is a pair of side characters that turn my antagonist into the antagonist. Basically, by just being bad friends at a bad time.

Tell me you are from the UK without telling me you are from the UK.

 

[servo]

Well there is none that i hate right now, every character has its justifications as a writer you know your characters best so you know the reason why they are like this good or bad, and while you write they develop themselves as well ..

Hating a character is not easy cause you know them in and out

 

[DaydreamingScribe]

Tell me you are from the UK without telling me you are from the UK.

I'm not from the UK

Though I'll admit the holiday was in Ireland.

 

[DireBadger]

Well there is none that i hate right now, every character has its justifications as a writer you know your characters best so you know the reason why they are like this good or bad, and while you write they develop themselves as well ..

Hating a character is not easy cause you know them in and out

That is exactly right! I mean, each character you create is YOUR creation, from your creativity. How can you hate them?

Even if they are the most monstrous, evil bastards in existence... all that evil comes from YOUR imagination. Hating your antagonist is like hating yourself.

 

[Eldoria]

That is exactly right! I mean, each character you create is YOUR creation, from your creativity. How can you hate them?

Even if they are the most monstrous, evil bastards in existence... all that evil comes from YOUR imagination. Hating your antagonist is like hating yourself.

What if I were to write an antagonist based on a real-life figure, like Hitler? Would it be impossible for me to hate him?

And can't we hate ourselves? Psychologically, humans can hate other aspects of themselves, unless they're narcissists who never see their own flaws.

 

[Our_Lady_in_Twilight]

That depends:

- If you mean who would I want a drink with, it'd be a pirate princess and her first mate bestie, who I tried to write with a sort of sassy chicks meet Fred and George Weasley energy. They'd be very fun to hang out with.
- If it's my favourite creation, possibly it'd be a whiny German med student, a serial cheater who I like to think I did a pretty decent job of making morally grey in the end.

So an interesting twist on the question might be this. Are our favourite characters the same as the ones we'd like to share a beer with? The bastards whose flaws are the most fun to write? Or the most heartrending, the ones that emotionally exhaust us as writers, but leave us in the end feeling like we did some proper art?

 

[3emergence]

Characters oftentimes evolve in ways that stray from how we originally birthed them.
Sometimes it’s great, and can really tie plot points you struggled to connect together.
In Cory’s case, he evolved over the course of a single draft.
If I’m struggling to make a character fit into a dialogue, I’ll sometimes just throw them in a quick non-relevant scene with established characters and create tense situations. -I think personality shines in tension -
He was initially going to be written as a pensive and caring foster dad , but over the course of one of these side dialogues he became a really nasty person. I hated him, but because he made me feel so strongly, I kept him.

As for my favorite?
A vampire named Sennia. Shes the only eligible heir to a disgraced family. She’s impulsive, fiercely loyal, and has an ego that’s just a bit too big. She’s been the most enjoyable to write overall.

 

[MajorKerina]

I generally like or at least appreciate all of my characters. The closest to dislike is a girl who absolutely loathes all males and wants to turn them into girls. She's so bullheaded and annoying but she is fairly easy to write.

 

[l8rose]

I don't really have any characters I hate in my stories. Even my annoying characters are all written with purpose and never stray into the 'god I hate writing this character' kind of hate. But if I had to say the one I like writing the least, that would probably be Elias. Originally, the story he's in was supposed to include his perspective in addition to the main character's but the more I wrote him, the more it revealed way too much. Not that Rachel, the main character, was an unreliable narrator but the story was supposed to be from the perspective of someone just getting introduced to the world of the supernatural and not that of an immortal. So I scrapped all of his chapters except the one where he goes bugshit crazy but might end up getting rid of that too.

My favorite character would be a tie between SfAL's Ara and CB's Ava. They're both such fun to write. They're both clueless and just trying to figure things out but from vastly different point of views. Ara is a powerhouse (one step below god, really) who has discovered she's been confined and weakened and why does everyone look at her funny? Ava, on the other hand, is an unreliable narrator who may or may not have memory loss but she doesn't remember if she does or not.

 

[SapphireStargazer]

The character I dislike the most in the piece I'm working on right now, The Art of Redemption, is Anya Pavlenko, the ex-wife of one of my protagonists. She's the kind of person who'd steal your cat and then taunt you about it (among other things)

I obviously love my protagonists, Nikolai and Beth-Anne, but my favourite character might actually be a secondary character, Stan Kovac. He is the kind of friend everyone needs.

 

[DireBadger]

What if I were to write an antagonist based on a real-life figure, like Hitler? Would it be impossible for me to hate him?

And can't we hate ourselves? Psychologically, humans can hate other aspects of themselves, unless they're narcissists who never see their own flaws.

No, because the moment you have created him, he is no longer Hitler, he is YOUR Hitler. He never committed any of the sins that Hitler is famous for, because he is merely a character in your books. You cannot hate him any more than you can hate yourself... but feel free to revel in whatever hate you can get from your audience, that is what you are intentionally trying to evoke, after all. Unless you aren't.

I am not going to delve into psychology (although I do in my books), but it is not healthy or profitable to hate yourself, or even parts of yourself, since they are parts of you. You can hate your behavior, you can hate the poor and thoughtless decision you made, you can hate the reactions that cowardice or weakness cause, but HATE is a weird and loaded term... and it is pointless compared to a determination to change. Then again, I am not writing a self-help book, but I determined many decades ago that hating yourself is useless compared to simply recognizing your flaws and embracing change.

I generally like or at least appreciate all of my characters. The closest to dislike is a girl who absolutely loathes all males and wants to turn them into girls. She's so bullheaded and annoying but she is fairly easy to write.

Wow, she sounds bugshit crazy. I hope you don't mind if your READERS hate her.

So an interesting twist on the question might be this. Are our favourite characters the same as the ones we'd like to share a beer with? The bastards whose flaws are the most fun to write? Or the most heartrending, the ones that emotionally exhaust us as writers, but leave us in the end feeling like we did some proper art?

All of the above?

 

[CharlesEBrown]

That depends:

- If you mean who would I want a drink with, it'd be a pirate princess and her first mate bestie, who I tried to write with a sort of sassy chicks meet Fred and George Weasley energy. They'd be very fun to hang out with.
- If it's my favourite creation, possibly it'd be a whiny German med student, a serial cheater who I like to think I did a pretty decent job of making morally grey in the end.

So an interesting twist on the question might be this. Are our favourite characters the same as the ones we'd like to share a beer with? The bastards whose flaws are the most fun to write? Or the most heartrending, the ones that emotionally exhaust us as writers, but leave us in the end feeling like we did some proper art?

I don't drink ... beer.

The most fun characters are the oddball side characters who steal a few scenes, then disappear from the story (unless I can find an excuse to drag them back in).
They include children, some of the more pathetic villains (like Hellhound in Strange Awakening) or some of the more "fish-out-of-water" characters, like a cat or an estranged orc. The ones it would be appropriate to have drinks with I would avoid like the plague... The other ones... well, maybe a tea party for the kids...

 

[Ruyi]

in one of my current works in development, I like the MC most because I put all the traits and setup I want for my ideal MC into him

at the same time I can’t advance because the ML is still stuck being stereotypical; I’m trying to come up with ways to make him unique so he doesn’t fade into the wallpaper like other MLs with his personality.

this is an issue when I create the characters first and then the plot, but I always feel that’s more organic than the other way around. my current solution is to read more stuff to get a sense for how others write their MLs…

 

[ThisAdamGuy]

[THIS POST HAS BEEN CONSUMED BY THE VOID]