My Favorite Protagonists Are Difficult Women, Here’s Why

By Kelly Sokol, Author of Breach 

I find it impossible to get to know someone, I mean really get to know someone based on their likes. You like dogs? Yes, me too. You love a good book? Same girl, same. The beach is pretty, you’re right. I also like peace, nature, equality, a runner’s high. Who doesn’t?

Likes are just anodyne, and, really, pretty blah. I know I’m on the way to finding a real friend when I can lean in and whisper, “Yes, I’m a dog person. But I can’t stand doodles”—really it’s the owners of doodles that enrage me, the way they insist on their dogs’ innate right to run around leash-free inside a city of two million people, but I digress. I do love to read, but I’ll pass over plenty of canonical tomes. Running gives me life, but don’t expect to see me at a 5K, because I’m too slow to be competitive at short distances. The beach is peaceful, all sun-gilded waves and coconut oil. Nonetheless, I sit there pining for a mountainscape, the icy lick of a glacial lake as I plunge my toes in. (Really, it’s because of the free-range doodles all over the beach.)

The takeaways, aside from questionable taste allowing me to blog about myself? I like certain dogs better than others, because I have associated one breed’s owners with entitlement. I’m a voracious reader, but not wedded to genre. I have an ego around my running, no matter how much I’d like to deny it. Finally, I’m comfortable showing less skin and will never attain a “bikini-ready” body. Would you have learned that from my likes?

Likes are the prettied up and packaged versions of our dislikes and it’s the dislikes, the hates, the can’t stands, that reveal character. Our likes are vague and emotional. Our dislikes are sense-based, visceral. As early as the year 900, Japanese lady-in-waiting Shei Shonagon wrote a list of “Hateful Things” in her Pillow Book, as well as “Things That Give an Unclean Feeling.” Items on Shonagon’s lists include: “a very ordinary person, who beams inanely as she prattles on and on.” Also, “little sparrows.” Characterizing choices, no?

The same goes for fictional characters. I write women who interest me, women who offer a mirror, even if the reflection in the glass is troubling. All of the characters I write, particularly the female protagonists, are flawed and they prefer to contour those flaws away from public view. They share their likes with the world, trying to convince everyone that’s who they truly are. They hide their dislikes. Hiding is a kind of secret. Where there are secrets, there is narrative tension. Narrative tension makes good fiction.

In The Unprotected, Lara James internally ridicules the coworkers who step out of the corporate fast lane to build families. That is, until she decides she wants a baby and suddenly can’t get pregnant. And once Lara gets what she wants most in the world, after sacrificing her health, career and marriage, she has no idea what to do with the life she created. Likewise, Marleigh in my novel Breach is hell-bent on keeping her family afloat. Even so, she can’t help internally judging the people who purport to help her. Do these behaviors make the characters likable? No. They make them real. To me, that’s more important. I don’t have to like a character to invest in her. I can read on in hopes of comeuppance as passionately as for a dream fulfilled. 

Somewhere along the line, a decision was made that female characters in fiction must be likable. Having protagonists that readers care about certainly makes a writer’s job easier, but no one told Holden Caulfield or Ignatius J. Reilly that they had to be likable. If you search reviews of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, the most consistently negative comments are how unlikable the two point-of-view characters are. I remember reading Flynn’s work and experiencing that like a revelation. People can be despicable and interesting at the same time. So can characters. No one is all good or all bad, not in life or on the page. Characters who struggle with their own way of being in the world fascinate me. I have to hope they do the same for readers.

Maybe I write difficult women because I crave honesty in fiction. Honesty from the mouths, and unedited thoughts, of women can be pretty terrifying, but I can’t get enough.

Kelly Sokol is the author of Breach and The Unprotected, which was featured on NPR and named one of Book Riot's 100 Must-Read Books of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood. She is a Pushcart Prize-nominated author and MFA creative writing graduate. Her work has appeared in Alpinist, UltraRunning Magazine, The Manifest-Station, Connotation Press, and more. She teaches creative writing at The Muse Writers Center. When she is not reading, writing or parenting, Kelly dreams, in color, of the mountains. She can often be found running in the backcountry. She resides in Virginia with her family. For more information, please visit https://www.kellysokol.com

When writing transformative fiction, is it more important to keep the main character likable, or interesting?

By Gary Lee Miller

What kind of reader are you? Many readers who enjoy transformative fiction prefer the main character to be “likable” or “feel like a friend.” Other readers are just as happy with a main character who may be an “anti-hero,” or in other words someone not necessarily likable, but interesting, as the main character driving the story forward.

Readers may either identify with or have sympathy towards the main character - or not. Regardless, it is important that on some level the reader is invested in the main character enough to continue reading, waiting to see developments which lead to their transformation or transformations to those around them. That is the challenge of the author.

Authors walk a tightrope when creating their book’s protagonist since that character is typically who drives the plot forward. Often the protagonist’s likeability factor may be influenced by the strength of the antagonist’s un-likeability factor (if there is an antagonist). In other words, “How bad is the bad character?” Most readers enjoy rallying against the bad character, or characters, which creates an even stronger juxtaposition when paired with a very likable or sympathetic protagonist.

The positive transformation is common for many authors and traditionally used in most feel-good novels. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott is an example of a book with multiple protagonists and positive transformations. Having multiple protagonists provides the reader with the opportunity to relate to one or more those characters, making the reading experience more enjoyable. Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy each have character flaws, making them more human, and interesting to the reader. The readers either see some of themselves in one or more of them or recognize friends or family members who have characteristics similar to one of more of the sisters.

Transformations can also be either positive or negative, depending on what the author wishes to convey to a reader. In a cautionary tale, the author may begin with a likable character and take their reader on a journey of seeing that character disintegrate due to their own poor decisions or external factors not within the character’s control. An excellent example of a negative transformation would be Michael Corleone in Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. Michael starts out as a war hero with a promising future, not being entangled in his family’s organized crime activities. Then circumstances lead Michael to make the pivotal, life-changing decision to avenge his father’s assassination attempt. That decision leads to the long, slow transformation of his character, including the carnage brought to those around him, friends, foes, and family, as he solidifies his power.

It’s not always necessary for an author to have an antagonist. My book, Finding Grace, does not have a traditional antagonist. Instead, the internal conflict comes from within its main character and protagonist, Judith, helping drive the story. This internal conflict results from her very challenging, sometimes traumatic childhood. Now with Judith as an adult, the reader shares in her transformational cross-country bus trip (her grandmother’s dying wish) as she is forced from the protective cocoon her immense wealth has allowed her to create, back into the real world. The reader is drawn in during her six-day journey from LA to Nashville by the backstories of her six different seatmates along with their interaction with Judith. In this case, while each day’s seatmate is facing their own challenges, my goal for the reader was for them to be very interested in her seatmate’s stories while seeing the positive evolution of Judith’s character as she engages in entertaining, thought-provoking conversations with them.

In transformative fiction, the reader should enjoy experiencing the main character’s evolution. But the storyline of the main and various characters should touch the reader at a deeper level, challenging them to understand themselves, causing them to ask questions about their own experiences and beliefs.

The original question was, “When writing transformative fiction, is it more important to keep the main character likable, or interesting.” There is no definitive answer because it all depends on the story and the author’s goal and style of writing. The overriding factor for any author in any genre is that the story must be interesting. Speaking of interesting, I believe you will find interesting what I’m sharing next.

In a conversation with the founder of an international publishing company I asked him, “I know you have your people who read the manuscripts submitted by authors with hopes of publication. Do you ever read any of them?” His reply was what I expected, but with a twist. As expected, he said he did not read the manuscripts, however he shared an exercise I believe every author will benefit from by doing the same. His continued reply was, “While I don’t read them, what I do occasionally with a manuscript is to randomly pick out a page, read it, and ask myself, ‘Does the author have my interest, making me want to read more?’” He said he would read four or five more randomly selected pages throughout the manuscript asking himself the same question. That often determined whether that manuscript was given a green light – or not.

Whether “likability” or “interesting” is more important in transformational fiction is debatable. Great books have a balance of both. If forced to choose between the two, my choice would be with “interesting,” for without an interesting main character, what’s the point of reading the book?

Gary Lee Miller is an award-winning author and actor. His debut novel, Finding Grace is available from booksellers everywhere. More about Gary at garyleemillerbooks.com