Do your characters have to be likable? 😈

Today's guest is international bestselling author Stephanie Wrobel

We often talk about writing “likable” characters.

It’s a common piece of writing advice: Your characters — especially your protagonist — should be sympathetic, someone that readers are going to care about and invest in. But what if the types of characters you want to portray are inherently unlikable people? What if there’s no one in your story for readers to root for?

In that case, write intriguing characters instead.

Your characters don’t have to be bubbly, optimistic heroes. They don’t even have to be nice — in fact, morally perfect characters can come across as annoying, unrelatable and even more unlikeable to your readers.

Writing “likable” characters doesn’t necessarily mean writing characters that the reader likes on a personal level, or even characters that your readers would be friends with in real life.

The important thing is to write complex, layered, realistic characters who will intrigue your readers enough to get them to follow along with their stories.

Ask yourself: Will the reader care about what happens to this character or not? If their goals, motivations and obstacles are interesting enough, the answer is probably “yes” — whether they’re a good and likable person or not.

In today’s interview, international bestselling author Stephanie Wrobel talks about writing coldly, separating art from business, and why she rejects the notion that her characters have to be “likable.”

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OUR SPECIAL GUEST TODAY IS…

Stephanie Wrobel

International Bestselling Author

Stephanie’s new novel, THE HITCHCOCK HOTEL, is out 9/24 and available for preorder now.

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What is the most memorable writing tip or technique that you have heard, and how did it influence your process?

Write coldly. A professor said this in class once. Using one concise and plainspoken sentence to relay a terrible plot development or character turn has much more dramatic impact than waxing on for several paragraphs with sentimental language.

What is one thing you wish you had known about the publishing process before going through it yourself?

For most writers, a career as an author is nothing like the career you pursued before this one. You should not expect a steady rise in income, readership, marketing budget, etc. Every writing career has major peaks and major valleys. This can be hard to come to terms with because with each book, we (hopefully) feel ourselves improving at our craft, but the factors above often don't reflect that improvement. Your best book may produce your worst sales and vice versa. Something I continue to work on—and it's hard!—is separating my art from my business.

What's one writing "rule" or commonly followed piece of advice that you decidedly break?

That the protagonist needs to be someone the reader is rooting for. Sometimes I get dinged for this, but the kinds of people I'm interested in portraying are often unlikable—mothers with Munchausen by proxy, cult leaders, voyeurs, etc. As a reader, I will personally go along with any character on a journey so long as they intrigue me. Good, bad, brutish, funny. As long as I'm not indifferent, I'm in. I don't think my reading tastes are that unique, so I reason some readers feel the same way.

How did you get your literary agent? What was the querying process like for you?

The query process was surprisingly straightforward for me. In the span of a month, I went from sending queries to choosing and signing with my agent. I admit to being skeptical that the query process would work when I started—I assumed only the writers who knew someone or had a connection to the industry got their work read. Thankfully, I was totally wrong. If your work is not being read or getting responses, it's probably because you aren't following each agency's directions. At the very least, you should be getting form rejections. Instructions are widely available online and take pretty much all of the guess work out of querying!

How do you personally get over writer's block?

Some things I find helpful:

1. Have a plan(/outline). If you know what you're writing that day, it's hard to get blocked.

2. Write by hand. This trick never, ever fails me. If I’m feeling stuck or "blah" at the beginning of the day, I’ll start writing in my notebook with a pen. The writing will go slowly at first, but it’ll gain speed at some point. Once my brain is moving faster than my hand can, I’ll grab my laptop and pick up right where I left off from the notebook.

3. Write on my couch. When I’m in the ideation/brainstorming phase of a writing project, very rarely will I sit at my desk. I almost always prefer a couch or armchair; something about being comfortable gets the creative juices moving.

4. Work outside my home. 98% of the time, I write at home, but if I’m struggling to get motivated, sometimes I’ll head to the library. This approximates going to an office; if I’ve made the effort to commute somewhere, it’s unlikely I’m going to screw around on social media for two hours.

5. Keep a master list of ideas. If the issue is not the writing itself but coming up with ideas in the first place, I suggest keeping a list of topics of interest to get your brain moving.

6. While revising, tackle the easy stuff first.

Are you a plotter or a pantser? What's your personal drafting process like?

You could say I'm a recovering plotter! Everything about my personality, both inside and outside of work, screams plotter. With my first two books, I wouldn't begin writing until I had a one-sentence summary of every chapter. I came to realize, however, that I was throwing away 2/3 of each first draft I wrote. So maybe the plotting wasn't working that well for me, after all. With my latest book, THE HITCHCOCK HOTEL, I tried to take a hybrid approach. I had one or two big plot points to guide my direction, but I let most of the twists and turns come to me as I wrote. We shall see what happens with future books. Like most writers, I'm fascinated by other writers' processes—and always up for improving my own.