It’s new territory for me. Usually, my protagonists are the good guys, the ones doing the right thing with good intentions.
Not that my main character is a bad person, but her ignorance is astounding and she’s a slow learner. As a reader, I don’t have to like the main character as long as I understand their reasoning and the story holds my interest. Only twice in my history as a reader has the main character been so unlikeable that I gave up.
One was Humbert Humbert in Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov), for obvious reasons.
Two was Delores Price in She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb) because she poisoned someone’s pet fish.
However, writing from the perspective of someone who is doomed to be disliked has given me a new appreciation for authors who have tried before. The transformation from antihero to hero is tricky, to say the least. It’s a constant balancing act of justification and offense. Without saying it in words, she must always be saying, “Hey, don’t give up on me yet!”
Secondary characters are even more important. Their characteristics must be carefully chosen to realistically contrast without making everyone the main character meets into an enemy. More than ever, I’m aware of how every conversation and interaction must be choreographed so that each scene propels my jerky character toward less jerkiness, without reading as contrived.
I’m waiting for the first alpha or beta reader to report they couldn’t finish reading because of my jerky character. I look forward to it. I’ll have some better ideas of jerk parameters.
