Creating Sympathetic Characters: The U Method
by Art Edwards
The Writer
January 2012
I’m always surprised when I like a fictional character who is truly bad.
I’m thinking of characters like Rabbit Angstrom, who commits myriad family atrocities across four novels in John Updike’s Rabbit tetrology; Humbert Humbert of Lolita, who seduces a 12-year-old girl; and Satan in Paradise Lost, who brings Adam and Eve down. Great books are full of these types of reprehensible characters, and yet somewhere in our hearts we love them a little--even root for them. How do writers pull this off?
I've spent fourteen years writing novels and trying to answer that question. Then one day I got it.
The key to creating such characters is what I call the U Method.
Consider the letter U, the way it looks. It’s high on both sides and low in the middle. I like to think of a character’s traits as falling somewhere on the U’s long arms. Their likable traits fall along the right arm, and their dislikable traits fall along the left one. The more likable/dislikable the trait, the higher up on its respective arm.
The key to creating a sympathetic “bad” character is making sure you don't have too much, too high on left side of that character's U without having the same on the right. The character's dislikable traits have to be counterbalanced by likable traits, and likable traits that are somehow compelling enough to make the reader accept the dislikable ones. A character unbalanced with dislikable traits will probably come off as unsympathetic to your readers. The more traits higher up on each arm of your character's U, the more complex the character. The more traits further down, the more simple.
For example, in Lolita, Humbert Humbert commits acts of pedophilia, which rank way, way high on his U’s left arm, but our disapproval of him is counteracted by the engaging way Humbert tells his story. It’s one of the most beautiful books ever written, and Humbert, as the first person narrator, gets much of our affection for his ability to engage us in this way. This ranks high on his U’s right arm. We love the storyteller, even if we hate what he does.
In the Rabbit tetralogy, counteracting Rabbit leaving his wife for another woman, purposefully scarring his son, and eventually sleeping with his son’s wife (all ranking high on his U’s left arm), we have Rabbit’s spirited and trusted belief that God or Grace or Something (he’s not overly concerned what) is looking out for him. Rabbit essentially believes that if it feels right to him, it must be okay in God’s eyes, and there's something very compelling about this faith, something a reader can like and relate to, ranking high on his U’s right arm.
In Paradise Lost, despite the fact that the character Satan is vengeful and prideful and looking to do whatever he can to harm God’s creation (high on his U’s left arm), we strangely admire Satan’s fearlessness in the face of God’s banishment of him, and his willingness to fight what even he must know is a losing battle. Such forward motion in the face of despair exhibits something like courage, and it ranks high on Satan's U's right side.
This method is especially helpful when, while workshopping a piece, your readers find one of your characters unlikable for one reason or another. Does the character in the Peace Corps strike them as too goody-goody? Perhaps a negative trait, like her abuse of prescription pain medication, would make her more relatable. Does the corporate headhunter in your story put readers off? Maybe seeing him tending to his mother with Alzheimer's would soften him a bit. Visualizing where these traits fall on the character's U helps me to think of appropriate counter-traits that might add just the right touch of complexity, and elicit pathos from my readers.
So there’s a balance. If you have a character in your book who does bad things--and most books do--you might want to make sure to counter that badness with some better traits, and better traits that are somehow proportional to the bad ones. This will lead to richer, more complex characters in your work, and ones your readers will like despite themselves.
by Art Edwards
The Writer
January 2012
I’m always surprised when I like a fictional character who is truly bad.
I’m thinking of characters like Rabbit Angstrom, who commits myriad family atrocities across four novels in John Updike’s Rabbit tetrology; Humbert Humbert of Lolita, who seduces a 12-year-old girl; and Satan in Paradise Lost, who brings Adam and Eve down. Great books are full of these types of reprehensible characters, and yet somewhere in our hearts we love them a little--even root for them. How do writers pull this off?
I've spent fourteen years writing novels and trying to answer that question. Then one day I got it.
The key to creating such characters is what I call the U Method.
Consider the letter U, the way it looks. It’s high on both sides and low in the middle. I like to think of a character’s traits as falling somewhere on the U’s long arms. Their likable traits fall along the right arm, and their dislikable traits fall along the left one. The more likable/dislikable the trait, the higher up on its respective arm.
The key to creating a sympathetic “bad” character is making sure you don't have too much, too high on left side of that character's U without having the same on the right. The character's dislikable traits have to be counterbalanced by likable traits, and likable traits that are somehow compelling enough to make the reader accept the dislikable ones. A character unbalanced with dislikable traits will probably come off as unsympathetic to your readers. The more traits higher up on each arm of your character's U, the more complex the character. The more traits further down, the more simple.
For example, in Lolita, Humbert Humbert commits acts of pedophilia, which rank way, way high on his U’s left arm, but our disapproval of him is counteracted by the engaging way Humbert tells his story. It’s one of the most beautiful books ever written, and Humbert, as the first person narrator, gets much of our affection for his ability to engage us in this way. This ranks high on his U’s right arm. We love the storyteller, even if we hate what he does.
In the Rabbit tetralogy, counteracting Rabbit leaving his wife for another woman, purposefully scarring his son, and eventually sleeping with his son’s wife (all ranking high on his U’s left arm), we have Rabbit’s spirited and trusted belief that God or Grace or Something (he’s not overly concerned what) is looking out for him. Rabbit essentially believes that if it feels right to him, it must be okay in God’s eyes, and there's something very compelling about this faith, something a reader can like and relate to, ranking high on his U’s right arm.
In Paradise Lost, despite the fact that the character Satan is vengeful and prideful and looking to do whatever he can to harm God’s creation (high on his U’s left arm), we strangely admire Satan’s fearlessness in the face of God’s banishment of him, and his willingness to fight what even he must know is a losing battle. Such forward motion in the face of despair exhibits something like courage, and it ranks high on Satan's U's right side.
This method is especially helpful when, while workshopping a piece, your readers find one of your characters unlikable for one reason or another. Does the character in the Peace Corps strike them as too goody-goody? Perhaps a negative trait, like her abuse of prescription pain medication, would make her more relatable. Does the corporate headhunter in your story put readers off? Maybe seeing him tending to his mother with Alzheimer's would soften him a bit. Visualizing where these traits fall on the character's U helps me to think of appropriate counter-traits that might add just the right touch of complexity, and elicit pathos from my readers.
So there’s a balance. If you have a character in your book who does bad things--and most books do--you might want to make sure to counter that badness with some better traits, and better traits that are somehow proportional to the bad ones. This will lead to richer, more complex characters in your work, and ones your readers will like despite themselves.