25 Reasons I Hate Your Main Character

As Chuck says, they are his personal opinions and most make sense, but they are mostly repeats of what others have said. Pretty generic... IMHO of course.

LOL'ed at this....

18. ATLAS POOPED

A character is more than just his philosophies. We are not the sum total of our beliefs. We have friends and family. Hopes and dreams. Secret plans and bizarre sexual peccadilloes requiring an oil drum full of egg whites and Abe Vigoda in a too-tight wetsuit. If your character fails to possess those things and is just a mouthpiece for his (or worse, your) belief systems, then I will come to your house and beat you about the head, neck and butthole with a copy of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

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- If only I could get some of my students to stop with this crap.

I'm still new to this writing thing, and I need all the help I can get with my characters. So thanks for this!

I am new. To AW, that is. Not to writing. I clicked that link hoping to find out if my main character is crap. Thankfully, I see nothing about my character that would warrant becoming any type of processed food product.

Thanks for the post.

she’s got black hair one minute and the next minute she’s a sentient recliner named “Dave.” You know. Little things.

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Goddamit. He's been reading my first draft.

Some of these reasons make sense, and it sounds like he copied them from the thirteen thousand agents, editors, and reviewers who beat him to the list. Other are personal taste, so who gives a rat's behind what he thinks?

Thanks for posting this. I especially like number 13! I want characters to be original, not copies of someone else's characters.

another opportunity to express my undying love for Chuck Wendig!

Isn't it embarrassing to read lists like these, and know you've committed one of those writing sins yourself? Oh well, live and learn!

I think no. 11 drove me the most crazy this past year. Whining MC's annoy the heck out of me.

If I don't like my MC, neither will you. But sometimes we get enamored of the little buggers and lose sight of what we are trying to accomplish in bringing them to life.

I love Chuck's list, and it's true, lots of us have made mistakes in the past. That's how we learn.

Thanks for posting this!

Aw, I love Forrest Gump (#6)! But maybe it was just Tom Hanks in the role... the movie was so much better than the book, which I didn't finish, partly because Gump wasn't nearly as charming as I recall. Hanks makes 'dipshittery' adorable. Sometimes sweet and gullible is refreshing! But yeah, I can't imagine reading a whole book about a MC like that.

Heehee, #11 is why Catcher in the Rye was agony for me. Holden, shut up!

That's a hilarious list! And SO well written! I love his writing style

crunchyblanket said:

she’s got black hair one minute and the next minute she’s a sentient recliner named “Dave.” You know. Little things.

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Goddamit. He's been reading my first draft.

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Phew. The sentient recliner in my WiP is named Cedric, so I think I'm okay.

Pearl said:

Isn't it embarrassing to read lists like these, and know you've committed one of those writing sins yourself? Oh well, live and learn!

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Yup. I'm not sure if my current MC is actually making a story, or just a show of himself.

CrastersBabies said:

LOL'ed at this....

18. ATLAS POOPED



- If only I could get some of my students to stop with this crap.

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If only I get could get more writers to do this well.

Most of those are old news, a couple are rather silly, from my opinion, and a couple just made me go Huh?

I generally dislike such lists, partly because they are just opinion, and largely because I'm not writing for him, or for anyone else. I write to please myself, and hope a lot of othe rpeople share the same taste in fiction, and characters, that I do. I'd never write a character a certain way, or avoid writing one a certain way, because of such a list. Such advice, I think, is why we have so much bad fiction out there.

Jamesaritchie said:

If only I get could get more writers to do this well.

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Could you elaborate on this, James? I've got an MC with a philosophy that gets him into trouble.

Jamesaritchie said:

Such advice, I think, is why we have so much bad fiction out there.

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Do you really think the proliferation of bad fiction is a result of advice and lists like this one? Really?

Bad fiction comes from people who write badly. Mostly because they read bad fiction, don't read enough in general, haven't written enough, or simply aren't good enough. Advice and lists are sought out by people who research and strive to improve. Whether advice helps or does not, it hardly directly contributes to bad fiction.

IMO, of course.

Wow, this thread is old.

/rude teenager out, carry on

Samsonet said:

Wow, this thread is old.

/rude teenager out, carry on

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Apparently it's old enough that I forgot about it. Read it, liked the article, realized I posted already.

You may be the self-professed rude teenager, but I am the old goober whose memory is not all that. I will step out with you, I think.

I like Wendig's blog, and I actually agree with this list, but I've been pretty steeped in all the "don't do this unless you're brilliant at it" advice that's out there.

Thing is, I don't think I've ever read a published novel that doesn't do at least a few of the "no nos" everyone says you can't do unless you're brilliant. So my conclusions are that:

1. You pretty much have to be brilliant at breaking rules in order to get published.

2. You'll never know for sure whether you are brilliant at breaking rules until/unless you get published.

3. Don't break rules from ignorance or for the sake of breaking them, but chances are, any story you can ever conceive of will require you to break, or at least bend, a few.

Edit--wow, some thread necro. Thought the blog entry looked familiar, but I couldn't tell for sure.