Fix Unsympathetic Characters
How to Create Sympathetic Characters That Will Hook a Reader
Dec 10, 2008
What is sympathy in a character? What does unsympathetic mean? And more importantly, how does a writer correct his or her characters to make them more sympathetic and avoid the rejection pile?
What is an Unsympathetic Character
Readers want to relate to the characters in the book. An unsympathetic character is one who has no quality to which the reader feels connected. The scorned woman, or vengeful man are two classic stereotypical characters. What makes them unsympathetic is when he or she is driven by qualities and motives that readers don’t want to see in themselves. Making them sympathetic means exposing vulnerabilities or honorable motivations and intentions so the reader feels good about cheering for the protagonist.
Why is Sympathy in a Character Important?
Readers like sympathetic characters. Because readers want sympathetic characters, editors and agents demand that their writers create characters with whom the readers will empathize and for whom they will cheer. Although there are exceptions to this rule, such as the James Bond characters who do not elicit much sympathy but for whom readers and viewers will root just the same, most other genres demand a more realistic, fully fleshed out protagonist. Readers want to live vicariously through the hero but in order to do so, the reader must first be able to relate to him or her.
How to Create Sympathy in Your Characters
Characters who are labeled unsympathetic are personalities that are not fully fleshed out or that are only portraying negative qualities. Essentially characters that are two-dimensional. To use a bad cliché take, for instance, the story of a scorned wife whose husband has been caught in a lecherous affair with his bimbo secretary. If this wife is furious and then proceeds to go on a smear campaign to ruin her soon-to-be-former husband, she is unsympathetic. But if the writer uses this same situation and same anger, but shows the vulnerability and hurt beneath the outward image of anger, this creates sympathy. Readers want to be able to root for the protagonist which means there has to be some level of vulnerability to the characters.
Use Back Story to Boost Sympathy
Back story can be a powerful tool in creating sympathy in characters. Take the above example of the scorned wife, for example. If she walks in on her husband with his secretary and this triggers memories of her father who was a notorious womanizer which broke her mother’s spirit—this creates increased sympathy. Then throw in that the husband knew about this past and swore in his courtship of her to never be that man, and how much she loved him until this moment, and the character has the reader’s sympathy. If a writer shows the character’s vulnerability strongly enough, readers will cheer for the protagonist no matter how outlandish the actions.
In Summary
A sympathetic character is a surefire way to catch an editor’s attention. To create this, a writer must ensure the character is fully fleshed out by exposing the good and bad personality traits and presenting some humanizing vulnerability.
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