How to prevent turning off the reader at first with a protagonist with unlikeable traits but that becomes better later on?
I have a story where the protagonist, who is a warrior meant to be the story's hero, has several unlikable traits. He is proud, kind of cold, has a hatred for the people of the enemy State (without exceptions, which makes him support war and sees no problem in killing soldiers), has a limited knowledge and isn't much prudent. Of course, he has several qualities too, but it's not relevant for the question.
In the course of the plot, many things happen which leads him to start changing and becoming a better person (including becoming the opposite of these flaws) since half the plot's progress and slowly until the end.
The problem is: how can I non-verbally tell the reader that he will become a more likeable person but that it will take kind of long until that happens, and preventing the reader from losing interest in the story until the change begins?
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Your character is a warrior. That lends itself to many positive qualities you can show: loyalty, courage, professionalism, camaraderie. There's a reason we have so many stories about warriors: these qualities evoke respect. Show your MC as a complex character, with admirable qualities, and qualities we would frown upon, and already you have the reader's interest.
Then, why does your MC hate the enemy so much? What has the enemy done? Invaded his land? Killed his friend? Did he have real need to fear this enemy when he was a child, so that as an adult he'd feel duty-bound to protect others from this enemy? How much does he actually know about the enemy, except that "those are the guys trying to kill me"? Make his hatred understandable. In fact, if you can make the reader internalise this hatred, and then take him on the same journey the MC is taking - of learning whatever you want your MC to learn, that would be an awesome journey to take.
One more thing: as a reader, I wouldn't want to know right from the start that the character is going to become more likeable, I don't want to know how he's going to change. That's like a spoiler. I'd want to get invested in the character as he is, good and bad, and then go with him wherever he goes, and observe whatever is happening to him.
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He can be admirable yet remain 'unlikeable' for the manner in which he deals with the challenges which you create for him, ie holding the moral high ground, exhibiting a sense of humour. You could make his antagonists 'likeable' to start with to keep the reader's interest, then gradually twist the perspective around.
Clint Eastwood's character in 'Unforgiven' was pretty repellent in a variety of ways but we kept watching anyway, partly out of a morbid curiosity of how much more grim and violent he could become.
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Few people are entirely unlikeable or worthy of rooting for in any sense. If your character didn't have anything good about them then he would not become a better person by the end of the story. The fact that he does become a better person shows that there was something in him that was good such that it could come out or be amplified, so what is it?
When you have a story where a character starts out bad or unlikeable in some sense but becomes good by the end the conflict is generally caused by us seeing in them the potential to be good but them failing to capitalize on that potential. So even when they are saying or doing something bad or evil or unlikeable or not in accordance with their potential you should show us a glimpse of what they can and eventually will become.
The thing about warriors is that they physically have the ability to generate great change in the kind of world where it is permitted for violence to make such changes. But violence and the kind of change it creates can be very positive or very negative.
What motivated your warrior to become a warrior? Is it just his pride? Being a strong warrior might be a good justification for having pride (if pride can be justified), but being a strong warrior who actually uses that strength to effectively bring about positive change in the world might be a far greater reason to have pride compared to just simply being strong. If this is your intended arc for the character, then you should somehow establish early on that pride is his motivation, but that he is not content with merely having pride in being strong. He wants more. This makes him relatable and while we may not like him totally we will at least relate to his desires and follow his progress for the sake of resolving this conflict.
Imagine your task is to portray a character who is deeply racist, but you want to give us the hope that they could be a better person (thus foreshadowing this eventuality). You might start off the story with a monologue of them describing in detail regarding why family is the most important thing in the world. Nothing they say at the beginning of this monologue is controversial or otherwise appears to be spoken by a character of anything other than high moral caliber. But THEN they transition into "and it is because family is so important that we must protect the white family from the foreign non-white elements that threaten it..." The good that we saw in them is twisted when the evil it is used to justify is exposed. Maybe the first event that happens to this character in the story is that their family is deeply and terribly wronged by non-white individuals. Now, even if we completely disagree with their hate, we might understand and then relate to what set them down the path to darkness. And because we recognize their unlikability as a twisting of what would otherwise be likeable (their devotion to their family) we recognize the potential for goodness in them and want them to be good.
The bottom line is to give us a glimpse into the goodness that already exists within them and then structure conflict in such a way that both uses that good to show that they have potential and identifies the potential that they are currently failing to (but will eventually) meet.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/34486. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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