The Mythcreant Podcast 572 – How Big Should Character Problems Be?
To have an effective character arc, your hero needs a problem. Otherwise, they aren’t changing, whether that means positive or negative change. This naturally raises the question of how big a problem your hero should have. Are they afraid of the dark or afraid of everything? Should they be a little grouchy or constantly in fight mode? All that and more on this week’s episode, plus an accidental Rickroll.
Transcript
Generously transcribed by Savannah. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.
[Intro]Oren: Welcome everyone to another episode of the Mythcreant podcast. I’m Oren.
Chris: And I’m Chris.
Oren: So, character arcs are where a character overcomes some kind of personal problem they’re having and grows, which is satisfying. Therefore, bigger problem means a more satisfying problem. Bigger problem is better, right?
Chris: Oh, yes, of course.
Oren: So, I’m not gonna give my character an arc about overcoming their lack of confidence or learning how to talk to their crush. No, that’s small potatoes. I’m gonna give my character the arc of overcoming their need to punch every baby! It’s the biggest problem. And it’ll be so satisfying once they’ve overcome it and they no longer want to punch every baby.
Chris: Yeah! I mean, if your character isn’t running around screaming, punching everyone, are they really flawed enough? Are they a complex character?
Oren: Did they not have enough flaws? Probably not. You should add more flaws. One of the most bizarre parts of reading Save the Cat for novels was your character−you should have a laundry list of flaws.
[Exasperated] What are you talking about? I know that you don’t think that’s true. I have seen the characters you write. That’s just not a thing. You don’t show an example in the book and you don’t do it in your own fiction. Why are you saying that?Chris: I think this is an area where people very frequently start waxing poetic and start getting away from what is actually, practically how you build a story and more into what feels romantic or deep or poetic.
Again, a character arc, we’d always describe it in pretty simple, non-romantic terms. It starts with some kind of internal problem. The character has an emotional issue that makes the character unhappy or poor judgment that is affecting them or others. Something that can only be solved within them. It’s not something that they could easily and should solve by changing their external circumstances. It’s just like any other plot arc. It starts with a problem.
And you can call this their “inherent misbelief” or their “lie” or their “want-versus-their-need” or any other label that you want that sounds deep to you, but it doesn’t really make a difference. It always boils down to that same thing. They have a problem, and the way that we know that they have a problem is that it’s something that the audience believes change is desirable, right? So again, some we can see the outward effects of it are bad or they’re unhappy, or we know that we want change. Therefore, it’s a problem, and it has to be solved in their mind or heart.
Oren: Caveat! Do remember the possibility of a downward character arc, but that’s also much harder. So we’ll cover that later if we have time.
Chris: Well, that also has to be solved in their mind or heart. The difference is not−
Oren: Yeah. They fail to solve it.
Chris: They fail to solve it.
Oren: You can’t fix them. You can make them worse!
Chris: Yes, you don’t have to fix them. It could be fixed in their mind or heart, but it could also then end up not being fixed. So that’s basically what we’re talking about. But in practice, this is a place that often becomes really thorny, where authors are tasked with establishing what the character’s character arc is, in which case they do need to show that a problem exists, but then what ends up happening is that readers can be really sensitive sometimes to character arcs and then hate the character.
And I find that this−again, getting into the romantic side of this−I think this is something that a lot of writers are not prepared to deal with because of all of the rhetoric coming out about this. All of the−and again, it’s not just the literary crowd that’s doing this, but that culture is probably the primary culprit here−where we spend so much time like, oh, the flaws are what makes a character. Then people are shocked when they get beta reader feedback and the beta readers are like, I hate this person because of their flaw.
Oren: You made them too flawed. I don’t like them anymore. It’s tricky because there are people who just love characters who are the absolute worst. It’s like, yeah, I would love to read about this jerk-ass coward who snivels in a corner all day. I don’t think that particular reader is very common, but they exist. And if that’s who you’re writing for, sure. Just be aware that that’s not a huge audience.
Chris: Every reader is gonna be different but different, right? Different people are sensitive to different types of flaws. And some people might find a character with flaws really relatable because they’ve had those flaws, dealt with them before, for instance. Or they sympathize with characters for other reasons, and they just aren’t that sensitive to flaws. I will say that I know me as a person that I have trouble tolerating assholery. A lot of other people can let asshole behavior roll off of them easier than I can. And so I’m probably in some cases harsher on characters who behave like assholes than some other readers might be. Right? We’re all different.
Oren: There are definitely different standards characters are held to which are not good and I don’t recommend writing your book to try to coast off those, but you should be aware of them. This is why you talked about this recently in one of your lessons posts, which was that one of the male romance interests in this story is controlling and arrogant and gets another character really badly hurt because of his controlling arrogant nature. But, he’s also written as the big, tough manly man, and this bar for that kind of character is so low that he seems fine because he doesn’t spend the whole book verbally abusing the protagonist.
Chris: There’s definitely different standards here where, again, a lot of times what we’ll see is those white male heroes are just allowed to be misbehaved more than other characters are, unfortunately.
Oren: And it depends a lot on audience identification. If the audience identifies with a character, they will tolerate a lot more from them.
Chris: But there’s also, I think, some readers, and I feel like literary readers might be this way, where they just get novelty out of character flaws. I think for some of them it’s almost like they get the joy of gossiping when they see a character that has weird flaws. They get some kind of engagement out of that, that other people don’t get.
Oren: I’ve certainly read a number of stories that are… feel like they’re inviting me to dish about how messed up this character is. And, uh, sometimes I’m not immune to that. Sometimes it starts to feel weird and voyeuristic. But I can’t say it’s not effective.
Chris: I mean, it was interesting when we watched Succession to see what was the deal there, and the first episode was funny. So because it was funny just being like, “Oh wow, these characters are horrible people,” seems to be a tolerable pastime. But then as it went on, it was less funny and actually spent time building sympathy for one of the jerk characters. It became clear that actually as this continues, you are actually supposed to grow attached to him and like him on some level. And I’m like, well, I don’t really want that.
Oren: Right. I suspect that was not a super long-lived storyline because when I talked to other Succession fans about it, they were like, ‘Huh? Whatcha talking about?” My guess is that that happened long enough ago they’d just kind of forgotten about it.
Chris: Yeah, at this point, the story has taken another turn.
Oren: The novel We’ve Always Lived in the Castle, it felt like that to me. It felt like it was very “Oh man, look how messed up this protagonist is. Look at all the weird stuff she’s doing. She’s real weird and messed up!” And I don’t know exactly how most readers took it, but I do know that I found a couple of reviews praising this story for just knowing how insane teenage girls were and−
Chris: Uuuugh.
Oren: −and that’s the reviewer’s words, not mine. This is from, I think the sixties is when this book was published.
Chris: That’s uncomfortable.
Oren: I was like, so at least for some people, part of its popularity was that this was supposed to be a realistic portrayal of an average teenage girl. I don’t know. That seems weird to me.
Chris: Yep. Nope, nope, nope.
So anyway, this kind of balance−we want their flaw to be present, but we also don’t want to annoy readers−can be delicate. So, it’s worth talking about what some strategies are for dealing with this because we want to have our character arcs, right? They’re really satisfying. Again, if you’re somebody who’s like, “Oh, I just really like flawed characters and this is what I want to do, and I’m writing for an audience that likes that,” yeah, go. Go you. That’s fine. In general, we aim to give advice for more common use cases. Sometimes we’ll go into niche stuff, but at this point, for most writers in most situations, we’re trying to balance this so that the character is pleasant to read about.
So knowing which problems are likable versus unlikable can be helpful because some of them are more sensitive than others. So the ones that are worst are either ones that just by their nature work directly against likability or ones that are liable to create frustration. So, for the working against likability, we have selfishness. Which you can do, but you have to do a lot of damage control to make selfishness−I have an article on that.
Oren: This one’s pretty common because it’s fairly easy to come up with, “Yeah, this character’s selfish, but never in a way that really makes you want to hurt them.” Like, yeah, this is a selfish character. They’re always trying to get money, but we’re not going to steal from the kid who’s collecting cancer donations.
Chris: Yeah.
Oren: They’re going to rob a bank or something. Or, if they did steal from the kid with cancer donations, it’ll be like a one-off joke, which we will quickly move past and never talk about again.
Chris: Right. Also, selfish is very broad, so if that’s what you’re thinking, narrow it down. How, in what way are they selfish? Let’s narrow down that. Arrogance is one of those things that’s very interesting because some audiences actually do like arrogant characters because they feel empowering. This is the Rick and Morty effect. Again, I would not choose to cater to an audience that wants to identify with an empowered jerk. But, at the very least, an arrogant character is gonna be quite divisive.
Oren: Well, because what you’re going to get is you’re going to get half the fandom saying no, you’re not supposed to identify with Rick, and then the other half saying, I identify with Rick. He’s very cool. Regardless of whether you’re supposed to or not, clearly a lot of people do, right?
Chris: An arrogant character is going to be grating for a lot of people. It’s not that there are no audience members who are drawn to that, but at the very least it’s going to be really divisive. So, if you know that that’s what your audience wants and you’re leaning into that, well, you do you. But that one is often real hard to manage.
Oren: It’s also really demographic specific. I was amazed actually that Eda from the Owl House basically fulfills the Rick role−the Rickroll role, LOL−fulfills the role of Rick from Rick and Morty. It’s very similar, and it kind of worked, but I think that was because Owl House was popular with a specific demographic for whom they identified with Eda, whereas you might not count on that for most of your stories.
Chris: Also, Eda was nerfed.
Oren: They did nerf Eda in season two.
Chris: They decided that she was too much and toned her down.
Oren: Which I have a huge respect for them for being willing to do that. And who knows, maybe that was always the plan, but that isn’t normally what happens with a character like that.
Chris: It doesn’t look like it. It looks like they− this definitely looks like a classic case of a storyteller absolutely loving their favorite character and then giving that character all the candy, having that character be obnoxious and then realizing, okay…
I mean, it might not have been from feedback. It might have been like, “I’m having trouble plotting because Eda can solve all of the problems.” Right? Or it might have been feedback, I don’t know. But making the adjustment there was great and probably was hard.
Then there’s characters that are really boring, just really boring as hell. That’s something that people… sometimes they can be relatable. Basically what you want to watch out for is a character… sometimes people want a character that has no motivation or feelings or opinions because then they come into their identity later. And that just makes them kind of a non-entity. So I would avoid that and just give them like, they’re fearful and they become courageous instead, or something. As opposed to oh, they’re just a non-person who becomes a person. I think that that’s just a little too blank, a little too boring. That’s working against likability.
And then in the creating frustration, this is about managing how much does the problem hinder or sabotage the character? And a lot of times you do want something. So it feels real. If it never affects them in any way, then it doesn’t feel real anymore. It doesn’t affect the story. But at the same time, if you do have the character making obvious decisions that are clearly a really bad idea, and your reader is invested in a successful outcome, they could get really frustrated then think that the flaws is real bad.
Oren: Usually, I have found that the most reliable way for this to happen is for it to be earlier in the story and for the problems that it causes to be for the protagonist specifically. It’s way harder if the problem is going to affect a lot of other people. I’ve got a whole blog post about that, about how in my novel I wanted my main character to make a mistake at a pivotal scene, and readers hated that. They got so mad at her. It was a big thing. It was something that affected the lives of lots of other people, and so having her stumble, they were just like, no, we don’t want her to do that. We are upset that you’re making this happen.
Chris: Honestly, if they sabotage themself in more internal arcs, like they sabotage their relationships or themselves emotionally, I think that’s easier. The thing about high stakes is it generally creates more investment in achieving a specific outcome, which is why people can even have too high of stakes. If it’s a comedy and characters are goofing off and not taking the problem seriously and you have high stakes, that can actually be an issue because audiences will get frustrated, but you actually want characters to goof off because it’s a comedy, right? So, having them sabotage themselves in either much smaller ways. It could be an external problem, but it’s not a very big setback. Or, it could be like, well they cared about somebody and they just pissed off that person, so they’ve now strained their personal relationships.
It’s not impossible that you could have some readers like, I’m really invested in this relationship. But usually that would just be drama that’s creating a little bump in the road. Knowing what type of story you’re telling and making it appropriate to that. So again, little things that hold them back are better and that seem like they are only delaying them a little bit, for instance, versus having them fall on their face. Or you could have them make a bad choice and then some other character helps them, but then there’s a cost to that. But they still move forward.
Oren: Right, like disapproval.
Chris: They get disapproval.
Oren: Shake their head. I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.
Chris: You do wanna think about, okay, with frustration issues, there is the reader’s experience all the way through the process, right? So, if you have a character who is obviously making a bad choice, and then you make it so, okay, actually that didn’t turn out so bad afterwards, you can still get a lot of frustration ahead of time, right? Because the reader doesn’t know that you’re going to then come and soften the blow by bringing in another character. So, unfortunately that’s something to think about, but it’s definitely better than nothing. So even if it’s really frustrating leading up to the choice, if another character makes it better, that will help. Ideally, it doesn’t look quite so cringe-worthy ahead of time.
So if a character… For instance, I think impulsiveness is the one I think of here because impulsiveness is not by itself a really unlikable flaw, but it does mean your character is going to do something they shouldn’t do probably to show that they’re impulsive.
So, okay, how do we do this? Well, something that is, I think, emotionally satisfying for the audience can help. We really want the protagonist at some level to punch that antagonist. It’s probably a bad idea, but it would be really satisfying if they would. Really fun for a moment. That could help. Those are some of the basic things that are going to be more sensitive.
Also with frustration, besides impulsiveness or proactively doing something bad, a character that is too meek and does nothing when they should act or just goes along with more nefarious characters when they should oppose them. That can also create frustration.
Oren: That one’s rough because I understand a lot of people want to tell stories about a character who is initially pulled along into circumstances that they shouldn’t be and learns better. I get that that’s a thing people wanna do, and Chris has a number of articles that can help. One of them is the lessons from the writing of Revenger where we talk about this. You can still do that. But you probably don’t want it to be just because the character is completely passive and has no desires of their own. You would usually want it to show how important it’s for them to get the approval of this bad influence in their life. Something like that, which would just be a lot more sympathetic.
Chris: And that’s one of those things where some people are more sensitive to characters than others because they want to have an empowered character in their story because that’s what creates a good experience for them. Whereas for me, I’m almost getting really tired of over-spunky protagonists that just thumb their nose at literally everyone around them. I feel like I’ve seen all of them before, and now they’re kind of dull to me. The disadvantage of that character, of course, too, is they can make it so that none of the antagonists are taken seriously because they don’t take them seriously.
Oren: Just call up the main bad guy, do a little Who’s on First routine with them, refuse to take anything seriously.
Chris: I honestly still don’t know of any character that is universally liked. Unfortunately, that is the reality of the situation. People just have different character preferences, but you can have a character that’s mostly liked. That’s liked by 90, 95% of people. That’s possible.
Oren: Or you could go the other direction and make them so disliked that it circles back around. I assume that’s what was going on with Neelix, but I don’t know for sure.
Chris: Another thing we can do to help with any kind of flaw or problem that your character has that might bother readers is try to get them on the same page with your character as much as possible. So you want whatever they do to be understandable, building empathy and sympathy. So, for instance, if your character has trouble trusting people and that’s going to hold them back a lot, well, you want to go into the background of why they don’t trust easily. Have they been betrayed a dozen times? Make that feel real for the reader so they can empathize with like, oh yeah, it seems reasonable to me that this character doesn’t want to trust this person.
Oren: Trust arcs in particular are interesting because you do have to create a situation where it seems like they should trust somebody because if you show how this is a dark world where people will constantly lie to you and it’s like, but you should trust this one. Should I though? This is the dark world where people will lie to me. Maybe I shouldn’t trust them. And then it’s like, no, that one was a good one. You should have known to be able to trust them. How would I have known that, author? How?
Chris: Which I think gets into the point of how do we make sure the problem is clear. Because it’s a balance here. We want to show that the character has a problem and that there is a character arc, but we don’t want to piss readers off. One thing is to make sure you are using internalization. You’ve got to be narrating what’s going on inside that character’s head. And if you’re not doing that at all, it’s hard for readers to tell whether or not something is supposed to be a problem or not. Once you have their head, you can either have characters be self-aware of their problems, maybe they know they’re too impulsive but they just can’t help themselves in the moment. They can exhibit what is clearly warped thinking.
And for that, you probably want some external context. You want to show a situation so readers can objectively see what happened. Then you show what the character takes away from the situation and see that their perspective is skewed. That’s another thing that you can do. If you need to, of course, the mentor character that’s like, “You need to be more patient” or “You need to believe in yourself, hero” can also be useful for establishing what the problem is.
Oren: Just get a wise mentor. They can just say it sometimes. It makes this a lot easier.
Chris: It does. But I still think you want to have that internalization in there if you could get it to clarify that there is a problem here and the character is not supposed to be right. With a trust issue, for instance. A thing that I would do is have it− so, okay, we have another character that’s clearly supposed to be a positive side character and then have warped thinking in the way that the protagonist is coming up with elaborate theories for how normal behaviors could be calculated in order to deceive them. And maybe they even can be self-aware. They can know that this is probably unlikely to be real, but still have it emotionally affect them. That will show that they have a problem.
Oren: Although on the other hand, it’s occurred to me, you can go too far in the other direction and be trying so hard to not make your character frustrating or annoying that when you’re like, okay, it’s time for them to overcome their issue, the audience is like, what issue? What are you talking about? They seemed fine?
Chris: It’s hard to tell. For instance, what happened in Project Hail Mary, right? I think with that one, it wasn’t that Andy Weir was trying to make the problem mild. I think what happened there is that his character was supposed to be a coward, but he needed this character to be brave for the plot to work.
Oren: Yeah, that’s… that character’s not a coward, Andy. He’s just not. In zero ways.
Chris: That is another thing to think about. Because I do think that ideally there is, if you want the character arc to be relevant to the story, you do want a problem that will sabotage the character as they try to go about solving problems. At the same time, if you need them to instantly get over their problem, their personal, emotional issue in order to solve a bigger problem, that’s not going to work out very well.
I think that’s one of the problems with cowardice, right, is cowardice is a flaw where it’s not impossible to have a setup where your character is a coward so they solve problems in less than ideal ways because they’re not willing to go out in the open. So, they always have to be hidey and sneaky about it because they’re too much of a coward to be in the open and that hinders them. But they still barely manage to solve their problems. You could create a situation like that, and eventually they can no longer sneak around and they have to be out in the open and face their fears.
But in Project Hail Mary, which is just one guy in a spaceship, that wasn’t really… you’d have to have, logistically, the ability to come up with that kind of halfway solution.
Oren: All right, well, with that, I think we will go ahead and call this episode to a close.
Chris: If you thought the problem with this podcast was too subtle to notice, obviously that means we’re great and you should become our patron. Whereas if the problems were too big that they were obnoxious, obviously that means that we need more money to fix them. So you should become our patron. Just go to patreon.com/mythcreants.
Oren: Before we go, I want to thank a couple of our existing patrons. First, there’s Ayman Jaber. He’s an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. Then there’s Kathy Ferguson, who’s a professor of political theory in Star Trek. We’ll talk to you next week.
[Outro]