Making the audience love a hated character

Hey!

I am currently writing a novel and there is one problem that occurred to me when I initially planned it. My protagonist is in prison, declaring that he believes he is innocent. The first assumption for a reader is to assume he is telling the truth, otherwise, why would he be the main character?

But, I want the reader to be unsure whether he is truthful or not. For this, I decided to make him rather cocky and a bit full of himself. These negative traits should hopefully lead to a distrust of his words.

This then led to another issue: if I make him have unlikeable traits, how do I make him likeable?

🐈Saving the cat (from falling into lava)

If you have ever read about storytelling techniques, you will have come across the term 'save the cat.' If you haven't, here's a brief explanation:

• 'Save the Cat,' coming from a book written by Blake Snyder, discusses how having a character do a selfless deed near the beginning of a movie/book to win the audience's trust and empathy - such as 'saving the cat.'

Why this is helpful, is because it meant that I had a strategy to try and make my character likeable to the audience, whilst also being unlikeable to the others in the novel.

It also means that I could introduce a secondary character, in the form of this 'cat'. Don't worry, I didn't actually put a cat in prison. I just had another character who was struggling in prison be helped by my protagonist.

By doing this, not only does it make the audience like the character for helping, but it shows that there is a possibility that he may do it again and has the capability of kindness. It just might take some character development to get to that part.

😭Queue the sad backstory

Another way to create empathy for the characters is by giving them a sad backstory. It has been done a lot more recently, but having the character have a sad past that is revealed throughout the novel helps answer two questions:

• What changed?
• Why does the character act in such a way?

At first, when you show the character in the past as being different from the current-time protagonist, the reader automatically wants to know what happened to make the character have such a drastic change.

The backstory is a difficult one to get right, however. It could probably do with a whole article in itself.

But by using the 'save the cat' method or employing a backstory that is either sad or shows drastic character development, you can get the reader invested in a character even if they themselves aren't incredibly likeable.

That's all from me today,
Fin :)