Despite what our first instinct might be, we must recognize that more much we like characters and how good they are really doesn’t correlate very well. Of course, we’re none too fond of Puppy Kicker McEvilface, and certain evils just earn our undying hatred. Yet we can read stories about murderous, obsessive dictators with a flair for human experimentation sans anesthesia and enjoy their time in our lives, can ‘like’ them. Meanwhile the most perfectly virtuous man makes our sneers appear. How does this make sense?

In truth, the ‘liking’ we have for characters in fiction (and people in real life, often) isn’t actually based on a comprehensive moral analysis but on a subset of virtues, different depending on the person, which make them ‘likable’. When we find these virtues, we ‘admire’ or ‘like’ or ‘enjoy’ the person- though generally from a distance. You might love reading about the ruthless, genius military despot in the novel, but you wouldn’t want to live too near him. Perhaps you want shake his hand, but you’re aware you’d be terrified if he became the ruler. The lack of these virtues, even if all the others are present, would bring the true opposite of this affection: disdain or disgust. Here we come to the real name of the quality these characters have. What we are looking for is how to create charisma.

What virtues are these?

They are virtues of archetype. The two most basic archetypes here are the masculine and feminine set, into which the other archetypes will roughly sort. The masculine archetype includes virtues, moral and otherwise, such as perseverance, determination, clear-headedness, intelligence, physical strength (and beauty), bravery, personal loyalty, ability to sacrifice for a greater goal, purposefulness, purpose-drive, sincerity, and moral consistency (sticking to a code or set of principles, even if those principles are, when evaluated objectively, very wrong). The feminine archetype (which I admit to lesser understanding of) includes nurturing-ness,¹ personal loyalty, beauty, familial love, and empathy.

When we consider these broad archetypes, though, it quickly becomes apparent that not all these traits are necessary, not in one person, to get us to like them. Physical beauty, particularly for men, can go out the door, but it helps. Personal loyalty (as we’ll investigate a little later) can be nuanced. Intelligence can be minimized, as with Samwise Gamgee, a man of only normal intellect (if towering common sense). These virtues are not a recipe; they are a set of ingredients, some of which are useful in one place, some of which are useful in another. Yet the character that holds to these will, by them, attract ‘liking’ from the reader.

Finding these virtues- and the sub-archetype you’re aiming for- is a matter of intuition, analysis, and imitation. Intuition because we are people who have an innate sense for analyzing people, analysis because we are readers as well as writers, capable of applying patterns noted in other works to our own, and imitation because we can look at specific characters who produce the effect we desire and imitate that effect.

The above said, though, we can look at a set of traits and acts that will tend to plunge your character straight into the disdain or disgust range, starting with the usable-but-difficult, moving onto the usually deadly, and finishing on the fatal.

For usable-but-difficult traits and actions, these are character elements which require work if they are to be kept from producing a certain level of dislike, from breaking a character’s charisma. I listed personal loyalty above, twice, and for a reason. A character who betrays somebody else is much less likable than a character who remains loyal even when it costs. In some cases, the betrayal can become irrelevant by context. Betrayal-but-in-a-plan, where the betrayal is seeming but not actual, is fine, at least once the deception is realized. Betrayal of people I don’t care about or dislike, particularly of minions, is generally less of a problem, particularly for villainous characters and those whose moral code allows or demands it. In contrast, if a man betrays his lieutenant, a lieutenant who has been entirely loyal, or if he betrays his wife, who has, again, been entirely loyal, that man loses by affection very quickly. As a general rule, breaking loyalty requires justification; breaking loyalty towards the loyal or towards those we instinctively believe the character should protect (her children, friends, and the like) is very difficult to forgive. I should note also that the reader’s personal values will heavily affect the analysis, and certain worldviews, such as the woke religion, can actually demonize personal loyalty.

Cowardice, especially in masculine characters, is another way to make a person unappealing, to strip their charisma. Note that cowardice is very different from fear or even panic. Fear is apprehension of danger and suffering; to show fear is allowable, even necessary for bravery to have an impact. Panic is an instinctive response, something to be overcome. For masculine characters, generally charisma is massively harmed if this panic is not overcome or worked around; for feminine characters, panic is much more acceptable, though it may annoy the reader. Cowardice, however, deliberate or uncaring abandonment of principle, desire, or loyalty, this is what will really drive home the coffin’s nails.

Stupidity- not merely normal intelligence but outright stupidity- can be dangerous. If the reader is spending his time being annoyed with Billy Bob missing all the obvious solutions, the reader is much less likely to actually enjoy his time. Annoyance is not compatible with pleasure, generally speaking, and so while stupidity may be dramatically necessary, be aware that egregious, prolonged stupidity risks frustrating and thereby alienating the reader. It can also verge into Unreality, discussed below.

In the masculine archetype at least (possibly also for the feminine), sincerity and courage of conviction, having certain beliefs and sticking to them regardless of hardship (though perhaps not regardless of argument) is a charismatic trait, something we admire. We tend admire the crusader, even as we think he is wrong in his cause, so long as we believe he acts for his crusade and not other, baser motives, particularly if that crusade is carried out with a certain set of morals and boundaries or with a pragmatic unscrupulousness justified by the goal. Evil characters in particular can get a lot of capital out of sincerity and courage of conviction.

The ’generally deadly’ category comprises those traits or acts which will earn disgust or disdain from essentially the entire audience, regardless of context, and which require careful context to be tolerable even for the few who are willing to consider tolerating. The two easiest examples, and the ones I’ll give here, are rape and pedophilia, though assuredly different cultures will have different ‘unforgivable’ sins. In Western culture at least these two evils will make just about any character disgusting, so long as they are treated with gravity.²

The final category, Fatal, has only one entry: Unreality. When people stop believing your characters are real people, on an emotional level, the characters instantly lose all charisma. We don’t like characters as series of letters or as images; we like them as people. Break that sensation of reality and the character becomes merely an assembly of sensations, no longer a person. This is why most ‘perfect’ characters are at most repulsive; they have almost that quality of uncanny value: nearly a person, but not quite. Usually they’re just boring. Mary Sues fall into precisely this category.

Before we wrap up, I must offer one caveat. Sometimes, the point of a character is not to be ‘charismatic’. Many characters don’t need to be likable; some character need to be not just hated but disdained. Grima Wormtongue needed no great charisma in the books, and the films chose well in making him outright disgusting. In the books, Saruman needed not the actual presence of charisma but the aura of its potential, a sort of force of personality which told of charisma once overwhelming and now hollowed out by the light of reality. Clearly, we shouldn’t just slap these characteristics onto characters indiscriminately; instead, we must carefully consider how we want readers to perceive a character and then create him in that image.³

This whole thesis, given as I have, might seem to go contrary the thesis I advanced a while back on hard virtue. Consider, however, the point above on Unreality. With all the character traits above- loyalty, bravery, nurturing-ness, etc.- and even with a physical trait like strength, the way we get the reader to buy into them is precisely ‘hard virtue.’ Unless they are proven by passing through the fire, they remain only assertions, and assertions have little emotional weight. Charisma in these characters rests not upon saying they have these traits but upon them demonstrating these traits under fire.⁴

God bless.

Footnotes

1 – I can’t think of a better capsule term, otherwise I’d use it. In part, this term should explain the relative shortness of the feminine side’s list, as it encapsulates multiple feminine-archetype virtues.

2 – Making them cartoonish or ‘unrealistic’ may not have this effect- push it so far the reader doesn’t emotionally buy into it and they become open manipulation, the type the reader will just drop the book over.

3 – This is one way of putting it. From another angle, we develop a character, evaluate him at the end, and discover that his role in the story resulted in him being perceived in a certain way. Every character is a mix of pantser and plotter methodology, for most writers; the important part is to be conscious of the process and result.

4 – To get topical: the assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania, which happened less than a week before this was written, demonstrates precisely how this works. It wasn’t Trump being asserted as brave that made him admirably to so many; it was the fact that he stood up after being shot and called for the battle to continue regardless. In other words, he demonstrated a masculine archetype, virtue under pressure, in a way that made it intensely real to those who saw.