Frodo only has one problem, but he still gets a ringing endorsement.
Making your protagonist a relatable underdog is a great way to encourage your audience to bond with them. Unfortunately, it’s easy for this effort to go wrong. Instead of feeling sympathy for your hero, the audience might think your character is whiny and unpleasant. The narration could come across as contrived, or your protagonist might end up with problems that are much too serious for the story you’re writing. I’ll help you steer clear of these traps and describe how you can effectively give your hero sympathy-inducing problems.
Don’t Twist an Advantage Into a Problem
The first thing any underdog needs is a problem that rings true. But instead of looking for genuine problems, many storytellers do their darndest to convince the audience that blessings are a curse.
Imagine:
- The hero is so beautiful that anyone who’s never met him before stops and stares. He hates all the attention and wishes he were ugly instead.
- The empress has all the wealth and luxury she can ask for, but she has to make all those terrible decisions. She envies the peasants with their simple, happy lives.
- The superhero reviles the day they were caught in a nuclear accident and ended up with the power to run super fast. They just want a normal life without sweet powers.
There can be downsides to advantages like these, but they’re not enough to make your protagonist a sympathetic underdog. Even if you manage to convince some audience members that your character isn’t full of unreasonable angst, blessings disguised as curses will never be as powerful as real problems.
To keep your protagonist from coming across as spoiled or ungrateful, they should be thankful for any advantages they have. You can induce sympathy by giving them a separate problem.
- Let your hero appreciate his beauty, and instead he can suffer from a strange ailment that prevents him from leaving his small village to see the world. If he left, he would quickly run out of the medicine he needs.
- Let your empress be proud of her position, and instead give her terrible waking nightmares that make her afraid to go out in public lest she make a spectacle.
- Let your superhero enjoy running super fast, but give those powers a huge catch. Since the hero is now powered by the sun, as soon as the sun goes down, the hero becomes unconscious and vulnerable.
By creating a separate problem, you have an opportunity to make your protagonist more complex and interesting.
Look Out for Problems That Are Tricky to Use
Many problems can work well with proper implementation but are dangerous to the unwary. In many cases, these problems aren’t worth the trouble.
Serious and Sensitive Topics
Hardships like bigotry and abuse can’t be thrown in your story and forgotten. Because these problems are so serious, you’ll be expected to spend way more page space than you probably want in order to address them. These problems can also be very hurtful and harmful to some readers. For example, just including depictions of suicide can make your readers more likely to actually commit suicide.
The Harry Potter series has this issue in spades. The abuse Harry receives is effective in creating sympathy for him, but J.K. Rowling clearly wasn’t prepared to deal with a problem of that magnitude. She wants him to go back to his abusive family every summer so that she can continue to juice the situation for more sympathy, but the way Dumbledore allows child abuse to continue is detestable. Readers who weren’t familiar with abuse might have waved off the depiction as a little unkindness, but as the series continued and the public discussion grew, it became increasingly obvious.
If you’re going to include topics that are sensitive and divisive, make sure they are important enough to you and your story that you don’t mind spending extra time and care with them. How do you know if it’s sensitive? First, would you classify it as “gritty”? That’s a warning sign. Is it unique to a real group of unprivileged people? Then it’s definitely sensitive. You can read more on what to avoid in our “signs your story is bigoted” posts.
Problems That Are Easy to Solve
Being poor would make for a great problem, except one thing: there are too many ways to solve it. Any type of resource or advantage the protagonist receives during the story can be converted into money. This is a big issue in Name of the Wind, where protagonist Kvothe has not only magic powers he can use to make money but also a wealthy friend of the family that he conveniently forgets about. If you ever want your protagonist to become famous, meet wealthy people, or gain special abilities, you’ll have to deal with all the ways your character could use that to increase their wealth.
Plus, storytellers rarely want to give their protagonist traits that would land them far in debt – like big medical bills or paying for college for three children. Being trapped in poverty is not the stuff of our escapist fantasies, and it’s difficult to pull it off with a half-hearted attempt.
Similarly, in editing we’ve seen some manuscripts where the protagonist could get help with their problem but won’t ask. It’s fine to have this trait as a character flaw that makes life harder for the hero. However, if the protagonist isn’t doing their best to solve a problem, they won’t get sympathy for it. The audience needs to believe the problem isn’t the hero’s fault.
Social Mistreatment
Social mistreatment doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Culture isn’t arbitrary and neither are the traits that are punished with ostracization. Yet judging by the stories out there, you’d think that having a freckle on the wrong side of your face would inspire bullying. To use mistreatment as a compelling problem, you must have a sufficient reason why your protagonist is being persecuted. Otherwise, it will ring false.
First, while advantages may occasionally inspire resentment from family members, they don’t provoke mistreatment from strangers. Your speed-demon superhero isn’t going to be picked on for having super speed. There are two reasons for this. First, people know advantages are cool. Second, people with advantages have power they can use against those who mistreat them. Bullies and predators look for vulnerable victims who can’t fight back.
If your protagonist is underprivileged, that is a likely reason for being mistreated. However, that can put you back in the “serious and sensitive” topic territory. It is possible to avoid that with fictional worldbuilding. In Harry Potter, Hermione faces discrimination for being muggle-born. Because this is an entirely fictional category of oppression, it avoids many issues that similar stories might have. Even with fictional oppression, you still have to be careful, because your audience will look for real-world parallels.
Instead of skipping right to social mistreatment, start by giving your protagonist a different problem. Then think critically about whether their problem would also cause social mistreatment. If it would, you can add it in.
Consider a Disadvantage or Loss
How do you find a problem that feels genuine, isn’t easy to solve, and doesn’t open a huge can of worms? I know two categories of problems that work well in most stories.
Disadvantages
Giving your protagonist a substantial disadvantage will create a striking impression and a genuine reason for hardship. It’s also likely to make your character a target for mistreatment.
For instance, in the Codex Alera series, everyone in Calderon wields elemental magic at some level. That is, except for the main character, Tavi. Without the magic that others use to complete difficult tasks, Tavi has to come up with more ingenious methods of getting things done. Even though he’s very competent, the people close to him often treat him as though he’s weak and helpless.
You could also have a character that
- can’t read.
- is part of a reviled underclass.
- doesn’t speak the local language.
- is terrible at the family trade.
Just be aware that if the disadvantage you pick is a real-life disease or disability, you might be in the “serious and sensitive” territory.
Loss
Something terrible happened in the past, and your character is still grieving. Losses can be useful in creating character arcs and giving characters disadvantages. For instance, in Avatar: The Last Airbender, the character Zuko has recently lost his status as the honored crown prince. The story of how his father unjustly cast him out is used to build sympathy for him. His arc involves letting go of his crown prince title, and his status as a fugitive from his home nation forces him to hide his bending.
Good candidates for loss are the protagonist’s parents, home, social standing, magic powers, or career.
With a loss, it’s important to show your character grieving convincingly. As I describe in my critique of Tiger’s Curse, the protagonist’s parents are dead, but she only thinks of them and their death in terms of her own inconvenience. It makes what should be a sympathetic loss feel trivial.
Build Trust in Your Character
Once you have a strong problem to work with, you’ll need to convince your audience this problem is real – not just in the mind of your viewpoint character.
In limited narration, the entire story is colored by the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings. Because of this, the audience has to judge whether anything you narrate is real or character bias. When something bad happens, they might consider it objectively bad, or they might think your character is being whiny. They usually decide in a split second, without conscious thought.
A good example of an unintentionally “whiny” character is described in my critique of Twilight. Twilight opens as protagonist Bella goes to live with her father in Forks, Washington. She does this for her mother’s sake, even though she hates Forks. Once Bella arrives in Forks, readers are told how she doesn’t like fishing, dislikes the sound of the rain, and even thinks that the vegetation is “too green.” Most readers will conclude that far from being genuine issues with Forks, these complaints show that Bella is just a negative person. Instead of building sympathy, this depiction makes Bella less likable.
This trap is easy to fall into, but it’s also avoidable. A couple different techniques will help you minimize the “whiny” factor and build trust that your protagonist isn’t just complaining.
Show Their Problems
It’s difficult to account for all the ways your audience will interpret your story. Chances are that you won’t be on the same page as many of your audience members about how good or bad something is. The more you tell rather than show story problems, the more likely that your audience will feel a contradiction between what they observe and what you’re saying. As a result, the viewpoint character is often blamed for distorting reality.
For instance, let’s say your protagonist has an obnoxious roommate named Kyle. Here are three statements you could put in a first-person narration to show that:
- My roommate Kyle is so obnoxious.
- No matter how many times I ask him to stop, Kyle keeps borrowing my things and eating my food without asking.
- It had been a long day of work, but at least I had my creature comforts to go home to. But when I got home, my gaming console was gone. Kyle must have borrowed it again; I wish he’d ask me first. Okay, no games, but I still had my brie and truffles in the fridge – or I thought I did. They were gone, their crumbled wrappers strewn across Kyle’s desk.
The first statement is straight-up telling. The audience might believe that Kyle is obnoxious, or they might think the protagonist is negative. The second statement shows more, and the third shows more yet. The more you move toward the showing end of the spectrum, the more believable the problems become. And if your readers still don’t think your problem is a problem, this interpretation is less likely to detract from their reading experience.
If you can’t show why a problem is bad, it may be too small. In Twilight, no amount of showing would have made “the foliage is too green” into a sympathetic issue.
Give Your Protagonist Positive Feelings and Outlook
Even if your protagonist is suffering, they can still love and appreciate things. Showing the positive side of your character’s personality will make them more likable, build trust that they aren’t just complaining, and force you to show rather than tell the problems they are having.
Let’s compare what the same problem looks like with a negative and positive character disposition. Here’s the negative disposition:
Example
Mara had a cake to make, but her kitchen was practically too small to move around in, much less bake something. She squeezed in and looked over her tiny mixing bowls. How was she supposed to fit all the cake batter in those? She’d have to mix the dry parts in two separate containers, and the wet parts in two separate containers, then somehow mix all those parts together without spilling everywhere. If only Mara had some decent kitchenware.
Now here’s the same passage, but the protagonist has a positive outlook:
Example
Naya loved baking cakes. The kitchen of her studio apartment didn’t have much space for baking, so she moved the microwave, toaster, and dish rack onto her bed to make room. She arranged the ingredients and pulled out the four bowls she owned. None of her bowls were big enough to hold all the cake batter, but she could mix the dry ingredients in two, and the wet ingredients in two, and then carefully move wet to dry, then dry to wet, until it was all mixed together. Naya baked happily away, dreaming of the day she’d have an expansive kitchen and a set of new kitchenware.
In the first example, Mara appears to see everything as a terrible chore. Many readers will want her to stop complaining and just go buy a cake at the store. In the second example, we know that Naya is motivated by love and enthusiasm. We see she’s working hard to get around the constraints of her meager kitchen. If you could choose Mara or Naya to win a free set of kitchenware, who would you choose? I would choose Naya.
Because you will always see the problems you put in your story as genuine, it can be difficult to break away and look at the story as outsiders could see it. Beta readers can help you identify when your problems – or your protagonist – feel petty.
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Great article, Chris!
I always thought that you might argue Jensen (from Deus Ex) could complain about not being asked, but a lot of things happen to people who didn’t ask for them and there’s worse than ‘getting cool stuff implanted in your body.’ In another society (one with less technology), he would have had to live with serious disabilities.
I often wonder why authors have their characters complain about a clear advantage. If a specific skill comes with a huge cost, I can see a character complain about that (as with that solar-powered speed), but making an advantage the thing people should feel sympathetic about is weird. Advantages will usually grant you priviledges of a kind in life, so using them as a ‘poor me’ thing doesn’t work.
Personally, I’ve wondered why none of the teachers Harry had before he went to Hogwarts (while he was still in the muggle world) ever contacted social services about a boy who wore cheap hand-me-downs (while his cousin he lived with had new clothes), was too skinny and short for his age, and had to endure his cousin’s bullying even in school. That should have been a red flag long before the Hogwarts letter.
Disadvantages are something I especially like to use to balance out characters. But, of course, disadvantages and losses also are good way to make the reader feel for the protagonist.
I could see the more negative outlook (your Mara example) in a character for whom becoming more optimistic is part of their story arc. But I agree that your positive character (Naya) is more sympathetic to the reader.
> I often wonder why authors have their characters complain about a clear advantage.
Because Jesus. He was given special powers but burdened with a destiny that would require a terrible sacrifice.
Too many people think they are clever when they make a messianic character, but then go only half the way and keep some of the surface elements but ignore the context that makes them meaningful. Which I think is actually the definition of any cliche.
If this is the true reason, then they are mistaken about theology. Also in Gospels sacrifice was voluntary, which is important.
Fantastic article! Good examples and a useful topic. Thanks again, Chris (and all you Mythcreants)!
To be honest, I don’t see how Naya is more sympathetic than Mara, or how Mara is that unlikeable. She has valid complains – baking without the right tools is a pain. In my opinion, what she needs is a little bit of hope to make her likeable, like a “but someday, once I win X prize, I’ll get the kitchen I always wanted” after all the complaining, which would sum up nicely a problem, a goal, and how she’ll attempt to get it.
Complaining just because, or complaining without some positivity is annoying, yes, on that I do agree with the post. However, I wouldn’t recommend doing the complete oposite. Characters who are too positive can get annoying fast too, if one doesn’t know how to write them.
I have personally written stories about Mara-like characters, and some people definitely sympathized with them, just like some people sympathize with Bella. But a lot of people just don’t give them the benefit of the doubt, and those people will find them and the narration to be unpleasant. You can certainly find your own balance, but if you like Mara’s narration, it’s something to watch out for.
Regarding the example of Bella, how would you judge her litany of complaints about Forks if her in-character conclusion about them was that she didn’t like the kind of (negative, critical) person she was becomingwhile living there? Would that be more sympathetic or less?
If she had self awareness that those little things weren’t the real problem, the real problem was that she missed her home and mother, then I think it would be an improvement – but it wouldn’t entirely take care of a problem. Unfortunately, narrating a really unhappy character can be difficult. Harry Potter in book five can a really relatable character to those who have suffered from depression or had similar experiences, but a lot of people think he’s too angsty. In Bella case, I would put more focus on the things she loves and misses – so readers understand she’s grieving and see that she doesn’t hate everything, and then I would show her making an effort to adapt to her new home even if she’s struggling. She could try to find joy in her favorite childhood spots or look up old friends.
Hmm, this is interesting, what about mistreatment between equal individuals. For example, my protagonist did a great wrong to her Sister and suffers social mistreatment in the hopes of making amends.
Her problem is lack of familial unity and the story centers on her efforts to get it back. Is that too maudlin?
If there’s just two people, I wouldn’t call that specifically “social” mistreatment. If it’s bad, it could be abuse – but is less likely to be abuse if they are equal in power. Without knowing more it’s hard to say for sure.
Regardless, it sounds like this may not be a good sympathy generator. Generally you want it to be something that isn’t the character’s fault, whereas your protagonist is being treated poorly because of something bad she did. And if your protagonist is choosing to put up with her sister mistreating her, that may not be sympathetic either. You’ll probably want another way to generate sympathy or otherwise increase your protagonist’s likability.
I kept thinking about Spiderman (as depicted in comics of the 60’s thru the early 80’s) when I read this article. In many ways he exemplifies the right way to implement the points you make.
I consider Mara more sympathetic because she’s hurting more. Also, because I’m fed up with people telling me to Be Positive! all the damn time. Why shouldn’t someone suffering have the right to be upset about their circumstances?
Furthermore, I think a lot of people don’t get the help they need because they “complain too much,” as if people in real life are supposed to be as entertaining as story characters.
For me, the problem is not Mara complaining about a problem. It’s that it’s hard to understand, at least from this slice of her story, why she would be baking in the first place, if she thinks it’s so difficult. It’s okay to be upset about something which happened in your life or about a problem you’re facing. But being upset about baking with bad equipment when there’s nobody forcing you to do so? If we knew that she is being forced to bake, if that’s her sole way of earning money, it would be understandable that she complains about having to do so without the right equipment. But she doesn’t give the impression of that kind of situation, but rather of baking for her own pleasure.
Having a character hurting and saying so is perfectly fine and can be a good drive for a story. Especially if you also show them doing something about it or, at any rate, trying to do something about it, even if it fails. Or show why they’re unable to do something about it. But hurting over having to bake for your own pleasure with bad equipment isn’t the kind of hurting most people would sympathise with. As I said, if she gave the impression that it was her lifelihood or that she was forced under threat to bake, it would be different – having to do it with bad equipment, even though it’s important for her survival. The latter especially could be a great hook for a story.
Special powers could mean huge personal loss if the character is an athlete, even at club level.
I wouldn’t have the character gripe about it, but they would definitely feel huge changes in their social life, it would be a lot like a career ending injury; They would have fewer opportunities to spend time with their old team mates. Their self esteem may suffer, even if their self worth isn’t based on the approval of others, participating in any kind of sport just feels good, and a social person who can’t get into solo outdoor pursuits may loose that completely.
You could probably fill quite a few pages with awkward efforts to make new friends outside of their old social circle.
Another thing that NOBODY EVER THINKS ABOUT; if a newly superpowered character kills people for a living, and they are suddenly many times more deadly than they were before, this is going to have an enormous impact on their mental health.
Yeah, characters complaining about how they want to be normal rather than having these cool special powers can be annoying (and I say this as an old X-men fan ;-) ). I’m trying to flip that around a bit though.
I’m working on this novel set in a modern world where demons are a constant threat to people and exorcists keep killing them off (it’s out in the open; no masquerade). Some people are born with magic powers, and they are required by law to become exorcists (because they are all needed to keep the demon threat at bay). Being an exorcist can often be really scary and disturbing, and it’s seriously dangerous. Plus, in order to take down stronger demons, you normally have to hurt yourself as part of the needed ritual, so after a number of years in exorcism, people can end up pretty maimed and disabled. (Although if you’ve done hard enough shit for a sufficient number of years, you have a right to retire to research and teaching.)
The perks that come with strong magic powers are a) high salary (although, like, lawyer-high or doctor-high, rather than Bill Gates-high), b) admiration (although often mixed with pity). Magic isn’t useful for anything else than battling demons though, so the perks are still pretty limited.
Exorcists talk about how they’re heroes, and how they wouldn’t want to be normal anyway – and also, occasionally,about how neat it is to earn a lot of money. But it’s at least partly a coping mechanism, since the downsides are pretty serious and they don’t have a choice.
>Being poor would make for a great problem, except one thing: there are too many ways to solve it. Any type of resource or advantage the protagonist receives during the story can be converted into money. This is a big issue in Name of the Wind, where protagonist Kvothe has not only magic powers he can use to make money but also a wealthy friend of the family that he conveniently forgets about. If you ever want your protagonist to become famous, meet wealthy people, or gain special abilities, you’ll have to deal with all the ways your character could use that to increase their wealth.
I take great issue with this, for several reasons:
* Who is that “wealthy friend of the family” you mention? If you’re talking about Abenthy, would you like to tell me how a 12-year-old child begging in the streets in a world without our modern means of transportation and communication is supposed to go about getting in contact with him, since he left the troupe several months and several hundred miles before the Chandrian came? Are you talking about Lord Grayfallow, the troupe’s patron? Because those have the same problems of inaccessibility. He didn’t “conveniently forget” about them — he’s not in any position to ask them for help. And even if he were, what on earth make you think they’d be able to provide any?
* Kvothe is still learning those “magic skills” of his in The Name of the Wind. It takes time to convert skills into money, and the book only really covers about the first coupe years of his training. As we see in The Wise Man’s Fear, he does, in fact, start turning his skills into money (and it’s implied that he gets over the money obstacle completely by the time he goes into hiding as Kote).
* Many of Kvothe’s early attempts to do just this are thwarted by various problems which come up and drain his resources. This is a thing that *constantly* happens to real poor people, especially the working poor — it is an incredibly precarious position. You don’t need to be far in debt for poverty to screw you — all it takes is a little bad luck, because you don’t have the resources built up with which to recover when you’re barely treading water. I am *extremely* irritated by your callous dismissal of this, because it’s the same sort of “oh, are you poor? You’re just not working hard enough! Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!” mentality that keeps tons of people in this very country trapped in poverty. I don’t know how it is that you can promote other social justice topics on this site and yet miss this! In The Name of The Wind, Kvothe doesn’t have the resources to avoid getting knocked back to square one again, and again, and again.