Likeable Characters—Yay or Nay?

 
You’ll often see two conflicting pieces of writing advice:
(1) Don’t have an unlikeable main character.
(2) You don’t have to have a likeable main character.
 
The first is one of those ‘conventional writing wisdom’ things, right up there with “Show, don’t tell” and “Write what you know.” And I think it’s about as misunderstood as those old sayings.
 
The second is newer (relatively speaking) and often bolstered with references to unlikeable characters in TV and film properties. (House of Cards, anyone?)
 
So, which is it?
 
First of all, there are no rules to writing fiction, right? So do whatever works for you and your readers.
 
And what works for most readers? Having a compelling character. Which isn’t the same as a likeable character, but in the Venn diagram of writing there’s a lot of overlap between them.
 
There’s also some overlap between a compelling character and a “Can’t take your eyes off her” diabolical villain.
 
Either can work as long as you keep in mind that readers have a few different ways of finding their way into a story.
 
Many readers like to identify with the main character. In a well-written 1st person POV novel (or very close 3rd), this character-identification can almost feel to the reader like they are the main character, either going through the story right there with them, or actually as them, depending. Either way, the protagonist has been crafted such that the reader really cares about them and what happens to them, on an emotional level.
 
This type of connection is the sort of thing that can lead to certain stories attaining the status of “beloved.”
 
There are also many readers who are entertained by interesting villains. But most of us (thankfully) don’t closely identify with evil people, so the deep emotional connection described above may be lacking.
 
Ex: Harry Potter is a beloved story, in part because people tend to identify with (and have sympathy for) an underdog character who’s good at heart. Voldemort is a strong villain, but while HP without Harry and Co. might be a fascinating study of evil, it wouldn’t have nearly the “empathy” factor of the same story with Harry and Hermione and Ron, etc.
 
So the question becomes: Do I want people to be able to identify—on some level—with my main character? If yes, then your character should of course have imperfections and moral complexities (nothing is more boring than perfection), but still come off to some extent as sympathetic and having those human traits which most of us admire and may want to identify with.
 
And if no, then make your unlikeable character as interesting and compelling in their evilness as possible, in hopes of capturing those readers who don’t need to empathize with a protagonist.
 
(Or try doing both, via the use of the anti-hero. It’s quite a balancing act, but the morally grey character can be quite compelling while still engendering sympathy if done well.)
 
All the above is a discussion of the value of purposely unlikeable protagonists.
 
But in reality, many complaints about ‘an unlikeable main character’ are actually aimed at unintentionally unlikeable characters. We’ve all read books where the protagonists weren’t cruel or evil… but weren’t necessarily people we cheered for either. This can be caused by them coming off as annoying or spoiled or self-centered or thoughtless or any number of similar attributes. Not that characters (and real people) can’t be these things at times, but if they primarily come off as annoying, you’re going to have a hard time getting the reader to even like them, let alone empathize and/or identify with them.
 
One way to avoid this is the use of a few trusted betas who will be honest enough to tell you, “The story was well written, but I didn’t really love the main character and I didn’t really care what happened to her.” This sort of feedback can be gold to you, because if your readers can’t bond with your main character, they very likely won’t bond with your book. (The external viewpoint is invaluable here because we usually love our protagonists—after all, they came from us—so we may not immediately grasp that they may not be as appealing to other people.)

So, to re-write the above axioms:
 
(1) No matter what, you want a compelling main character.
(2) And if they’re someone with whom you wish the reader to identify, try to craft them in a way that doesn’t preclude this.
 
Because some level of emotional connection between your work and your reader is vital if you want the work to resonate long after they turn the last page.
 
Happy crafting!