What is the hardest character to write in fiction?

I've been thinking about this based on complaints I've seen about certain types of heroes in the different threads. Especially the Idiot Hero types.

I want to hear what the rest of you think on which characters are the most difficult to write. I myself think that the hero is the hardest character.

They get the most attention, they can't be too weak or dumb, but they can't be too strong or powerful either. To say nothing of how if their character is of a type that doesn't appeal to the audience, they'll be declared boring out of hand.

Then, there are the types who like the villains on general principle. Making an appealing hero can be really difficult I think.

Children.

Any character whose desires are not known to us, be it because they haven't shown any or be it because it changes just that often, and who has no apparent goals. For bonus points, anyone whose style of being does not align with yours as the writer, such as a person who is a part of some minority that you cannot emotionally relate to or a person on a different stage of mental development.

Put all three together, and you have children. So that's the answer.

edited 1st Aug '17 2:24:18 PM by Kazeto

As a social pariah all I have to go off of is other fiction but I have no idea whether I'm doing well are not and odds are I'm not therefore my answer is a character who I don't have a general concept for.

Question is this from a narrative stand point because I've a different answer for that one.From a narrative stand point it would have to be a character that classifies as Small Role, Big Impact

I will said audience alienating charater, I mean is one think to write a assassin because everyone does it, but to write let said a slaver in any way that is not a caricature? that is hard, hell even George martin fell for that one.

If anything, I will said Class V anti hero, the one like Snape and Roshchach because you want to mantain the greyness of the chararter which is a dificult thing to do.

Audience alienating characters is easy I just magnify the worst traits of myself and people I observe in different characters where I see fit(like a flaw that matches them).And with children I think the key is give them some sort of Blue-and-Orange Morality combined with Insane Troll Logic.

For me personally I would have a hard time writing a sexually permiscuous character. I find sex in stories to be really uncomfortable so I wouldn't even know where to start!

I think I'd also have a hard time writing a surgeon since I don't know that much about surgery and I really don't want to know more... it creeps me out.

Sex never even enters the my stories and I have a madman throw the former queen's decapitated head out the window while setting off fireworks.

I think with any given writer, there's going to be character archetypes that are hard for them and others that come easy. It's not a question of "what character is objectively hardest to write," it's more about "what character is hardest for you to write?" And a writer can only figure that out through self-discovery. You ultimately get the thought process when you swap "character" out for other things — "genre," "tone," "setting"... Some people excel at gritty dramas set in our world. Some people excel at high-minded sci-fi epics. There are certain writers who avoid sex not because they're prudish, but because they just don't have that skillset. And other writers who avoid violence. Or writers who only write sex and violence. It's all a matter of who's comfortable with what.

Of course, truly great writing can happen when the writer challenges themselves to go outside of that comfort zone.

edited 1st Aug '17 9:33:02 PM by AwSamWeston

Personally, writing leader characters team leaders and rulers are something i fear i suck suck at it.

Characters that belong to a different species that may feel superior to humans. The annoying Can't Argue with Elves trope happens because it's very easy to write them that way, I believe.

Boring characters.

Or rather, characters who initially seem boring. One always needs to find an "in" when writing a character, and if there isn't a strong enough point of interest at the outset, finding that way inside becomes much harder. Similarly, a lack of much interior life just doesn't lend itself to a whole lot of rich engagement, so characters with very simple motivations and perspectives that are not in themselves strange or overpowering aren't much fun either.

Children, on the other hand, have always made perfect sense to me, because they are mercurial and contradictory without too many layers of justification and self-deceit. Which can make them charming or irritating or even frightening, but never boring. Even saintly children find the world novel enough that their reactions are worth inspecting.

As a child I self-deceived myself into believing I had voices in my head to get two of my classmate in trouble because they kept bothering me

That's... not what I'm talking about, and a bit of a non sequitur.

I suck at kids too to the point I can't even make them sound like children. it's one of the major criticisms I have when people decided my dialouge. they just didn't sound like children. Now the main characters are teens but I can't make sound like teens either. they just sound too adult personally. and as per usual, the dialogue is stilled as all heck. at least it flows better this time.

@ewolf2015

I kind of cheated here and though my story involves children, most of them have gone through some or the other trauma to make them much more adult than the typical child. It's an interesting contrast when they meet regular kids. Things do get squicky too.

Back to the topic at hand; writing a sympathetic pedophile, it's almost never done in fiction. A film called "The Woodsman" starring Kevin Bacon is the closet I can think off. The moment you have your character say he's attracted to children, the reader would be like, "Oh! He's the bad guy!"

My current story features such a character as a background and exists as part of a side plot. He's kinda sad & pathetic, trying to find treatment while a former victim of his wants to hunt him down for revenge.

I would also like to shout out "SWISS ARMY MAN" for making an obsessive stalker seem like a fun guy

edited 3rd Aug '17 5:38:35 AM by SmokingBun

Children.

No one can remember their childhood perfectly, and children then to act different around adults than they do other children.

The hardest characters for me to write are mundane humans who live in a mundane world. Everything in my heart screams that something important is missing, and it won't stop unless I start introducing supernatural elements.

That is me, Real Life is either too boring or too grim and depressing. Writing a real life genocidal is hard, for example.

For me, I'd say creating genuinely likeable, yet incredibly flawed characters. My characters really have a knack for being selfish, often immoral pricks. Even the supposed heroic ones are more driven by their own personal justifications and internal motivations than actually helping someone a lot of the times, and side characters tend to be cynical, overly critical and again, more focused on benefiting themselves and their lives. It's fine some of the time, I guess, but I think I rely too much on assholes to drive my stories.

I suppose I like writing very flawed characters, even those near past the moral event horizon, but I do believe that to have a reader invest and stick with a protagonist or whoever, there does need to be an element of that character they like or find enjoyable. I get not all characters have to be likeable, but the main cast probably should be. If they don't like the character, they're not going to relate, to sympathise, to care. I try to find the balance by adding some good qualities to the characters (well, most of them), but I worry that the bad qualities can maybe overshadow those. It's tough to get that balance without one dominating the other, but I'm working on it.

Magnificent Bastards - It's hard not to make them seem like Mary Sues, but its also hard not to make them seem too under qualified.

Probably, the Cloudcuckoolander. Characters that have a way of thinking much different than mine, so it's hard to make out how they think and function. It's difficult to write these people as three-dimensional characters (and in the case of fanfiction, staying true to the canon character), instead of writing them as 'lolrandom' one-note jokes.

People who don't really think things through. Those Leeroy Jenkins type of people who charges into any situation without any forethought and something along those lines. That includes kids.

The Chessmaster, or characters who in general can be manipulative, or are able to think five or more steps ahead.

While I have a few characters that I want to have a Chessmaster type personality, the main issue is most of my main characters are in high school so I struggle coming up with a believable explanation for how a fifteen-year old knows how to manipulate people or can realistically predict what their enemy is going to do and how they can counter it.

Also how to make their plans well-thought out without making it too contrived, and without making others oblivious to it look stupid.

edited 27th May '18 11:58:58 PM by Lyciboo13