Friday
Friday Flash Writing Prompt: The Unlikeable Suspects
Randall had a flash prompt
talking about the movie The Usual
Suspects and how the villain creates an entire story using what he sees on
a board in a police headquarters. It was a neat trick and a cool ending,
telling us a lot about who Keyser Söze is. And what Keyser Söze is, essentially, is a
prick.
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| Hi, I'm the prick. |
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| Don't talk to strangers...or those who might marinate you in steak sauce. |
He’s not the only one either. Hannibal Lector? He eats people. We should not like those might consume us. The Joker. Oh, we all love the Joker, but if he were real, we would move as far away from that crazy psychopath as possible. That dude Denzel Washington played in Training Day—unlikeable. But what do Hannibal Lector, Keyser Söze, the Joker, and that dude Denzel Washington played in Training Day all have in common: Oscars. People seem to love unlikable characters.
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| That dude Denzel played in Training Day. |
So, if people seem to find these characters so
interesting, why are so many student writers chastised when a character is “unlikeable?”
First off—not all characters should
be likeable. That’s just not very believable. We don’t like everyone we meet.
Hell, there’s a few guys at work I’m always trying to figure out how to rid the
planet of, and we’ve all had those at least some point in our lives. But
countless creative writing teachers warn their students about unlikeable
characters.
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| Aw, he's so evil he's kind of cute. |
I was talking with my thesis director about
this. We were unsure on one of my characters. He’s a good guy, but I’m not sure
if I want people to like him. We joked about the unwritten unlikeable rule (say
that ten times fast). We both thought it was a little archaic, or a
generational thing.
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| Who's this jackass? Oh...that's me. |
So, here’s my challenge to you—especially to
those who have been told their entire career that all of their characters had
to be likeable. I want you to intentionally write an unlikeable character. We
might find them cool, sly, fun to read, but it should be that if we actually
met this character, we’d find them repulsive.
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