: Re: How to write a manipulative protagonist that the audience can connect with I've created a manipulative sort of protagonist, one who enjoys mind games, blackmail, systematically destroying people

We want to despise those who do manipulative things, but we also want to be them.

If your goal is to write someone manipulative that the audience can connect with then you are asking to write a person, not a character.

A Fictional Person

While a character follows a set archetype or "template" of sorts a person has believable unknowns. That is, the audience wonders about them.

A fictional person could reasonably have an uncle that passed, siblings they hate, or hobbies they do not get enough free time for... Even if none of that is shown.

Cersei Lannister from R.R. Martin's popular series is painted as wantonly callous, sadistic, and even crazed at later points in the TV adaption - fans of the books get peeved at this because she reveals much more human aspects of herself that the show barely even glances at (her true feelings about Robert are essentially a footnote in the show.)

The Cersei of the TV adaption is a character. In the book, she is a fictional person.

In brief: if you want a manipulative character whom the audience connects with, make certain it is reasonable to think "I wonder why they did that or what happened in their past... In fact what about their [blank?]"

Part of fiction writing is suspending the imagination. And interesting characters with unknown depths help with that.

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: Re: How to write a manipulative protagonist that the audience can connect with I've created a manipulative sort of protagonist, one who enjoys mind games, blackmail, systematically destroying people

More posts by @Welton431

: Is a single main character really important in a novel involving a team effort? I have had several people ask me who is the main character of my thriller novel. But, the novel involves multiple

: Documenting the no-args call of a command line program I am writing the built-in help for a command line program. The exact name is irrelevant, so let's use foo as a placeholder. This utility

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: Can success create its own crisis? I am writing a story with a three crisis structure. The first is an external crisis that has the hero rushing to the rescue of the heroine. Then their relationship

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