: Re: Is it a good idea to make the protagonist unlikable while making the supporting characters more likable? My protagonist is a very shitty person that makes bad decisions for the wrong reasons.

@Ogunnowo420

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You want a character to be engaging, not necessarily likable. Breaking Bad doesn't have a likable or even sympathetic protagonist; it has a competent one and an engaging mystery. An unlikable character is a handicap, so everything else you write will have to carry the dead weight; but it is possible to turn that dead weight, that liability, into an asset.

The seven deadly words of a book are: "I do not care about these people."

Note, it's not "this person", but if a reader doesn't care about anyone in the story, they are likely to put it down and often correct to. Engagement/Caring doesn't mean like; but you should be answering the question "Why does the reader care?" often and strongly. Books that undersell often have this problem.

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