I love a flawed character. Give me the insecure, the arrogant, the walking disasters who make terrible choices. I’d take a well-written train wreck over a bland, perfect protagonist any day.
We don’t read books to follow perfect people making perfect choices but there’s a difference between “complex and human” and “so irritating I'm begging for a plot twist that removes them from the story entirely.”
Characters don’t need to be perfect. They don’t even need to be likeable. But they do need to be readable. Here are some ideas to prevent your characters getting annoying.
Humanise your most annoying characters
A character who always follows the protagonist around craving attention and validation might be annoying unless we know why they’re doing that.
Maybe they feel abandoned by everyone and they’re over-compensating. Maybe they’ve been ostracised so long that they latch onto whatever scraps of attention they can get.
A “tragic” backstory doesn’t magically make an annoying character less annoying, but giving their annoyingness some context can help. to humanise them.
Don’t reduce them to their quirks
If a character amounts to something like “the fashion-obsessed one” or “the avocado hater” (me) then chances are they could use some depth (unless they play a very very minor role).
Think about what’s underneath the quirk. The fashion-obsessed socialite? Maybe she uses clothing as armor, meticulously curating her image because she grew up feeling invisible. The guy who can’t shut up about cryptocurrency? Maybe he’s desperately trying to prove his intelligence because he bombed out of university.
We should be able to understand more about the character than just their main quirks. If you need a hand fleshing out your characters and making them feel like real people, check out the character workbook to develop distinct, consistent characters with 100+ pages of interactive work.
Avoid constant negativity (unless that’s the point)
Unless you’re deliberately writing a whiny character, balance the whining with proactivity and positive moments if you want to avoid your character becoming grating.
Even the most self-pitying character needs moments of joy, resilience, or at least something interesting going on beyond their grievances.
It’s normal for characters to have low moments. They might vent to their friends or feel hopeless and start to despair. Normal. But consider balancing these moments with moments of hope or enjoyment, or it could get a bit tough to read. Depends what kind of story you’re trying to tell!
If your character must be negative, perhaps let them be funny about it. A well-placed, self-aware complaint can make a character endearing rather than exhausting. Think Marvin the Paranoid Android levels of deadpan wit.
“Show don’t tell” when it comes to whining
I’ve noticed a lot of readers have an extremely low tolerance for very whiny characters.
If your character is always whining about how her friend is unreliable, show us how that impacts her. Show us how she misses an important appointment because she was stood up by her friend. Show us what that means for her life.
Instead of dumping their tragic past in one big exposition-heavy monologue, let it seep through in their actions. Maybe they over-apologise. Maybe they hoard small tokens of affection like they’re priceless artefacts. Maybe they rehearse conversations in the mirror, terrified of saying the wrong thing.
Allow them to change
Starting your character off as annoying isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it can be a great setup for a satisfying character arc. Readers will forgive a lot if they can see a character trying.
What’s frustrating is a character who remains stagnant, making the same mistakes over and over without ever learning from them.
Think about how your character’s behaviour evolves over time. Maybe they start off as a self-absorbed diva but after eating a bunch of sh*t they develop some humility.
Mine it for comedy
Annoying characters can be pretty funny. Generally you might want to avoid giving them too much “screen time” (page space?) though, but it’s your call! See what your beta readers say.
The key is knowing when to dial it up and when to rein it in. A character who steals every scene with their grating behaviour can quickly wear thin, so consider using them in short, punchy doses. If their antics start to feel like too much, trust that your readers will pick up on it.
Test your annoying character’s presence in different scenes. If you remove them from a scene, does the story lose something, or does it suddenly breathe easier?Sometimes annoying characters work better in moderation, like MSG.
