On Protagonists Who Act Their Age and Readers Who Don't Like That

If there's one thing I can't stand about the literary world, it's bad reviews.

Now let me be clear. You, as a reader, are absolutely free to give a book a bad review. If you genuinely did not like a book, you are free to express that opinion in a non hateful way.

My issue is when you give a book a bad review because you don't understand literature.

Let me give you an example, which also happens to be the thing that made me want to write this post. I recently finished a book (and for the sake of the author and the reviewer, I won't say what the book was) that I absolutely loved. It was part of a series that is one of my favorites and this book lived up to the glory of its predecessors. I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

So, my first step upon completing the book was to freak out about the cliffhanger to add it to my "read" list on GoodReads. I happily added the book, gave it five stars, and was pleased to find that the average rating was about four and a half stars. Good. That book deserves it.

My mistake came when I scrolled down and started reading reviews.

The first review on the page gave the book one star. I was horrified, but curious. What could have provoked this person to give such a great book such a terrible review? I started to skim the review, but the more I read, the angrier I got.

The gist of it is that the reviewer did not like the main character. He thought she was bratty, selfish, immature, mean, and a million other things. Which is fine. You know why? She was supposed to be.

The whole point of that story was that she was self-centered and immature. That's what made the story so compelling. 

The point of the protagonist is not the be the perfect example of good character and likability. The point of the protagonist, or any character for that matter, is to feel real. If characters fall flat, the book suffers, no matter how good the story is. Real and relatable characters make all the difference in storytelling.

So yes, the reviewer is right that she was kind of bratty and very self-centered, and a little annoying sometimes with how immature she was. But here's the thing: She's eighteen. She's facing challenges that are beyond what an eighteen year old should have to deal with. 

I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a teenager who isn't a little selfish and immature.

Somewhere along the line, the notion that protagonists had to be 100% likable 100% of the time became popular, and frankly, I think it does literature a disservice. Some of the best books I've ever read have had protagonists who have made me actually yell at the protagonist for being stupid, annoying, selfish, rash, heartless, or a million other things. They have frustrated me, annoyed me, angered me, and, usually, in the end won me over. 

And that's a sign of really good writing. If this author really inspired this much anger and hatred in this reviewer, then clearly she is an excellent writer. 

Again, I don't say any of this to criticize the reviewer, but honestly, I kind of like when a character inspires that much emotion in me, even if it is annoyance. It means they're doing their job.

Avoiding the Editing Burn Out

So the past few weeks have been super crazy. I finished up my most intense semester of college yet, went out of town for a week, then immediately came home with a massive to-do list.

Let's keep in mind that most of my to-do list is fun stuff, but it is still overwhelming. 

I am currently about 2/3 of the way through what I'm hoping is my last round of edits of my completed manuscript before I start submitting (excuse me while I have a panic attack). I am about a third of the way through reading my friend's debut novel (shoutout to the lovely K.E. Ormsbee on the release of The Water and the Wild!). I have another book already on my Kindle waiting to be read. I have a list on GoodReads of so so so many books that I want to read. I have a short story that I never finished writing from like a year ago. I have two in progress manuscripts that I want to keep working on so I don't lose momentum. I also have two online college classes to do. 

And this list doesn't even include all the random day-to-day stuff that I need to do.
 My goal is to finish editing completed manuscript by the end of May so I can start querying in June.

All of this to say that, basically, I burned out. Not a total oh-my-goodness-I-can't-even-function-in-life-anymore burn out, but an editing burn out (Side note: this has totally happened to me before). I reached a point where I just didn't want to edit anymore. Some people prefer the editing phase of writing, but others, like me, prefer the actual writing (word vomit) stage. I like putting words on paper. That's the easy part. Making them sound good is much harder for me.

So, basically, when I first started editing, I lived in this state of denial for an embarrassing length of time:

(Except that my novel is a fantasy novel... hahaha puns)

I knew that I needed to edit, but I didn't want to because I was afraid of the challenge it presented. I edited on my own for a long time before I ever let anyone look at it, and even then, I only let one person see it (I have since given 2 people access to the entire thing and 1 person access to pieces of it. Hey, progress is progress, don't judge me). 

I then got really motivated to edit so that it could be the best I could make it in hopes of getting it published. I went through several drafts before finally printing it (see my post about printing the manuscript). 

Printing it brought it's own form of encouragement, but I still experienced an editing burn out. I got so tired of editing, of reading the same scenes over and over because I just can't seem to get them right, of catching weird timeline inconsistencies, and OH MY GOSH I CHANGED THAT CHARACTER'S NAME AND IT RUINED MY LIFE BECAUSE I KEEP FINDING THE OLD VERSION 6 DRAFTS LATER. 

Then I had a mini (okay fine, it was major) crisis moment and despaired in full on drama queen mode and it went a little something like this:

(Fun fact: I don't even drink coffee... This is just my natural state)

But then I took a deep breath, I put the manuscript down, and I picked up a novel and read. I revisited some of my favorite writing related blogs. I wrote a few scenes on my in progress manuscripts. I relaxed. 

Then I came back to the manuscript rejuvenated. I remembered why I wanted to edit this in the first place. I want to send it out. I hope to get it published. I want to be able to let my friends read it without wanting to crawl into a hole and die of embarrassment.

And I want the story to be the best it can be. I want to do the story and the characters justice. After all the years that my MC Jade has spent screaming in my head for me to write her story down, she deserves that much. 

So yes, editing is not my favorite part of the writing process by any means, but it feels really cool to read a scene you've read a million times only to find that it has a new kind of magic to it because of something you changed during editing. It feels like life has been injected into your writing and it's fun. 

Editing is hard and sometimes not fun at all, but when you see the evidence of your hard work, it feels really awesome. And of course, if I am lucky enough to become a published author, much more editing is in my future, so I've learned to love it and what it can accomplish.