What makes you say "I don't want to read about this character anymore"?

I think a more fitting expression would be they have to stay true to their character. There's a difference between characterisation and true character.

Characterisation consists of personality, traits, quirks. It is how a character acts under normal circumstances. A construct. The mask we wear to fool ourselves and those we interact with into believing whatever it is we want them/ourselves to believe about us.

True character is how someone acts when the shit hits the fan. A soldier may believe himself a coward (characterisation), but when the bullets start flying somehow he gets up and leads a charge (character). Or the other way around–he may act like a gruff, battle-hardened veteran, but when the shells start falling he curls up in a ball and cries for his mother.

Great stories often put characterisation and character at odds to give us complex protagonists. Example: Walter White, a man who does horrible things and justifies them by claiming he has the good of his family at heart, while in fact the only interests he serves are his own pride and greed.

 

When they're boring or whiny. I've read things where the main character wants you to side with them, but it's so hard because all they do is whine and the only thing you can think of them is they're spoiled and you hope they don't live to the end.

 

The thing I hate reading the most is a protagonist who is unable to respond to the nature of evil he encounters. I have no problem with an antagonist beginning the story stronger, but if the protagonist is not en route to achieve a mental victory in the end, it really bothers me. Generally it means that the author doesn't intend for the hero to grow as a person, and when he wins, it will be by yelling really loud and swinging his sword really hard. Basically, the hero wins because he's too stupid to figure out why he's losing.

 

When they stop being proactive. One of the things that will bore me faster than anything is a character who doesn't "do" anything. In my opinion a protagonist shouldn't just be along for the ride.

 

Yes, actually that's my biggest beef with Memory Sorry and Thorn by Tad Williams. The protagonist Simon/Seoman just comes along for the ride and kind of bumbles his way through, and ends up the King! Perhaps the author is intentionally making a point that victories aren't always planned but I find it unsatisfying to read.

 

Characters that are helpless. I understand the author is either trying to build suspense or they think a character who is not heroic is more relatable, but sometimes they go too far in that direction and end up with a character who's so unheroic as to be useless. I can't stand it when the protagonist finally confronts the bad guy after he's spent the entire book doing one reprehensible act after another, has his gun pointed at the bad guy, then can't pull the trigger, or spares him out of some misplaced sense of nobility, and the whole time I'm sitting there screaming "Shoot!"

 

No, never heard of it. Sounds a little... I don't know. Unfocused?

 

To quote David Rossi "One man's logic is another man's crazy.". Not everyone will see the protagonist in the way the writer did. So the likeable, hero of a story can change between readers. Not everyone who reads Harry Potter sees Harry Potter the same way. Some prefer Ron, Hermione or Hagrid. Some people even root for the villain. I read a short story in an anthology called "Under My Hat: Tales From The Cauldron", in the story by Ellen Klages called "The Education of a Witch", in the story a little girl sees Sleeping Beauty for the first time and she falls in love with Maleficent. She cries when Maleficent is killed and, at the toy store she buys a Maleficent puppet and in the end she apparently develops small powers with which she makes another pre-schooler's nose bleed and the story ends with her ready to unleash her powers on her new baby brother.

So don't think that everyone will accept your story or characters the way you saw them. Like in real life not everyone will like your characters.

 

Interestingly, the author of the Serial Killer novels was pretty disturbed by his character, too. That may not be a good reason to finish the series, but it interesting that he persisted despite that.

Two characters come to mind, though. Walker Boh in the Scions of Shannara and Richard in the Sword of Truth novels. I finished the SoT novels out of sheer stubbornness, but I came to despise Richard Rahl. The author made this super-powerful character, then delighted in repeatedly rendering him powerless. That wouldn't be so bad, except all his power was completely useless. He couldn't even use his greatest power most of the time. The problem with Walker Boh wasn't that he was filled with self-doubt, it was that the narration repeated his concerns over and and over and over again without making any progress. It started to feel like the author was cutting and pasting the internal monologue. Even though i didn't stop reading, I find I am completely intolerant of any character that shows similar tendencies.

 

I watched/read an interview with Raymond Fiest where he was talking about his super-character Macros the Black in the Riftwar series, and he had the same problem as Richard Rahl. Super powerful characters just wreck story as they remove obstacles, so you have to create reasons why they can't act. Raymond Fiest mentioned how this plagues superman - in every story with superman the author trying to invent some reason why superman can't just fly in and solve everything ridiculously easily. It's also the reason why the king is often weak, mad, evil or absent and society divided / fractured in so many fantasy stories - if the king is strong and/or society united then they would bring their might to bear on problems and solve them quickly, and what then is left for the protagonist to do? Its made me very wary about creating super characters even though they press some emotional buttons.

 

Yeah, this is important. The Hulk is insanely powerful, but he hardly has the power/skill set to solve every problem.

In my current WIP the heroine is a nearly unbeatable warrior who can kill even monsters that are basically King Kong with armor plating and 'angels' with just her sword... but when the male MC's best friend loses his arm and his dreams of becoming a noteworthy warrior because of her flakiness, all she can do is stand there watching him cry and feel bad.

 

Interestingly, I stopped reading those books for a completely different reason. I came to despise Richard because he got so damn preachy. Yes, ok, we get it, COMMUNISM IS BAD. I just wanted to grab Terry Goodkind by the collar and shake him around while screaming "Stop shoving your personal beliefs into the character's mouth and get back to telling a frelling fantasy adventure story! That's what I bought the books for!" Of course he couldn't manage to do that so I never finished the series. My husband, who also finished it out of sheer stubbornness, told me the last few books were just awful. Of course, Goodkind later said that as far as he was concerned he wasn't writing fantasy, he was writing IMPORTANT LITERATURE. I wish I'd never given the man any of my money.

 

Yeah good point, makes me think of Watchmen when Rorschach says to Dr Manhattan 'you could have stopped this' and Dr says 'I can change almost anything, I can't change human nature'

 

Haha yes, he could have tried just a bit harder! Like 'OK everyone I've just destroyed all your nukes, now be nice or I'll make you go splat'. If only a more active person had got stuck in that molecular destructor thingy and turned blue - perhaps Dr Phil or Oprah??

Sorry everyone this has got way off topic. I have two more character types that turn me off.

I don't like reading when a character gets dragged through the mud too much, it wears you down after a while. So Theon becoming Reek in GOT, after a few torture scenes I just wanted to fast forward his parts. OK I get it some people suffer dis-proportionally in conflicts and in paying for their decisions, but after a while its too much. Another one is the character who suffers nobly through trial after trial and bad guys keep picking on them - eg Bates in Downton Abbey, my wife and I enjoyed the show but we got sick of him very quickly.