I was recently reading two fantasy books at the same time (I often read more than one book at a time), and I found that I really liked one of them and didn't care for the other. Both were well-written IMHO with interesting plots. The difference was that I was sympathetic to the protagonist of the book I enjoyed and rooted for her throughout, while I couldn't care less about the fate of the protagonist in the book I disliked.
There were two traits that caused me to fail to connect with the main character in the second book:
- She was not a good person - every character has flaws, but I'm more likely to care about a character if they are a basically decent person. Being good is not a requirement for me though, since I rooted for Kaz's crew in Six of Crows and for Kelsier in Mistborn, for example.
- She nade dumb choices - whenever there were multiple possible courses of action, the protagonist seemed to always choose the one that put her or those she cared about in danger. I lost count of the number of times I asked "Why???" when I was reading the book. After a while, I was no longer invested in a happy ending for her because she was actively sabotaging her fate through bad choices for the sake of advancing the plot.
You may have the most engaging plot and beautiful writing, but if the reader doesn't care about your protagonist, then it doesn't matter. A great character can overcome a mediocre plot, but I can't think of an example where I thought highly of a book when I didn't care about the main character.
Have you read stories where you weren't sympathetic to the protagonist? What was it about them that made you not care? How did it affect your enjoyment of the story?
