Fictional losers?

January 24, 2022 1:44 PM

I'm working on a historical novel, and my writing group has given me feedback that my protagonist is "not very smart" and "kind of a loser." There were some suggestions to switch the POV character to someone else who is more traditionally heroic/cool, but it's really important to me (and for big-picture thematic reasons), that the POV stick with this introverted, stuck-in-the-past, slightly unstable "loser" -- he does grow in confidence though the novel! -- but obv the reader has to care enough to go along with him for ~300 pages. Are there examples where this is done well?

The closest model I could come up with was Fanny Price from Mansfield Park, but I think this is the weakest of Austen's novels, so it's not super helpful for me.

Surely there are others? Where my introverts at?

posted by basalganglia to Writing & Language (48 answers total)

Yes, this is a thing. You'd find many such characters described as Anti-Heroes.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 1:47 PM on January 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

Anti-heroes is a strong and common trope for good reason.. it's interesting the group didn't mention this particular direction. I may come back to edit, I'm trying to think of the most famously unlikable antiheroes.
posted by firstdaffodils at 1:59 PM on January 24, 2022

It sounds like your writing group kind of sucks, actually. Protagonists need to be heroic or cool or smart? Since when?

A good counterexample is Joseph Roth's Radetzky March (multiple doofus narrators); or Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain (what a doofus); or Henry James's The Ambassadors (though that's not written explicitly as historical fiction, but, my goodness).
posted by praemunire at 2:03 PM on January 24, 2022 [22 favorites]

I think people who initially come off as losers are extremely common as protagonists (eg, Harry Potter) but if you're planning on them staying a loser for 300 pages you may need something a little more structural. Since you mention Fanny Price, you might want to check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt2SR3tQki8 - it has a bit of a comparison between Mary Bennett and Fanny Price that might be useful to you.
posted by inkyz at 2:08 PM on January 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

A Confederacy of Dunces seems to fit the bill.
posted by Julnyes at 2:08 PM on January 24, 2022 [16 favorites]

I never thought Holden Caulfield was very cool!
posted by Don_K at 2:09 PM on January 24, 2022 [7 favorites]

Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye would be a classic example. Pierre from War and Peace. And then there’s Notes from the Underground and No Longer Human. Sensei from Kokoro is more intelligent than what you’re describing, but he is truly one of literature’s greatest introverts.
posted by betweenthebars at 2:11 PM on January 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

Jack Crab -- Little Big Man.

Not a loser so much as somebody who's not exactly pursuing a Hero's Journey (TM). Gets me wondering how common this is with main characters in satires and/or picaresque tales.
posted by philip-random at 2:16 PM on January 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

I agree with praemunire. Since when do protagonists need to be heroic or cool or smart-- or even, God help us, sympathetic? This kind of comment / criticism tends to come from people grasping for something to say, in my experience.

Examples of non-heroic, non-cool, non-smart, non-sympathetic protagonists abound in fiction, as has already been related here by others.

Circling back to the writer's group-- way back when I was much younger, I participated in several writing groups to give and receive feedback. I found that the feedback I received was less than helpful upward of 50% of the time. I learned to take what I needed and leave the rest. For me, anyway, writing is not about pleasing others. It's about fulfilling a vision that I have, good, bad, or indifferent. Writing that does not fulfill my vision is not worth doing. So I react to the majority of feedback with a smile, a thank you, and go on my merry way.

Just my .02, pre-tax.
posted by charris5005 at 2:20 PM on January 24, 2022 [10 favorites]

the tv show "futureman" on Hulu immediately comes to mind.
posted by noloveforned at 2:22 PM on January 24, 2022 [4 favorites]

I don't know if "anti-hero" is quite the right term, as the connotation there tends to be more that we know the person is morally bad but we (the audience) think they're cool or smart anyway.

For books narrated by someone who is uncool or a bit of a "loser" at the beginning, some ideas:

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
The Secret History
One Last Stop
posted by lunasol at 2:26 PM on January 24, 2022 [6 favorites]

I've been told that Quentin Coldwater of The Magicians is like this, and clearly it's a very successful series, although I also know some readers were put off and frustrated by Quentin as a protagonist. (I have not read the book.)
posted by phoenixy at 2:28 PM on January 24, 2022 [7 favorites]

I also know some readers were put off and frustrated by Quentin as a protagonist

I would put up Quentin as an example of a protagonist who is annoying for no good artistic reason, or at least not one good enough to compensate for the generally unpleasant experience of being in his head. But those books did sell well!
posted by praemunire at 2:32 PM on January 24, 2022 [3 favorites]

Protagonists and narrators don't have to be cool or smart. I wonder if your writing group is missing something, though? Like, did they not think you intended your protagonist to not be super smart?
posted by bluedaisy at 2:33 PM on January 24, 2022

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry comes to mind
posted by warriorqueen at 2:34 PM on January 24, 2022

A Confederacy of Dunces, definitely. And it won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, so some people liked it.
posted by pH Indicating Socks at 2:39 PM on January 24, 2022 [3 favorites]

“Loser” characters are all through children’s and YA literature. My question to you is, does your writing group not like that your character is a “loser” and an introvert or does your writing group find your character unlikeable and unengaging? Why should I want to read about your protagonist? What’s interesting about them/their story, and is that on the page?
posted by epj at 2:42 PM on January 24, 2022 [5 favorites]

I'm a reader who hates being in the mind of introverted losers and have put down or never started many of the books upthread because of the fundamental unpleasantness of being inside a character's mind. (Catcher in the Rye and Confederacy of Dunces being two of the more acclaimed ones I couldn't stand, I've avoided the Magician's despite loving the show for the same reason.) A novel featuring an introverted main character I could stand is Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, whose main character is an introverted person with severe panic attack level anxiety based on weirdly corporate branding. I think the difference between these forms is essentially an action driven plot and a character who takes action rather than resists action. So if you're trying to appeal to people like me the environment needs to ppush the plot forward even if the character doesn't and if you're not trying to appeal to people like me, well not every book is for everyone.
posted by edbles at 2:43 PM on January 24, 2022 [6 favorites]

Don Quixote
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:46 PM on January 24, 2022

Best answer: CC Baxter from The Apartment. In the beginning, he's a lonely, pencil-pushing pushover. Over the course of the movie, he learns to care deeply for someone, becomes disenchanted with the powers-that-be that he'd previously idolized, and gains the confidence to make a small but important and heroic stand.

He's delightful. And Jack Lemmon makes him so fun to watch -- he juggles executive schedules for his housekey, sleeps on a park bench, nearly trysts with a jockey's wife on Christmas Eve, invents the best possible way to strain pasta, and becomes someone who lives an honorable, worthy life.

Being cool or heroic isn't what makes a great character. Great characters are great because they're interesting. They react. They do things. They make people wonder what they'll do next, and how that lands in a meaningful and emotionally compelling way.
posted by mochapickle at 2:48 PM on January 24, 2022 [24 favorites]

Of Mice and Men
posted by flimflam at 2:56 PM on January 24, 2022

Iirc the protagonist of Shades of Grey (by Jasper Fforde, not 50 Shades) isn't especially introverted (how does introvert=loser?), but is not especially smart or cool or good or ...

The main character in Villette might fit the bill, though I read it when I was young and might have missed a lot of nuances.
posted by trig at 2:56 PM on January 24, 2022

My partner suggests Terry Pratchett's Rincewind, who is a fantastic loser.
posted by sibilatorix at 2:57 PM on January 24, 2022 [10 favorites]

Ann Leckie does this in her book Provenance to good effect -- I think the key is that the reader can see that the main character is being taken for a bit of a ride at the beginning but it's because the character is sincere and naive.
posted by heatherlogan at 3:01 PM on January 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

Quoyle from The Shipping News by Annie Proulx is a great example of this. He is terribly shy and unsure of himself but you will find yourself rooting for him because of his inherent goodness. It’s a really polarizing book because it’s written in a very particular style, but the Pulitzer Prize committee liked it enough for it to win in 1996(?).
posted by corey flood at 3:07 PM on January 24, 2022 [6 favorites]

Your writing group is trying to help you by digging into their guesses about *why* they didn't like it, but their proposed fixes ("I would like it better if this protagonist were smarter") aren't the only way to fix it. If you can figure out what sections of the story lost (or angered or bored) them, I'd focus in there and see what you can do to make the story more engaging either in or around those parts, so it carries them through.
posted by Lady Li at 3:17 PM on January 24, 2022 [10 favorites]

King Dork by Frank Portman.
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:19 PM on January 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

Classical Anti Hero
posted by InfidelZombie at 3:32 PM on January 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

John Bierce's Mage Errant fantasy series follows a protagonist, Hugh of Emblin, who is rather uncool. He is shy, disliked and traumatized, and when he finally does make friends they have to save him in fight after fight!
posted by lloquat at 3:34 PM on January 24, 2022

How Not to Die Alone was this for me. You spend much of the book wondering just what on earth is wrong with the main character, who manages to make every wrong choice every step of the way.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 3:36 PM on January 24, 2022

Writing this kind of character is really difficult, because (quite reasonably) a lot of people don't want to spend time with sad sacks, even if they're fictional. Sometimes authors get around this by making the story compelling in some other way: Martha Wells' Murderbot is a character who is introverted, unstable, and stuck in the past--but those stories are amazing because the scenario (ex-killer robot tries to figure out what to do with its life) and the voice of the character are great.

Rachel Hartman's Tess of the Road has a rare female "unlikeable" character; I nearly quit on that book, honestly, but the picaresque format kept me engaged long enough to get to enough character development so that I was hooked--and the payoff was worth it. I cannot stress enough how much my opinion of that book relies on Hartman having stuck the landing: a milquetoast ending would have made me chuck that book at the wall.

It can help to acknowledge that the character is kind of a pill: side characters in Sarah Rees Brennan's In Other Lands are constantly talking about how annoying the protagonist Eliot is, and in fact, a lot of the plot relies on that aspect of his character, but we get it from his (entertaining, acerbic) pov, so it puts the reader on his side (as well as adding to the poignancy of the story).
posted by radiogreentea at 3:37 PM on January 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

In Richard Adams' Maia - sort of a prequel to Shardik - the main character, Maia, is relatively likeable and all, but you come to learn that she's kind of ... unaware of things, and that while she's in the middle of political intrigue, her influence on the plot is often either secondary or accidental, while her smarter friend is actually a plotter, schemer and driver of events.
posted by Occula at 3:44 PM on January 24, 2022

The first character I thought of when you said "stuck-in-the-past, slightly unstable 'loser'" is the protagonist in Updike's "Rabbit" series (Rabbit, Run being the first of four, two of which won the Pulitzer).
posted by thebots at 3:55 PM on January 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

Lee Fiora in Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. Looks like a YA novel but it's not really, more of a bildungsroman. She's the protagonist, she is frustrating as hell - timid, introverted, majorly codependent with her best friend, far too concerned with what others think of her, superficial, materialistic, almost completely incapable of acting on her desires (like, she actively takes away her own agency constantly as if she's helpless to it), definitely unstable in many senses. But she's smart in her own way, very observant, and strangely compelling - she's written in a way that makes you want to root for her to change herself and change her life. And ultimately she does, but not in a way anyone expected in the end.

I do agree with others above that this is sort of weird feedback from your writing group though...
posted by nayantara at 4:09 PM on January 24, 2022

Arthur Dent from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - another hapless, untalented protagonist from British SF/F satire.

I wasn't sure about this, but since radiogreentree brought up Murderbot... Martha Wells's Tremaine Valiarde from the Fall of Ile-Rien books sort of fits. She's reasonably clever and determined, but also depressed and experiencing some imposter syndrome because all her friends and acquaintances are exceptional.
posted by sibilatorix at 4:11 PM on January 24, 2022

Response by poster: Thank you all! So many great reading suggestions here.

CC Baxter from The Apartment is exactly what I'm going for. Right down to the outline of "lonely depressed guy learns to connect with someone, realizes he/they are being manipulated by more powerful people, and tries to stand up for what's right." The scope I'm dealing with is way bigger than a domestic drama, which is maybe why people want A Hero (TM) to swoop in and save the day. (Maybe also a reflection of this point in this never-ending awful pandemic.)

For now I've moved a bunch of the interiority out of Chapter 1 and will get cracking at figuring out how these other writers are able to create compelling stories out of characters that are too much in their own head.
posted by basalganglia at 4:19 PM on January 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

get cracking at figuring out how these other writers are able to create compelling stories out of characters that are too much in their own head.

You might find Donald Mass's The Emotional Craft of Fiction useful for this. He spends a lot of time on the ways you can make a character's inner journey interesting, even if they don't fit any of the hero archetypes.
posted by rpfields at 4:27 PM on January 24, 2022 [3 favorites]

The lead character in Sherwood Smith's Crown Duel duology is a naive, idealistic country girl who fails catastrophically at revolution, because she is politically ignorant to a staggering extent. She and her eventual love interest end up succeeding, but it's a long road from where she starts, with a lot of embarrassment and failure along the way.

... somewhat like Catherine in Northhanger Abbey, as well.
posted by suelac at 4:46 PM on January 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

There is Don Quixote de la Mancha... It is 400 years old, and we read it in translation, but it is still laugh-out-loud funny.
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 4:55 PM on January 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

1) The Paul Giamatti character in the movie Sideways is depressed, thin-skinned, and profoundly uncool, but still very sympathetic.

2) The POV protagonist of Sarah Rees Brennan's In Other Lands is nerdy, truculent, frequently obnoxious, and spends the entire book in the shadow of his two more heroic-mold best friends, but the reader still roots hard for him.
posted by The Elusive Architeuthis at 5:05 PM on January 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

Vonnegut’s work is full of loser protagonists that you can’t help root for, like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse-5 and Kilgore Trout in Breakfast of Champions. (Though Billy Pilgrim is very much not “stuck in the past,” lol.)

It helps that their foibles are very relatable and presented sympathetically, so you identify with them instead of being put off. (Contrast Ignatius J. Reilly of Confederacy of Dunces, who is extremely off-putting, but in a hilarious way.)
posted by ejs at 5:10 PM on January 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

I think Donna Noble from Doctor Who might fit here. She’s not an introvert, she’s awkward and unglamorous, but she works hard to connect with people and do what’s right, even when it’s difficult and uncomfortable.
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 5:47 PM on January 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

introverted, stuck-in-the-past, slightly unstable "loser
This brings to mind John Rebus, the main character in Ian Rankin's series. Rebus is exactly that, slightly unstable, stuck in the past he alienates those who come come to close.
posted by 15L06 at 6:01 PM on January 24, 2022

It is solidly in the fantasy genre, but "Master of the Five Magics" by Lyndon Hardy has a main character that is moderately awkward but mostly undervalued/unappreciated through the majority of the book.
posted by coppertop at 6:03 PM on January 24, 2022

Do give a look to Arthur Dent in the a Hitchhikers Guide series. Definitely a helpless, hapless, clueless, hopeless man, but also adorable in that way. He's completely unnecessary to the early plot and exists for things to be explained to him. Later in the series we find that he is accidentally a living embodiment of the cruelties of life and death in the universe, at least for one other particular being. He also finds himself in a situation not unlike the lead couple in Idiocracy who are the sharpest in a whole society simply by being not as dull. And even later, he finds his true calling and is widely respected for his specialized knowledge, because he is able to teach another society how to make sandwiches, and becomes the first Sandwich Maker. His tragedies and successes are usually from being a rather boring normal person passing through absurd tribulations and accidents.
posted by panhopticon at 8:24 PM on January 24, 2022 [4 favorites]

If you do want to make a character a bit more likeable, one classic screenwriting technique is called “save the cat”. If the character does one kind and selfless thing, even a small thing, rather early in the story, the audience will root for them more.

Think of Mad Men’s Don Draper gently pep talking Peggy out of her depression and how a few moments like that made us forgive him for the many awful things he did later.

You can calibrate how much likeability by the size / sacrifice / risk they undergo to save whatever metaphorical cat you want.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 9:31 PM on January 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

Character and/or narrative voice can go a long way to towards making an otherwise unprepossessing character interesting. While I don't have specific recommendations for you about developing voice (and if anyone else knows any, I'm interested!), I'll second the suggestion of Maass' The Emotional Craft of Fiction above
posted by telophase at 8:32 AM on January 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

compelling stories out of characters that are too much in their own head.

I submit Denis from Crome Yellow. He is so much in his own head that when he finds the diary of one of his housemates, he's shocked to learn that in fact she, too has thoughts about things. Incredible.

Crome Yellow is my #1 most recommended book. It's set in a manor house in the 20s, and our main character Denis is a summer visitor. He believes himself to be a grand poet, but doesn't produce much; he thinks everyone around him is vapid and dim, but he's pretty milquetoast himself when he opens his mouth; he's got a crush on one of the young women at the house, but makes no designs on her, and also gets upset with the other young guys in the house talk and dance with her with ease; etc. He ends up concocting a story and runs away in embarrassment. He's a little dweeb, is only superficially likeable, if that, and honestly just sucks. He reminds me a lot of my college boyfriend actually. And very specifically, he sucks because he can't get out of his own head and enjoy things in earnest.

I've re-read Crome Yellow over a dozen times, no matter how much of a loser this kid is I keep coming back to see it.

I think Denis will get you a lot of what you're looking for. And if not--the book is great, and it's short, super funny--it won't be time wasted to read it.
posted by phunniemee at 3:07 PM on January 25, 2022