Women characters are still too often judged by one question: Is she likeable? That question can do a lot of damage on the page. Anger gets softened. Ambition needs an explanation. Bad decisions need a sympathetic reason behind them. A woman can be selfish, difficult, ruthless, jealous, furious, or want something she probably shouldn't, but writers often start sanding those edges down because they're afraid the reader won't like her. But liking a character and wanting to keep reading about her are two very different things. Stop Making Her Likeable is a 90-minute workshop about what actually keeps a reader invested in a complicated woman. We'll look at why readers can become completely absorbed by characters they don't approve of, what makes difficult behaviour fascinating rather than simply frustrating, and how motivation, contradiction, desire, and agency affect the way a reader responds to her. We'll also look at our own pages. Where are we explaining a woman because we're afraid she'll be judged? Where are we making her apologize for wanting something? Where have we given her a tragic reason for behaviour that we might simply allow from a male character? The goal isn't to teach writers how to create an “unlikeable female character.” It's to stop treating likeability as the price a woman has to pay to be worth reading about.
Understand the difference between being likeable and being worth reading about. Students will look at why a reader can dislike a woman character and still be completely invested in what she does next. Spot where they may be making a woman character easier to approve of. Students will look for places where anger, ambition, selfishness, desire, or bad decisions are being softened, justified, or explained away. Figure out what actually keeps a reader with a difficult character. We’ll look at motivation, contradiction, desire, agency, and emotional truth, and how those things change the way a reader responds. Question the standards being applied to women on the page.
Students will examine whether they are asking a female character to apologize, justify herself, or earn sympathy in ways they might not require from a male character. Rewrite one moment from their own work. Students will choose a place where they have made a woman character safer, softer, or more acceptable and revise it without sanding off what makes her interesting.
ABout Anne Marie
Lacey L. Bakker is fascinated by women who are difficult to explain away. The woman who makes the bad decision. The woman who wants too much. The woman who is angry, ambitious, selfish, brilliant, messy, or simply done behaving the way everyone expects her to. She is especially interested in why readers will stay invested in a woman they don’t necessarily approve of, and what makes that character feel real instead of merely “unlikeable.”
That question sits at the centre of much of her work as a Manuscript Analyst, Positioning Strategist, and writing instructor. Her background in reader psychology, consumer neuroscience, and neuromarketing shapes the way she looks at character, attention, expectation, and the gap between what a writer intends and what a reader actually experiences.
Lacey is the founder of Pandamonium Publishing House and has worked with writers since 2015, helping bring more than 150 books to print. Her writing has appeared in Chicken Soup for the Soul, Woman’s World, and Best Health. She is also completely obsessed with villain origin stories and always wants to know what happened before someone became the person everyone else decided was too much.