User blog comment:Creeper50/Character Tip: Characters Do NOT Need To Be Likable./@comment-4715955-20160115021106

"Making a character who is constantly acting on what is best is not realistic."

It's also not inherently likeable, nor is a character who makes mistakes unlikable. You're missing the point.

Flawed characters can be perfectly likable. The reason you need to make your characters likable is so the audience actually sympathizes with them, and actually wants to spend time with them. If your character is a douche, nobody will root for them, and having to spend the entire story with them becomes a miserable drain because you just hate them more and more. Take two characters: a divorced alcoholic who's trying to be a better mother, or the self-absorbed teen machete-fodder of a Friday the 13th movie. Which one would you rather spend a hundred chapters with?

Let's take it up a notch: would you rather watch a movie about a hard-as-nails gangster who callously murders children, or the hard-as-nails gangster who kills the first gangster out of disgust? We can follow Tony Montana through Scarface because, of all the awful people in Scarface, he's the least terrible. He's still terrible, and he makes huge mistakes, but there are some things he just won't do. Unlike everyone around him, he has principles. Distorted principles, yes, but still.

It's good that you're thinking about these sorts of things, but I think you ought to read and write for a few more years before handing out advice.