Andrea Laurence | Redeeming An Unlikeable Character

I’ve written a lot of different types of characters in the 20+ books I’ve published since I started in this business. Like real people, every character is a little different. I enjoy learning about their quirks and imperfections. Their bad habits and fears. I like picking their imaginary brains to find out why they are the way they are. That’s my favorite part of writing. A lot of my characters have a bit of me in them – a healthy dose of sarcasm, a bit of a pessimistic attitude, an unnatural predilection for take-out, and the ability to make a fool of themselves without even trying.

But there’s other sides to me that I’m not as proud to share, just like there is in everyone, and I try to represent that in my characters as well. Not every bit of us is likeable. I’ve done things I’m ashamed of. I’ve been mean to people for a variety of reasons and justified it in my mind at the time. I’ve thought I was better than someone else, or smarter than someone else, and I’ve let that influence me and how I acted. I think everyone has done that in their life. People aren’t perfect and neither are characters in books.

When I was crafting the world of Rosewood, Alabama, I created a cast of characters nearly a hundred people strong. Like any town, there’s a variety of different types of people, and as it impacted my first two heroines, some of those people were mean girls. You know the ones I’m talking about – the perfect, snotty girls in high school that had everything and made your life miserable. I will admit that over the course of my adolescence, I was on both sides of this story, both the mean girl and the one whose life was made a living hell on a daily basis (although more the latter than the former). I was never a Regina George (I was never that popular), but I wasn’t a saint, either. My sarcasm had a cutting edge that took years to soften. But it did. I’ve also grown a lot since then. I matured. I realized how hurtful I could be and how I wasn’t any better than anyone else. That isn’t something that happens overnight, and not everyone has this revelation, but people grow. They change. And I wanted to show this in the series as well by letting my mean girls get that same opportunity.

To quote Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion, “I bet in high school, everybody made somebody's life hell.” That means that even the mean girls probably had someone in their lives that did the same thing to them. But in books and movies, we never get into the mean girl’s head to know why she’s the way she is. During the first two books, we got to meet two characters – Maddie and Lydia – from the point of view of their less popular high school victims. As I worked out the plot of book three, I knew that the next Chamberlain sibling to get their own story would be Maddie. But wait... Maddie isn’t the downtrodden girl from the wrong side of the tracks or the plucky sidekick everyone wants to cheer for... she’s a mean girl. Grant nearly stabbed her with a serving fork in the second book! It didn’t matter. She needed her story told and that meant telling it from the other side, getting under the skin of a character that no one really likes. Not just to justify her actions in the past, which may be unjustifiable, but to help her grow as a character like a real person.

To do that, she needed to grow on the page. Which meant she was going to be a total pill at the start of the book.

Maddie’s attitude and air of superiority are critical to the book’s conflict with the hero, Emmett. Her refined palate and sense of decorum fly in the face of other people, but having her loosen up and grow as a person is central to her story. She needed to be knocked down a few pegs, get called out for her actions, and face it head- on. I knew going into this story that it was a risk. I knew that some people would just hate her and wouldn’t bother to finish the book. It’s hard to be inside the head of a character you don’t really care for. Some people would relate Maddie to the mean girl in their own past and wouldn’t be able to get beyond it to sympathize with her. For those readers, no painful backstory or character redemption would make this story one they enjoyed. They want her tarred and feathered and will accept no less. But in the real world, that’s not what happens. And that’s not what happens here, either.

For those readers who can see and appreciate the change in Maddie, I think it was a risk worth taking. To know why Maddie protects herself so fiercely, to see her realize her mistakes and try to do the right thing... I think it’s a big payoff for me as the writer, and for the reader as well.

Everyone deserves a happy ending and I’m determined to give even the meanest of mean girls, her very own HEA.

About Andrea Laurence

Andrea Laurence is an award-winning author of contemporary and paranormal romance. She has been a lover of reading and writing stories since she learned to read at a young age. She always dreamed of seeing her work in print and is thrilled to share her special blend of sensuality and dry, sarcastic humor with the world. A dedicated West Coast girl transplanted into the Deep South, she’s working on her own “happily ever after” with her boyfriend and their collection of animals including a Siberian Husky that sheds like nobody’s business.

Andrea is represented by Jessica Alvarez at BookEnds, LLC. Her publicist is Morgan Doremus at Pitchlit.

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About STIRRING UP TROUBLE

When a prim and proper baker and a laid-back bartender have a neighborly disagreement that gets them both in trouble with the law, a sweet reconciliation is stirred up in the playful third romance in Andrea Laurence’s sexy Rosewood series.

Maddie’s life is perfectly sweet. Her bakery’s tasty treats are rising to the top of every must-have list in town, and her commute is just a block away by foot. She loves everything about her little downtown Victorian bungalow—except for her unbearably noisy neighbor, Woody’s. The bar’s obnoxious and sexy owner, Emmett, seems to live to aggravate Maddie. But he mostly thinks she could use a stiff drink to dislodge the stick up her ass. He’s just trying to run his business. Bars stay open late, they play music, they serve alcohol. If she doesn’t like it, why did she buy a house across the street?

When Maddie and Emmett’s battle lands them in front of the local judge, they’re ordered to do several weeks of community service cleaning parks and painting over graffiti. As they scrub away the latest works of art by the town’s anonymous “Penis Picasso,” the baker and the bartender slowly begin to see there’s more to each other than meets the eye. So what happens if they wave the white flag and surrender into each other’s arms?