Cringe-Worthy Fiction
Don’t play it safe. We need more complex, messed up characters in the world.
Before we get into this week’s post, I’d be remiss not to remind you that my debut novel, VICTIM, is now available for pre-order. VICTIM is a fearless satire about a hustler from the Bronx who sees through the veneer of diversity initiatives and decides to cash in on the odd currency of identity. If you enjoy this newsletter, I think you’ll also enjoy the book.
I really like the word “cringe.” The highest compliments I’ve received about my novel so far have been from early readers who have described it as cringe-inducing.
Cringe, to my mind, is good. Cringe is relatable. Because in real life, we constantly make ourselves cringe. We cringe, and think, I can’t believe I just thought that, or, I can’t believe I said that. We cringe thinking about how we embarrassed ourselves that one time, many years ago. So long ago we wonder why it’s coming up now. You know why? Because cringe sticks. It’s memorable.
On television, we’re attracted to characters that make us cringe—often because of their terrible decisions or morals. Just think about the characters at the center of some of the most popular, and award-winning shows of the past couple decades: The Wire, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Succession.
It’s obvious there is an appetite for such characters in the world. So why is it that in contemporary literary fiction of the last decade or so—perhaps even a bit further back—there seems to be so much concern over morals and righteousness. So much emphasis, particularly from critics and from the very-online sort, on characters having the “right” beliefs and desires. And if they don’t, characters who eventually evolve, by the end of the book, into having those “right” beliefs and desires.
These days, I’m often thrilled when I stumble upon a writer who seems to do the opposite. When I find a writer who has created characters that are selfish, that lie, cheat, say the wrong thing, think the wrong thing, and that, above all, don’t feel bad about doing it. Who perhaps even believe they’re in the right.
A whiff of subversiveness like that feels like a sip of ice cold water on a hot day.
Lately, I’ve read many pieces about this problem in fiction. So many that it suggests, at least to me, that a turn is coming. A malaise with self-conscious novels, characters, and plot lines designed not to offend, or to offend precisely the people who deserve to be offended.
One of the better pieces on this topic was Will Blythe’s recent piece on the state of the literary world, in Esquire. Blythe is the former literary editor at Esquire and now a contributing editor at Harpers. Although his piece is quite bleak about the literary world’s trajectory, I loved it. (Blythe’s intro, by the way, was one of the best descriptions about what reading really looks like these days—for better or worse. Check it out.)
What was of most interest to me was Blythe’s musings on how the downfall of magazines and newspapers, as well as the internet, and the manner in which books are consumed, marketed, and placed on various platforms to be ranked and “liked” and “starred”—places like Amazon and Goodreads—has fundamentally changed literary production.
Writers and writing tend to be voted upon by readers, who inflict economic power (buy or kill the novel!) rather than deeply examining work the way passionate critics once did in newspapers and magazines. Their “likes” and “dislikes” make for massive rejoinders rather than critical insight. It’s actually a kind of bland politics, as if books and stories are to be elected or defeated.
He details a recent campaign to derail the launch of a debut novel by Cecilia Rabess because the plotline was about a young black woman who dared to develop “an attraction” for a white, conservative colleague. (I know, how despicable!) Rabess’ case has been written about a bunch. Without having read the book, an army of people on Goodreads left one-star reviews and called the book “anti-black” and “racist.” Rabess, by the way, is black.
Blythe argues that because of cases like these writers and editors have developed a fear of writing or publishing something with the “wrong” narrative that “will reveal their ethical ignorance.” This, he argues, and I agree, has led to a softening of literature. The pulling of punches.
It brings to my mind the image of writing with a little scold on your shoulder to ensure you’re saying the right thing. “The power of literary fiction—good literary fiction, anyway—does not come from moral rectitude,” Blythe writes.
I agree. What makes fiction interesting is complexity. Investigating a morally dubious character, such as Humbert Humbert in Lolita. Showing off their nuances. Not judging them, as I read so many authors doing, making it so obviously clear who the “good” characters are and who the “bad” ones are.
Being curious about people, even people with, gasp!, politics, beliefs, habits, or desires we personally don’t like or agree with. In fact, I think it is imperative that we’re even more curious about those types of characters because they’re so different and repulsive.
Good literature, Blythe writes, “stares unrelentingly at the behavior of its characters without requiring righteousness.”
This resonates with me because I’ve been on both sides of the coin. I’ve listened to that little scold on my shoulder. In the past, I’ve approached writing more like a politician than an artist. Thankfully, I realized somewhere along the way I needed to abandon that posture. I think it is no coincidence that my career prospects changed soon after.
The ironic thing about all of this, after all, is that people want these types of characters. They’re dying for them. Now more than ever.
So how do you go about creating them? I’m no expert. But here are a few specific things that proved useful to me while writing VICTIM, and that I’m reminding myself of as I work on the earliest draft of my next novel.
Divorce your characters from yourself.
A big reason I was afraid to write a messed up, unethical, and potentially polarizing character for so long is because I worried readers would assume I am that character in real life, and would therefore think I am “bad” and have some questionable thoughts, desires, beliefs, etc. After all, my protagonist in VICTIM is Puerto Rican, from the Bronx, and is a writer. “People will think he’s me,” I worried. And you know what? They will. You know what else? There is absolutely nothing I can do about that.
Somewhere around the 8-year mark of working on my novel I accepted this truth. My protagonist is not me. I know it, and that’s all there is to it. That simple act was quite radical. It freed me up to take my protagonist in interesting directions, to make him say and do things I was previously withholding out of fear that they might make me, Andrew, look bad.
With your newfound freedom, make characters do shit that makes you cringe.
It was my experience that once I freed my protagonist from the weight of having to worry about the reputation of his creator, he just started running wild, being himself. My book started to get interesting because he started doing and saying shit that made me wince. But Instead of taking out these moments, I explored them. I magnified them.
Where were these things coming from? What were they revealing about my character, about what he really wants and is after? During revisions, I looked for moments that could be heightened. Moments where I could push and push the stakes and put my character in more compromised situations, make him take his lies and conniving to higher heights. You can always pull back later when doing this, but odds are you won’t need to.
Have real empathy for your characters.
You don’t want to write characters so bad you can’t root for them a little bit. People, even people who do terrible things, are still people. They have desires, for example. What does your character really want? How do his or her messed up actions relate to this desire? Just as important: What are their fears? Their deepest darkest concerns? Someone acting like an asshole just to be an asshole isn’t interesting. It might be funny for a bit, but it gets old.
What is interesting is someone who acts like an asshole because of their shitty childhood, or because they’re overcompensating for some big insecurity. Show us the full picture of this person, of why they are the way they are. To do that, you have to care about them. You have to put yourselves in their shoes. Most importantly, you have to completely change the stance that they are the most repulsive thing ever and don’t deserve to be examined. That will only guarantee you a flat, predictable character.
Tune out social media and other judgmental voices.
This one is easier said than done. And, to be honest, I’ve never been on the receiving end of a Goodreads attack like Rabess. But I do remember a time when I cared so much about approval from people on social media platforms that I held my own writing back, fearing I’d offend them.
Changing this involved setting some boundaries for how I interacted on these platforms. Going cold turkey a bunch of times. But it also involved looking inside of myself to think about why the hell I cared about the approval of people who don’t even know me in the first place. It involved coming to the realization that a lot of the people you fear might judge you probably won’t even notice what you’re up to. People have their own stuff going on.
So, lean into the fun. Flick off the scolds on your shoulder.
And if, by some chance, you end up being in the middle of the storm like the Rabess’s of the world, stay on ten toes like she did. Because people can only stay “outraged” about something for so long. Eventually, the mob will find the next thing. And, in the end, you’ll probably end up with a hell of a lot more readers as a result of the skirmish anyway.
Peace,
Andrew
Recommendations:
Som-Mai Nguyen wrote an excellent piece last year in Astra Mag (RIP) on how American born writers from certain cultural backgrounds are often seen as arbiters for millions of people from their motherlands that, often, they don’t even have that close of a connection with. “When people say the X community, I wonder whether they just mean some X people I know and refuse to say that because it sounds sillier to extrapolate uniform feeling from the latter, as there’s no X convention where everyone votes on a slate of propositions.”
I’m not sure how I stumbled on this 2006 essay by Paul Beatty on what constitutes “black literature”, but I’m really glad that I did. Beatty is a master. And, as this piece makes clear, adept at identifying and making fun of cultural trends way before anyone else even has a clue as to what is going on.
On Twitter, or, I guess, X, the writer Austin Adams had a great thread reflecting on why a “crisply written, tautly plotted, highly lauded novel” he recently read gave him no pleasure at all. “I've been sitting with that question for about an hour now, & the best answer I can manage is: I come to literature to be shocked by the strangeness of existence, how uncanny it is that we exist, what bizarre creatures we are.”
New Yorker critic Kelefa Sanneh is one of the best critics—of any medium. He’s such a smart thinker about music—so smart that his insights in that realm tend to resonate far beyond. I devoured this wonderful Q&A with him in The Sun. “I think often we simplify conversations about divisions within America in ways that can flatten or obscure what’s actually happening. There’s this sense of Team Red and Team Blue, and hip-hop is Team Blue because it’s Black music. But if you look at the actual history of hip-hop and what rappers have said and written in lyrics, it’s complicated.”
Really enjoyed this interview of novelist Claire Jimenez on the Books Are Pop Culture Podcast. They had a great discussion around not “believing the hype” around your own work, and how that can stop you from writing the things you really want to write and instead focus on telling stories you think people want to hear. I must say, too, the hosts of
, Reggie Bailey and Akili Nzuri, are a breath of fresh air in the literary world—and in the world of literary podcasts, which can often have a staid tone. I found them both to be funny, down to earth, and insightful. I’m looking forward to more episodes.
YES ANDREW! "Cringe" characters are HUMAN characters. People are flawed, and broken, and ridiculous and noble and vulnerable and loving and hating... human beings, in short. The characters we relate to the most are those that are full of complexity--light and dark, beauty and ugliness. Bravo on this piece. I wrote a pilot, WISENHEIMER, which has received multiple awards and accolades, primarily because of the raw and flawed nature of the characters. THANK YOU ANDREW.
Is it actually worse though? Reading the esquire article, I'm struck that many of these same criticisms, which are essentially the criticisms of middlebrow fiction, have been made throughout the 20th century (esp in Dwight Macdonald's "Masscult and Midcult"). I'm also not certain I'd agree with some of the characterizations. Are the characters in Emma Cline's GIRLS, who join the Manson family, really politically correct? The criticism of Uncle Tom's Cabin is also facile and typical, but it's actually a good and complex book. It contains most of the themes of 19th century slave narratives (none of which were about violent protest), and depicts a wide variety of slave owners, good and bad, to make the point that under no circumstances is slavery moral or acceptable. It's a work of deep moral seriousness--the best possible argument in favor of "sanctimony literature", so it's strange that it's often used as an argument against it