“One Of The Simplest Ways To Make The Audience Like A Character Is To Show Him Liking Other People.

“One of the simplest ways to make the audience like a character is to show him liking other people. One of the easiest ways to make the audience care about a character is to show him caring about other people. We care about Harry Potter in no small part because he cares so much about his friends. It’s impossible to imagine Harry seeing Hermione get hurt and feeling anything but horror and guilt, no matter how terrible a fight they might have had beforehand. Katniss is by design a more prickly and “difficult” protagonist than Harry is, or than Moss seems intended to be, but we care about her from the start because we see how deeply she loves her sister and her willingness to sacrifice herself to protect her. Bad writers, though, often make the mistake of thinking that you make a character likable by showing that other characters like him, and make the audience care about him by showing that other characters care about him. This tends to have exactly the opposite effect. At a certain point the reader starts to wonder what’s so great about this guy that everyone is showering him with praise, and starts actively wanting to see him fail or be told off.”

— https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/325399.html?thread=1869956375#cmt1869956375 (via pitviperofdoom)