There’s this John Mulaney skit where he talks about how much he needs everyone to like him. It plays in my head a lot. You can find it on YouTube — The Mayor of Nothing1. What is often quoted is the part where he says: “I need everybody, all day long, to like me so much.”
And don’t get me wrong — this is the bit I often quote. But people leave off what he says next. “It is exhausting.” It is so exhausting to be a people pleaser. To worry constantly about what other people will think of you. To define yourself by how good you are at keeping other people happy.
It bleeds into every part of your life — your relationships, your work, your existence. I want everyone to like me. I want everyone to think that I’m on their side. How can this not impact everything? It impacts my writing. Sometimes it feels like it especially impacts my writing.
I want to hedge everything I say on Substack. I do not want to be wrong or to offend. Even though sometimes I feel very strongly about what I am saying; it is so tempting to pepper my sentences with ‘sometimes’ and ‘perhaps’. I want to keep my writing soft enough that it can appeal to everyone, but in doing so I risk losing my own voice in the process.
This isn’t helped by everyone and their cat weighing in with the ‘right’ way to write on Substack. Maybe we should all be more thick-skinned. (There I am hedging again in my uncertainty). Or maybe people need to stop spouting their opinions as gospel in public forums.
My first novel, the one that I am editing for agent submissions, features characters that I am constantly terrified that won’t be liked. Especially the lead character because she is a woman, and she is a woman who is going through a hard time. Long story short, she makes bad decisions, and I am afraid that she is unlikeable. Even though… I wrote her to be a fully-fledged person, which means she is not always likeable — she is trying her best, but her best is not always good. But I worry that a reader will not see it that way. That she will be seen as whiney. Selfish. Annoying. And god, we know that there’s nothing worse than an annoying woman.
I have written before about how we can’t handle complex female characters. I think that’s the word I mean when I say ‘unlikeable’ — I mean ‘complex’. When we talk about complex characters, we mean human characters, and most humans/people are unlikeable at times. If your character is always inherently unlikeable with no redeeming understanding, then they are probably a flat figure. And the same is true the other way round. No one person can be liked by everyone. Shouldn’t it be the same for characters?
When it comes to my drafts of this novel, I have spent more hours than needed staring at paragraphs and questioning if my protagonist is likeable enough. I have deleted lines and put them back in, trying to decide how many teeth is an acceptable amount for her to show. It is a losing battle.
No great novels have been written with the worry of ensuring an audience only ever likes and agrees with the character. It makes me think of Jane Austen and Emma and how she said of the titular character: “I’m going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.”2
You want your audience to be willing to follow your character through the narrative, but are we misunderstanding what it takes to do that? An audience must be interested in your character. And they probably want to root for them — we like to have a protagonist to root for. But characters should not have their edges shaved off to be palatable to the masses. Look at how people respond to the Roy family from Succession.3
The new novel I have started writing has two lead female characters. One of them teeters on the edge of what is acceptable — she is unashamedly self-confident. She is beautiful and can be cruel. She is viewed as brilliant, and she knows it. I am trying to allow her to be all of these things. To not feel that she must be less than who she is to make the story easier for some to swallow. To only reinforce that a woman cannot be complex and still deserving of love. And that she can be these things and still be loved.
I believe in trying to be kind. But that does not mean becoming a plank of wood for people to walk over. People pleasing is not an easy thing to unlearn. Even if I struggle to apply this thinking in my own life, I hope I can at least write women who can be free of it.
Sentence that stuck with me: “I have deleted lines and put them back in, trying to decide how many teeth is an acceptable amount for her to show.” That’s a literary punch in the face right there, absolutely loved this read!
There’s so much overthinking that goes into being a people-pleaser.
Constantly wondering if you’re being too much or not enough, what’s the perfect amount of yourself (if you can even call you in that moment your true self) for one person to another. It’s emotionally exhausting.
Very much relate to this, especially the hedging what I say on Substack bit! I always feel the need to apologize or add caveats to things that should not require caveats because the fear of anyone being offended/not liking me is overwhelming.