I've heard people say a writer can't afford to be in love with her characters, but I don't think it's being in love with them that's the problem -- it's being stuck in the infatuation stage, where their faults are either entirely invisible to you or all, without exception, strike you as cute.

The problem with this is that you need your characters to be able to do actual bad things, things that you and your readers will both recognize as wrong. This is true for several reasons. First, it helps you set up conflict or complicate your stories. If you need conflict, or a reason for two characters not to cooperate to end your story very prematurely, you can't beat someone acting -- for reasons that are in character for him -- like a big enormous jerk.

Second, it helps avoid the Canon Sue problem of other characters becoming warped out of shape so that your precious darling never has to be blamed for anything. There are lots of situations in canon in which both characters contribute to a fight or an antagonistic relationship by being rude, insensitive, jealous, prejudiced, vindictive, or just generally screwing each other over. If one of them instead acts like a perfect martyred saint, not only is he out of character, but his enemy now looks like an evil bully for picking on someone who's never apparently done anything to deserve it.

Finally, sometimes you just need to take a little of the shine off characters who might otherwise come off as unlikeably perfect -- if you are writing a character who is always brave and caring and who devotes her entire life to her cause, you may need to show her occasionally losing her temper just to prove to the readers that she's real. Sometimes the canon creators forget this, and present us with a character who we are supposed to believe is basically perfect in every way. Those characters tend to be widely hated by fans, who will go out of their way to identify behavior the canon creators thought was cute and reframe it as intolerable. Don't make your character that character.

Unfortunately, I've seen too many authors who seem to have lost touch with the fact that their favorite characters are, in fact, capable of being big enormous jerks. They end up writing supposedly average teenagers who never say insensitive or mean things to their friends, or heroes who endure endless suffering and angst without ever complaining or feeling resentful or wanting someone else to save the world for a change, or ruthless criminals responsible for an incredibly high body count in canon who suddenly would never really hurt anyone who didn't really deserve it.

If you think this might be you, I have some suggestions for you. (If you're not sure, you might try the first of the suggestions anyway. If you're sure it's not you, it might still be an interesting exercise.)

First, think about this: what are some bad things that it would be in character for your character to do? Just make a list. You can include bad things they've done in canon, if you really do think they were bad (but not things that canon presents as bad but that you think were actually perfectly acceptable.) They don't have to be evil in a dramatic way -- things that are just petty or mean or irresponsible or insensitive or unfair work too.

Now look at your list. Warning sign #1: you have no list. This is a characterization emergency. If you are truly drawing a blank, start with small things. Would she be unkind to other people, maybe because she's frustrated or impatient or jealous? Would he let his friends do nasty things without trying to stop them? Would he sometimes blow off his responsibilities or let down people who are counting on him? What might you do wrong, if you were this character? They may be heroes, but they're not perfect people, any more than we are.

Warning sign #2: your list consists entirely of things that you think in an abstract sort of way are "bad," but that you don't really have a problem with. "Arrogance" does not count as a character flaw if you think of it as pride and would admire someone in real life for behaving in the same ways. "Stealing things" doesn't really count if you don't think stealing is particularly wrong in the character's circumstances. "Blowing off his responsibilities" doesn't count if you think that the character deserved to stay in bed for a week after the horrible abuse canon put him through.

You can work through this one in two ways. First, think of the people you like or love in real life. What do they do that you really hate? Does your sister scream at you on the phone when she's angry? Does your mother try to manipulate you? Does your roommate eat all your groceries even though he knows you can't really afford to replace them? Does your best friend tease people and not notice when she hurts their feelings?

Pick the things that get to you. Do any of these things sound like things your characters might do? Try to picture the characters you love doing things that would make you want to yell at them. Try to picture them doing things that would make you want to slap them. These are the things that can help you get them to screw up their own lives and complicate their own plots, rather than you always having to do it for them.

Second, try taking the things that you said were bad (but secretly don't mind) and exaggerating them just a little bit until they start to bother you. I really do mean "a little bit" -- don't twist the characters all out of shape. But. So your character is a thief -- would he steal from people who really needed the money? What would happen to those people? So she's arrogant -- does that extend to, say, thinking she's better than people of another cultural background? Does that start to look ugly at a certain point?

Right at that line where it starts to bother you, but doesn't make you hate the character, is where you want to be in terms of finding things to play with in your stories. More on that in a minute.

Now you have your list of potential bad things, and it includes some things that you actually would have a problem with if you knew this person. Pick something on the list and think about how you could use it in a story. How could something this character did wrong kick off or complicate a plot? How could you show this character as partly responsible for a bad relationship with another character? How could you bring some humanity to a character who's starting to look a little too perfect?

You can go pretty far with showing your characters screwing up without making your characters unlikeable -- almost always farther than you think, for your point of view character. It's amazing how much weight being the point of view character gives your character's perspective. You will often have to push hard to make the reader recognize the times when you think they're wrong (but they don't).

However, it is possible to push too far. That's one pitfall of writing characters doing bad things. Every reader has their bottom lines, the things that will make them stop liking your character, even if they still believe in them. Most of the time, you don't want to cross that line. The problem is, the lines are different for every reader.

There are things that you should at least recognize are often going to cross that line. Rape, deliberate harm to children, overt racism. You may not be able to go there without losing the reader's sympathy entirely, or if so, you need to work very, very carefully. With other things, you can figure you'll lose some people, and it's a matter of how important it is to the story you want to tell -- adultery, for instance, is going to make some readers decide your character is a horrible person, but it's not going to be a deal-breaker for everybody.

One thing that can help is setting up situations where actions that are indeed wrong have consequences all out of proportion to anything the character might expect. I'm thinking now of a scene I wrote in "Fear the Rest," where Charles and Erik are both being short-tempered with each other, but manage to inflict more mutual emotional damage then they intend. Erik shouldn't make snide remarks about Charles's lack of a sex life when Charles feels that he's been forced into unwanted celibacy by a disabling accident, and Charles shouldn't be openly scornful of one of Erik's close friends (whose worsening health Erik is grief-stricken about). But neither of them knows the context that makes the cheap shots they're taking hit harder than they intended -- they haven't seen each other in years -- and I think the carelessness of it is more palatable to the audience than it would be if either of them hit that hard intentionally.

The other big pitfall is, I think, when you are already angry at a character for something bad he did in canon, and you write a story that's intended to show everyone what the character did wrong. This is very tricky to pull off without it feeling like everything in the story has been distorted in order to allow you to punish the character -- all the other characters tend to either be martyred victims or demand to know how the main character could be so evil, and the main character tends to grovel (or at least apologize profusely) for something that he shows no signs of being sorry for in canon. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it's hard, and you really have to work to stick to how the characters would react to what your main character did, rather than what you want to see happen to square accounts in your own mind.

But in general, I think you can get a lot of mileage out of letting the characters you love do things you know they shouldn't do, and seeing where the consequences take them.