Wickedness sells: nice characters are boring

Sadly, author George MacDonald Fraser, who wrote the marvelous Flashman novels, is dead.

He knew how to create a character who lives – an anti hero.

This excellent article, George MacDonald Fraser revealed: The truth about the man behind Flashman | the Daily Mail describes Flashman and his creator. In the first Flashman novel, Fraser introduces his creation:

“‘You will have read, in Tom Brown, how I was expelled from Rugby School for drunkenness, which is true enough, but when Hughes alleges that this was the result of my deliberately pouring beer on top of gin-punch, he is in error.”

“I knew better than to mix my drinks, even at seventeen.”…

Fraser’s stroke of genius was to seize upon Flashman, villainous bully of the priggish Victorian novel Tom Brown’s Schooldays, written by Thomas Hughes, and make him the anti-hero of a dozen books of his own.

George grasped a simple, ironic truth about life: the stinkers usually come out on top.

Keep “stinkers usually come out on top” in mind in your own novels, because nice guys are boring and your first rule as a writer is always – don’t be boring. Create characters who are alive, and although wicked, have a couple of character traits which are admirable.