Writer's Mind - Flawed Characters and Why We Love Them

Flawed Characters and Why We Love Them

I have an addiction. I've tried to overcome it, but my efforts have been met with an amazing level of resistance. My body fights me. My mind fights me. I often wonder if I'll be addicted to this stuff forever. So many times I've tried and failed to quit, by this point it is hardly more than a joke. What am I addicted to, you ask? Well, I'll get to that detail later in this article, and I'll even fill you in on how I used my own personal addiction as inspiration when developing one of the main characters in my current writing project.

Why do characters need flaws? Perfect characters are boring, and sometimes even annoying. Perfect characters don't have to struggle as hard to achieve their goals. After all, they're perfect. Things come easily to perfect people. If there's no struggle, there's no conflict, and conflict is what makes good writing. Character flaws = sources of conflict. They can be sources of conflict with other characters, conflict with the environment, and, in many instances, conflict with self.

In most cases, you want a character who isn't perfect but is in some way better than average, or at least a character who has the potential to be better than average. Fulfilling that potential – overcoming obstacles and growing into that better-than-average self – will become part of the conflict that drives your story. You want a hero, someone willing to take action, not a passive wimp. Readers are living vicariously through your characters. They want to feel special, and for that you need special characters. At the same time, a character who is too special, too perfect, seems unrealistic and comes across as a cardboard cut-out. Give your character some flaws in one area to compensate for his above average skills in other areas.

Why do we love flawed characters so much? Because we feel like we could be them, we could walk in their shoes, we could – with the right kind of skill and motivation – overcome the same obstacles they overcame. We can immerse ourselves more fully in the story because we can step into the character's shoes, see things from his perspective, and believe in the reality of it. If they're heroes with flaws, we can aspire to be like them and actually have some hope of succeeding in that endeavor. They give us hope. They give us – imperfect and flawed beings that we are – a glimpse of what we could be. If they're perfect, we dismiss any hope of ever reaching such glorious heights. We can't relate to them. We can't empathize with them.

Make your character's flaws intriguing and interesting, not tedious and irritating. You want someone readers will enjoy spending time with, preferably so much they reread your novel or screenplay until the pages are worn and tattered. You don't want a character whose qualities grate on the reader's nerves. Give your character enough flaws to be interesting but not so many as to be overwhelming. It's a delicate balance. Unless done right, characters who are too flawed are almost as annoying as characters who are too perfect.

Ask yourself: How does this flaw affect my character's behavior, his attitude, his reactions? Take, for example, Tony Shalhoub's character on the television series Monk. He is obsessive-compulsive about germs, cleanliness, and order. That flaw is a factor in each storyline. It affects how Monk acts and reacts in every situation. How do your character's flaws affect her actions? How do they affect the storyline?

If you can't come up with any flaws for your character, look around. Think about your friends, your family, your next-door neighbors, your boss and coworkers. Contemplate what it is about each of them that irritates you. Is your neighbor a nosy gossip? Is your brother too impatient? Does your boss have a temper? Does a friend have a tendency to act first and analyze the situation later, usually after his impulsive actions trigger unpleasant consequences? Voila! You've pinpointed flaws you can incorporate into your characters.

If all else fails, draw on your own personal flaws for inspiration. (What's that you say? You have no flaws? Think again.)

To illustrate this point, let's go back to my personal addiction. Two weeks ago, I tried to quit. It was agonizing. I struggled. I swore. I lasted thirteen days, until I simply couldn't stand it anymore. I caved, and it was off to the 7-11 to get my fix....Mt. Dew Code Red.

Caffeine. Sugar. Deliciously sweet cherry flavor. Pure bliss in a bottle.

Not to mention, hundreds of calories and enough chemicals to preserve an elephant.

It may seem silly, but it's an addiction nonetheless. I can't stop, and I hate myself for my weakness. I detest my lack of willpower. I despise the fact that when I take that first swig, my mind and body sigh in unison with complete and utter contentment. When I don't have it, when I try to stay away from it, it's all I can think about. It intrudes on every waking thought. Its power over me becomes painfully obvious. I can hear it calling my name from every convenience store within a twenty-mile radius.

All I can do, I finally decided, is find a way to use this in my writing, to turn this misery into something productive. Something good had to come out of all this suffering and self-loathing.

I gave one of my characters an addiction – not to Mt. Dew Code Red, but to something far more interesting instead – and was able to write about his struggle with powerful emotion, intensity, and insight. Not only that, but his addiction gave me an idea for a new spin on the story and I was able to tie it into the storyline in ways I hadn't even expected.

Flaws can generate new story ideas, or they can simply flesh out characters and make them more realistic and lifelike. Flaws give a character depth and move him from a two-dimensional page into a vivid, three-dimensional reality, even if that reality exists solely within the mind of your reader.

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