Pebblepup's Writing Den

Everyone has flaws. Your characters need to show that. Your hero can be a little bit of a coward as well. It’s a good idea to work on giving your characters flaws.

Your hero doesn’t have to have cowardly tendencies, but he or she does need a flaw or two. Think about the flaws you have. I’m stubborn. I will take too long to ask for help. That’s a flaw. It can also be a strength because it means I won’t give up. Your characters can do that as well.

The internet is full of lists of character flaws. Search for them and decide which flaws work for your story. That’s the key. A timid hero will resist acting until forced. That can create conflict which drives the story.

You can make a character anxious, for example. Have them be too eager to please and anxious that they are liked. You can make a character be arrogant. If that’s your hero, you will walk a fine line between your readers rooting for or against your character. You might have a character overcome a flaw to triumph over the story problem. That’s an option as well.

The flaws needn’t be an integral part of the story, but they can contribute to the problems the character has in overcoming the story problem. Your character needs to have flaws to make them believable.

No one is perfect and your characters shouldn’t be either. That is the whole reason kryptonite was created to weaken Superman. Without it, Superman would just swoop in and save the day. Bang! The story is over.

The point here is that human beings have flaws. Your characters, even if they aren’t exactly human should as well. Otherwise, your readers will not empathize with them. They might dislike them. Either way, they will stop reading and we write our stories so that someone will read them. Well, most of us do.

Even if you are the only one who reads the story. Will you read about a perfect person solving every problem they come to? I doubt it. So give your characters a few flaws to overcome.

Use the flaws to drive the story. They might even turn out to be helpful in solving the problem. Suppose your hero chooses to hide rather than confront the villain. That act may cause the confrontation the hero was trying to avoid.

So check out the internet. See what flaws you can give your characters to make them people readers can relate to. Or those flaws will prevent an easy, far too early, resolution of the story problem. That’s the goal.

We write problems for our characters to solve. If they solve them too early, we have no story. Character flaws are a great way to halt the character’s progress in solving the story problem.

Give your character some flaws to distract them from the main story problem. You will find they are more real characters. Thus, they are more likely to find more trouble on the way to the story problem’s resolution. Go for it and see what happens.