Ergh. Those people
We all knew those people in school. You know the ones. The ones that were perfect at everything. The ones who had learned everything there possibly was to know about every musical instrument by the time they were twelve, got themselves A grades in 100 exams, yet were also amazing at football, basketball, tennis and bareknuckle fighting. Teachers loved them, parents loved them. They were perfect.
And everyone you knew hated them, right?
Your DNA says ‘I hate you’
It’s weird, but we seem to be biologically engineered to hate people more successful than ourselves. I suppose it’s a survival trait. A cavemen who was happy to kill one bison/tiger/wild bowl of noodles and sit down to celebrate his achievement would soon run out of food for his family. A bison would have only gone so far, and instead of hunting for another one, he was sitting there going ‘oh yeah, I’ve done pretty well. I’m a good caveman.’ But if he saw another caveman who had three dead bison in his cave, and was jealous of him, he would go out and continue hunting and try to best him. He wouldn’t die of starvation, and by being competitive, he was reducing the risk of his family running out of food.
Also, your brain says ‘I hate you’
It’s not just our biology that makes it hard for us to identify with characters who have it all. At a dead basic, selfish level, what’s the point? If everything is going well for someone, why do they need us to care about them? It’s why none of us ever sit down and think, ‘God, I really hope Bill Gates is ok at the moment.’ It’s a waste of time to give compassion to someone who has no need of it (Yes, Bill Gates probably has problems too. Don’t dig too deep into the example). To be cruelly honest, if Mr or Miss perfect has a bad time, we’re probably going to think they deserved it.
The thing is, we identify with the characters we read about as though they are real people. If their marriage breaks down, we are sad for them, if they die, sometimes we go as far as to weep, and we are happy when they succeed. But because we think of them as real people, if they’re too good, our biology kicks in and the hate appears. And it’s very hard to care about someone you hate (although if I was a 1950’s comedian I would probably make a marriage joke right now).
Being in a story doesn’t count as a flaw
Which is why your characters need to have things wrong with them. You might think that the story, which practically by necessity must have bad things happening in it, will be enough to win our compassion. We’re a bit more fickle than that. Deep down, most readers know that the chances are, the main character of any novel will get what they want and will be fine at the end. We open a book knowing this, even if we know it at such a deep level that consciously this knowledge doesn’t register.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a cliché. Please shut up
A brilliant example of this is superheroes. By rights, they should be on the list of people we don’t care about. They are so much better than us, either physically or mentally. Why do we care? Because they still have problems. If you want to create a superhero, the easiest and most effective formula to use is to give them a superpower that requires the one thing that they don’t have. When Thor gets banished to Earth for his arrogance, it is only in becoming humble and willing to die that he gets his hammer back. A superhero is usually someone we can identify with because their power is the polar opposite of their normal character. Peter Parker becomes a loved and celebrated person, despite being a college nerd who people look down upon. What’s more, it is the struggle to cope with the responsibility they now have that gives them a weakness we can identify with.
Perfection = Dullness
As I said in We read stories because, without hard work, success is bland, it is the conquering of obstacles that makes us want to stick with a character until the end. But if that character has no flaws, the obstacles will seem very dull. In The Matrix, Neo’s flaw is that he is new and untrusting, and unable to live up to everyone’s expectations. In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo is the weakest, most unsuited person to the task of taking the ring to Mordor. He is surrounded by powerful warriors; the first time he sees the Ringwraiths, he drops his sword and runs away.
It’s all about balance
Flaws give characters more problems to deal with, and because we all like to see people overcome their problems, that makes them more appealing to us. But be careful not to go too far the other way; your characters still have to be likeable. A struggling alcoholic, addicted to prescription medicine, coping with the death of their parents by turning to crime, becoming arrogant, patronising and not listening is going to be a hard pill for us all to swallow. It is worth noticing in that list, that flaws can be huge (such as alcoholism or drug addiction), or they can be smaller character traits (such as not listening or being arrogant). As long as it gets in the way of characters forming perfect relationships with everyone they meet, and complicates the story, then you are on to a winner. Generally, a character’s flaws are what makes the story possible. In my book (which had better get published one day. Please?), Politics in Blood, the whole plot is based upon the fact that the antagonist plays on my protagonist’s arrogance. What should be an easy thing to walk away from is something she can’t resist, because of her pride.
Flaws make characters. They are more important than hair or eye colour or many other physical descriptions you may spend hours getting right, as they actually impact the story, unlike ‘My blue hair means I’m going to piss off the wrong people.’ Having said that, if a person’s hair colour is a focal point because they are vain, there’s your character flaw. Be careful not to overburden your character with flaws, or else they will become impossible for your reader to care about. Also, make sure that their flaws are ‘flaws’, not nasty traits. You probably want your MC to be likeable. Eating puppies isn’t a flaw, it’s an evil act. Paul ‘Fido Chomper’ Smith is not a character whose flaws will draw you into caring about him…
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I know someone who plays four instruments (most at grade eight level), has pieces performed by a London Orchestra, and last year produced an excellent pastiche of famous comic double acts. Every time I go to chat with him about my more modest achievements (“hey, a fifteen minute play of mine is being done by my uni’s theatre group”), I inevitably get sidetracked by learning his incredible next project (A TWO HOUR SKETCH SHOW!). I only wish he had a flaw. It’s impossible to hate him because he’s so damn modest.
This post has shed light on something that’s been bugging me for a while, namely why the protagonist of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ is clearly the least interesting person in the show. He has no motivation, and, worse than that, no flaws! We have no reason to watch him, thus his friends take the limelight and the empathy, and end up stealing the show.
Wow, his success makes me feel like a rubbish human being. How old is he?
You know, that never really occurred to me, although now you mention it you’ve got a point. I guess his motivation is that he’s trying to find ‘the one’ (presumably why he tells Robin he loves her in the very first episode). But you make a good point that the supporting characters are much more dynamic than him. Which is probably a big flaw for a protagonist (and not in a good-in-the-context-of-this-post kind of way…) Then again, how many sitcoms can you think of where the best character isn’t the protagonist/protagonists? I’m thinking Holly in Red Dwarf, Niles in Fraiser (arguable that he was a protagonist), Nick in My Family, Brian in Spaced, Roger in American Dad… I think there must be something about the way you can characterise supporting characters that means they always steal the show. That might be a blog post I have to write in the near future (you’d be credited with the genesis of the idea, of course). Thanks for the inspiration!
Frustratingly, my friend is my age, so 19. Yeah, it’s completely makes you think you’re a bit behind when he’s already done so much. Then again, I’m not looking to receive royalties from a national orchestra, so I can’t be intimidated on that front.
You’re welcome.
Hmm, I agree that the lead in sitcoms isn’t always the most memorable, or “best”, character, but I think they’ve got to have some reason for “being”. Ted’s only role in the series, as far as I can see, is to narrate and tell us about his more interesting friends. As for his goal of finding ‘the one’, well, he doesn’t seem to be looking very hard. It hardly ever crops up in episodes, and, even when he’s in a relationship, he doesn’t seem to particularly fight for them.
In the show’s defence though, I do love their innovative use of flashbacks and false memories i.e. an episode leads us to believe the series of events went one way, but Future Ted then reveals, in truth, because he or others were drunk/stoned, he misperceived what actually happened.
Yeah, like how Lister in Red Dwarf wants to get back to Earth, which powers the show. I agree about the flashbacks – the actual format of How I Met Your Mother is very innovative. I’ve only actually seen Season 1 and 2 fully, and then a few odd episodes here and there, but I seem to remember something about a pineapple which was quite funny.
Very nice post! I like your approach on this topic and I do hope you get to have your book published.
Thanks Samir! Glad to hear it, and thank you for the kind words
Congratulations, you’ve motivated me to write a character flaws post. Sure, I may have been half-planning to get around to it eventually, anyway… but you’ve made me *gotta*. (Erm, that’s not bad grammar — that’s my sentence being lovably flawed.)
Some great section-header work today, by the way. My fave: “Being in a story doesn’t count as a flaw”, closely followed by the one that closely follows it.
Yay! I made you gotta good! Thanks for the praise. Looking forward to reading your post, and coz I know it’s being written, I’ll start commenting on every post you’ve written demanding to know where it is if it aint up soon
Aha! Looks like I’ve discovered a sweet new way to generate blog comments and Hyperteller attention! I’ll be sure to keep that in mind if ever it starts to get lonely, down Ever On Word way. (;
Batman. What you said in your post about Superheroes was so to the point. That’s why I am such a Batman fan. His biggest flaw is he can die. That just makes me root for him that much more.
Nice post. When I read posts like this I start to think about my book. I’m not sure my character is rounded enough. I’m not even sure he has a flaw – the mind races.
I agree to being a massive batman fan, and the appeal for me is that when you get right down to it, he walks a fine line between being a superhero and a villain a lot of the time. I’m not sure I’d agree that being able to die is a character flaw though, it’s a physical weakness. The main characters of most stories are capable of dying (even in the superhero genre). If he was afraid of dying, that would be a character flaw, as it defines everything about his actions and how the story works. Batman being able to die doesn’t really power the story very much, it’s perhaps an ‘obstacle’ rather than a flaw. It’s why Luke Skywalker not being able to use the force at the beginning of Episode IV is not a flaw, but him being reckless and refusing to listen to authority is (he’d have learned a lot quicker and made fewer mistakes if he listened to Yoda and Ben more).
It’s a good thing to think about. Sometimes I think we all struggle to give our characters flaw because we want them to be perfect. Having said that, I find giving my characters flaws to be much more fun than giving them strengths, which usually tend to come more easily.
Yes this is so true. Without flaws, without a conflict, readers just don’t care about the characters. This is why I created character bibles for each character. In it I outlined physical and mental attributes. One such section was response. How does a character respond to normal stimuli? What happens when they are pushed too far? What things aren’t they good at?
In the story I am currently writing, the protagonist is jaded and in the beginning, it is difficult to decide whether he is good or evil. He goes through an identity crisis, in which everything he knows is questioned. The hope I have that by the end of the story, readers will have grown to understand him and support him, despite their original dislike of his personality. That’s the plan anyway.
I love ambiguous characters. It was my mantra when writing my book, that you shouldn’t be able to point to any character and say ‘yep, that one’s a good guy/gal’. I think that mystery carries the reader a long for a while, so as long as he’s interesting to start with (and from the sound of it he is), then his personality will keep us hooked until the moment comes when we start to care.
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