Flaw? Only one please.

Flaws. Do you have a flaw? What is your Flaw? One Flaw two flaw your flaw my flaw. Flaw, flaw, flaw, flaw. Have I said flaw enough? Good because I’m tired of flaws. I couldn’t tell you what Frodo’s flaw is to be honest. He’s too innocent? Small? Possessed by the ring? I’m not sure any of those are a flaw and if one is, why aren’t they all. As an author I believe the use of character flaw is a crutch or at the very least an obsolete way of developing a character. Authors are constantly struggling with the horrifying perfect character, the Superman without kryptonite weakness, the flawless deity that is character X. The fixation with flaws comes from this fear. Flaws break down a grand scale concept of humanity into a bite size morsel, except it has been overused and needs a newer version to take its place. That’s where I come in.

Overall. I think this technique is a subpart to the grander design of character development that I’ve talked about in blog posts and my YouTube channel. As I see it the intention of the author when developing a character is to mimic reality. After all what is the purpose of writing if not to create a believable individual for our readers to enjoy. To that end it is important to remember that we, as humans, have multiple flaws. No one is perfect and each of our individual issues is what makes us absolutely annoying to other people. When reading about those issues however, it instantly makes a character more interesting.

A character with a single flaw, like anger for example, is predictable. We know what to expect when faced with obstacles. They are going to ball their hands into fists and yell. Perhaps this can be done well a time or two, but after the tenth encounter with an antagonist the same old spiel will have the reader thinking they are watching an episode of Pokemon where Team Rocket is reciting their catch phrase song for the millionth time. This is especially obvious when a time comes for the character to be dressed down, or put in their place and one of two things happens. Either One, the character is dressed down and doesn’t respond as they have for no other reason than plot, or Two, the character explodes again and the events unfold as if they hadn’t.

For a little more clarity:

Option 2, Stephanous enters a guard station. The guard asks for papers which Stephanous does not have, so he acts belligerent yelling obscenities at the guard. The plot requires Stephanous to enter the city in search of the scoundrel who robbed him so he acts belligerent in order to bully the guard. Except the guard cannot be bullied and argues back. Perhaps the next several pages are a screaming fight ending with Stephanous entering the city without showing his papers.

Option 1, Stephanous has argued, bullied, and powered his way through every obstacle placed in front of him. He’s knocked out every antagonist he’s faced, but when a scoundrel steals his prized rabbit’s foot and sneaks into the city of Badtiding, Stephanous must enter. He approaches a guard shack and the guard asks for papers. Now the author wants this to be a conflict, but doesn’t see the guard as cowing to a mere boy, so they don’t allow the guard to be a push over. Now when the screaming match starts Stephanous is turned away.

While option one has a more interesting story develop because of the altercation we are left wondering why Stephanous didn’t punch the guard and lock them in the privy. Option 2 is less believable and loses the possibility of an interesting conflict and resolution.

Now this problem is simplified for argument’s sake, but I’ve seen it done enough to feel I haven’t over exaggerated the issue I’m trying to represent. The same situation can be used for meekness, fear of conflict, shy, drunkard, or any flaw you want. If only one is represented by a main character and a point of conflict arises, most will rely heavily on that flaw to get them through the scene.

This is not what you want for your character. Random drastic character reactions for the sake of plot are off putting for most readers and tend to pull them form the story. We want characters to react how we would expect humans to react with in reason. If we learn that Stephanous is angry all the time because he has a desire for control and he was born a peasant than every time something occurs that doesn’t fit his way of thinking we can expect anger. However if at the same time we see him bow to authority we can see he is aware of the hierarchy of the world he was raised in. Neither of these are flaws in the traditional sense. I would argue they are character traits or the character’s phycology.

As an author my secondary focus in on Philosophy a precursor to Psychology and Sociology. Any of the three should be of interest for a budding author. Anthropology can help too because humanity hasn’t changed much over the last thousand years. We still view our wants over anyone else’s with few exceptions and our sense of morality is most often viewed as superior to anyone else’s. Because of this any of the above-mentioned fields of study can provide a variety of human types to use as a basis for character creation instead of a flaw.

Take a character who has PTSD, add meekness and an inferiority complex to their chart of characteristics. The possibilities of conflict are wide and varying enough to stay fresh not to get boring or repetitive. Taking our example of the guardhouse above and putting this version of Stephanous we can see a few directions for conflict.

A) Stephanous was already in prison once for bucking authority so his confrontation ties with his meekness causing him to turn away and search for alternative avenues to enter the city. If this leads to breaking the law we can get a more direct character arch where Stephanous must decide what is more important, his lucky rabbit’s foot or going back to the dungeon.

B) Stephanous has the character arch moment right there. His inferiority complex is triggered when confronted by a holy-than-thou guard shoving their weight around and Stephanous decides he’s had enough being pushed around and challenges the guard. Of course this could end him up in the dungeon where he must face his fears. It also allows for meeting a new character expanding on the story.

C) The last option I’ll put down is perhaps all of these characteristics lead the author to not have Stephanous enter the guardhouse at all, instead he plans an ambush and waits to catch the scoundrel as he exits the town.

Singular flaws limit an author with choices and cause characters to fall flat when creating them. We often forget that humans are contradictions and avoid pairing opposite characteristics with the Flaw we so carefully crafted. An angry character has to be stoic and yell a lot. A sad character only screams when someone doesn’t understand their sadness and cries when challenged. We never see a Happy character mad even when someone cuts them off in line. Perhaps given the proper setting these characters could do well for a scene or two, but eventually a reader will notice the pattern and hope for the scene to be over and may even close the book.

As I stated in the opening, we as authors start with a single flaw because it helps us avoid a perfect character. We want to have characters that grow. The flaw is a focal point that we can use as a guide to make sure we do not have that hideous perfect character as we tell a story, it is a crutch to lean on when we are unsure how a character would react. It is an imperfect theory that stunts growth in a character because of its heavy handed use, instead of Psychology which is a more fluid tool allowing for diverse characters with more human traits than two dimensional flaws.