Designing flawed characters in storytelling

Common writing advice is to make sure your character has flaws. While this is broadly true, what makes a good character flaw is dependent on narrative, genre, and to a certain extent, taste. In romance stories, flaws present the main internal conflict to the romance. Each character’s flaw is the thing blocking them from love, and the thing they need to overcome in order to reach their happy ending. Rather than impeding the romance, the protagonists’ flaws are actually what move the story forward by forcing the characters to work for their love. 

Flaws can be scary, because they’re an opportunity for the reader to dislike the main character. Some writers tackle this by giving their characters fairly neutral flaws, like being clumsy (interestingly, the clumsy character is almost always a woman or girl… we don’t tend to see a lot of brooding mafia men who drop things all the time). The thinking here is that it serves to make the character “relatable” by preventing them from being “too perfect.” However, this loops back to the “relatable” issue above. This kind of non-flaw prevents us from getting to know the characters in a meaningful way by substituting a surface-level difficulty for real intimacy about what the character’s vulnerabilities and coping mechanisms might be. 

The other difficulty is that this kind of flaw has no effect on the narrative. It doesn’t matter to the story. The plot doesn’t change because of a character being clumsy, and they’re not likely to make bad decisions because of it. Whereas if a character’s flaw is that they tend to ice people out instead of talking about issues, that’s going to eventually create problems in their relationships, and can lead to bad decisions–and the spice of narrative: conflict. 

Good character flaws should be:

• Meaningful to the narrative, whether through pushing the conflict forward, or through illustrating the story’s themes. The big conflictual moment in a romcom, for example, where all seems lost, is most effective if it grows out of the main characters’ established flaws. Allow your characters to make mistakes and for those mistakes to change the course of the action. 

• Integrated into character. A good character flaw will feel like a coherent part of the character. The easiest way to do this is just to take one of your character’s strengths and extend it out past the situations where it is useful or called for. Maybe someone who is fantastic at keeping a cool head in tense, high-pressure situations struggles to articulate their emotions because they’re so used to keeping things locked down. Maybe someone who is an effortless social butterfly struggles to hear when they’ve hurt people because they’re deeply afraid of being disliked. Think about situations where your character will struggle to respond well, or where the opposite of your character’s strengths are needed, and try to integrate some of those situations into your plot. 

• Grounded in backstory. Why is this character the way that they are? This is the unending allure of the bad boy with a heart of gold. What made him this way? What other dimensions does he have inside of him? But this is applicable to all characters. We want to know what shaped them and why they behave the way that they do. Sympathetic backstory is a huge component in winning over readers when your character makes a bad decision. Allowing us to understand why your character acts this way is one of the best ways to build sympathy.