What is a character flaw? It is usually used to describe some sort of quirk to a persons personality , that prevents them from being a perfect person. This flaw can lead to major issues through the story, usually in the form of loss of relationships or life threatening situations. However they can also draw people to the person showing the flaw, as people are intimidated by perfection. Flaws are part of what separate a well written character from an easily predictable cardboard cutout. A character has to have weaknesses or no one will ever expect it to have any problems, and why read a story if you know exactly how it will turn out the very first time you read it?
Of course having someone be all flaws is a bad idea too, as it is much harder to sympathize with someone who has no strengths. You literally, can't pick out something he could do to help the situation. A flaw doesn't exactly have to be a bad thing either. For example in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians book series, the protagonist, Percy, is told that his fatal flaw is loyalty. I know it sounds incredibly respectable and is actually a nice thing to be a loyal person. But in this context, it means he will never doubt or betray the people he cares about. His faith in his friends will not waver, until he is given absolute proof, he will not believe that they have done anything wrong. So if he chooses the wrong friends this character trait could easily become very fatal. At the same time, his loyalty attracts people to him though, after all, he will never give up on you, and lots of people appreciate that.
A good character flaw is like that, you know it could get your character killed, but you also know you can't change it without changing your character in dangerous ways either, and changing it could also lose them some of the connections they hold onto. Character flaws don't have to be permanent, heck you could have entire sections of your story devoted to them getting rid of that flaw. But usually, it gets replaced with another character flaw. Back to the Percy example: If Percy Jackson were to lose his loyalty flaw, it would likely be a traumatic experience that would change his entire character. If the trauma is extreme enough, he might jump to the opposite side of the spectrum and start betraying people fairly often because he couldn't believe in anyone anymore. A deep seated character flaw has to be treated with extreme care because it is a part of who they are and you can't just rip it out without consequences.
There is another type of flaw though, the physical weaknesses of a character. The most famous example I can think of for this type of flaw is Superman under the affects of kryptonite, where just getting near it makes him incredibly weak. Another less extreme example would be having a limp, or not being able to swim. These flaws are naturally dangerous because they can result in physical dangers when in the wrong situations. But they are not necessarily as permanent, Superman can get away from/destroy the kryptonite, People can learn to swim normally. However, they can be completely permanent too. like maybe the limp is from a peg leg, or I can't swim because the moment I touch water, the electricity coursing through my body spreads out through the water and damages everything the water touches, including me. Superman will never get over kryptonite.
Either way though, character flaws are important because they pull the people in your stories away from the realms of unstoppable. If a character reaches unstoppable and you haven't used some earlier character flaw to give him a weakness, then you have to start relying on the powers of dues ex machina to get you out of a situation. Unless something like that is well written, it feels like a cop out, and some people won't appreciate it.
My reasons for writing this post? I hope I give all of my characters good enough flaws that I never have a Unbeatable god introduced as a main cast member. As I was thinking on that I wondered what exactly I would describe as a character flaw and decided to write this post about my thoughts. The Spaceballs picture is also naturally, about how a good villain is willing to take advantage of a heroes standard flaws in order to win.
Picture from a google search on an example I remembered from Spaceballs, the movie.
Excellent writing. May I ask if you are an author for a living? Have you published books before?
Yeah, I haven't actually written anything I feel is good enough for publishing yet. I'm hoping to improve the quality of my writing through my posts here.
Well I think you are going to do well if you can find a voice and then fine a niche that people are interested in.
I wrote one investment article before I knew much of anything about steemit and of course I only got one or two comments.
I have lots of topics I'd like to write about, but also need to figure out what the niche is. Once we get a following, I think I'll be able to broaden into other areas of interest. Until then I'm just trying to add value through comments and build a following, such that when I write there are actually people who will see the articles in their "home" section and read them. I think its a long and slow process, but certainly, we need to have steem power in order to have influence. You already have a pretty good influence score. Do you mind telling me what you have done to raise it. Mine is stuck at 33 and I do have 3244 steempower I've bought, with about 100 of those earned through commenting.
That is what he would like to do. Which is why I prodded him to get on steemit and WRITE. That is his only real barrier stopping him. He wants to be a writer, but to do that you need to actually write. So hopefully with encouragement from people like you he'll start doing it more often.
Thank you for the feedback. I've been reading quite a bit of your commentary and I think you need a purple heart for how much effort you put into curating steemit. I am truly grateful you are willing to fight the good fight with all the crap that has been dished out by bernie...
It can be tough. I think why people that have tried to do it in the past tend to not succeed "may be" (I could be wrong) is that the attacks by Bernie and others wear on them. Their instinctive nature is to lash out and attack back. So when being called names, belittled, etc eventually they call names or belittle back. I get it. It is tough for me to resist at times.
Some of them will get artistic with their art images on their posts in very graphic ways which can even be a form of an attack. I would say I even failed at this to a degree if you look at my initial image. I likely should not have arranged that the way I did. No one has challenged me on it, that is simply my personal hindsight assessment.
I try really hard not to descend to their level. If I can do that then I believe the things they say to me only end up making them look worse. I have transcended my point in life where a bully in a hallway saying something at my expense will make me cower and the herd pat the bully on the back so they don't become the next victim.
I long ago stood face to face with bullies. I simply need to try really hard not to become a bully myself. I am sure that the steemit community will call me out on it if I do. I also know those I speak against will be looking for any fleshy part I might expose through which they can stab me.
I've always found the best villains to be relatively normal people who are doing "evil" things for what they perceive to be a good reason.
For example, they are the ones willing to do "whatever it takes" to gain power for some reason they feel justifies it.
Bad villains are the ones who are evil just to be evil, or "the big bad" of the story.
Yeah, there are several times I have read or watched a story where the villains only major issue is that they take a 'the ends justify the means approach'. Everyone has a justification for their actions, no matter how bad they are. Very few people do some horrible act going "this will be fun!" instead its usually "by doing this action I will get this to happen, and I need that response"
There are some good villains who are evil for evils sake though. The joker is a well known example of someone who does bad things just because he can and still has an interesting character. I've heard the antagonist from the anime Monster is also a really interesting villain. It really depends on how you write them I suppose.
Well written in almost an essay like format.
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