How to Write a Character Flaw

hi guys it's Ellen Rock freelance editor this is the third video in my series on protagonists we've talked about how to create a goal driven character as well as how to make sure your character is driving the plot today I'm going to talk about how to write a character that's flawed and how to make sure that that flaw works well with your story there are two different problems you can have with your flaw the flaw could be absent or the flaw could just not be working very well with your story assuming that you have purposefully it omitted a flaw it's most common that you're overly identifying the character as a good guy or a nice person and you have difficulty giving the character negative traits you also might be identifying that character as a hero and you want that character to just seem really strong and really capable and a really great person and adding flaws feels like you're weakening the character so you really don't have to be afraid of that because readers actually find flaws to be more endearing and it makes your character more likeable and more relatable so if you omit adapt law because you're afraid it might make your character not likable or it might make your character less of a hero don't worry about it the best heroes have flows the best characters have flaws it's nothing to worry about if you're concerned that it might make your protagonist not seem like as good of a person or as heroic now most writers do understand the concept of a flaw at least they understand that the flaw is something that exists and something that should be present in their character unfortunately a lot of people don't understand the difference between a flaw and sort of a quirk or a personality trait this can make a huge difference in your novel because of what your character really has is a slightly negative personality trait that's not going to serve the function that the flaw serves in the book and the flaw is actually a really important part of the characterization as well as the plot itself so the main difference between the character flaw and a character trait or a quirk is that the character flaw will have a stronger connection to the problems that the care Durr is facing so the flow will cause actual trouble in the life of the character whereas a quirk might be like clumsiness or overspending or something like that it might not really contribute significantly to the plot it may be relevant occasionally but it's not it's not a deeper emotional challenge that the character is having to cope with the character flaw will actually interfere with the characters ability to move forward in a helpful and productive way and this is because the flaw is connected to backstory and connected to a false belief that the character has I talked about this in a blog post and I'll put a link to that in the description if you want to read a little bit more in depth about this issue because it's a little complicated but essentially the character has a relevant a key moment of backstory and that moment of backstory has led the character to a belief so perhaps the character grew up very poor and that led to the belief for that character that the only way to be happy is to have money so the characters flaw then will be connected to that belief and connect it to that backstory so the character may have a flaw of being overly stingy or prioritizing money over family and over the course of the novel that will interfere with the characters ability to be happy or to achieve their goal or their or satisfy their motivation the character in the beginning won't see that this is a flaw or they may see that as a flaw but believe that they don't have any other option but eventually the character will come to the conclusion that they need to change and that they have this false belief and that this element of themselves of how they conceptualize things or how they react to things is a flaw so essentially if you're trying to determine whether or not your character has a true flaw or just a personality quirk you need to focus on how it's impacting the novel and whether or not it really affects how that character reacts and moves forward because the flaw should be getting the character into trouble it's the flaws connection to back story until false belief that leads the reader to be able to identify with the character and empathize with the character even if the flaw is very severe or very negative a lot of the time I get asked by people how do you write a character who has a very negative trader a very unlikable trader does a very negative or unlikable thing and make readers still care about that character and the best way to do it is to connect it to backstory and connect it to a false belief so then the reader can look at this character who does a horrible thing and identify with why they've done it it doesn't mean they would react that way themselves it doesn't mean they would agree with it but they can identify for this person they can connect those dots to see how this person arrived in this situation so if you follow this you can actually get pretty unlikable flaws without losing the readers empathy towards the character for instance you could have a man who drives drunk and accidentally kills a child which would be a very very unlikable flaw driving drunk getting drunk it's very unlikable but if you connect this character's alcoholism to the past into a false belief you can better give the sense that this this guy might have turned out different had this not happened or this guy might have been a different person in a different situation when I've had this flaw and the reader can really connect and say okay I understand why the person the character reacted this way if you don't give your character flaw the main effect that it will have on your novel is that the character won't have room for growth because without a flaw any way that you try to create a character arc or you try to create some kind of lesson or morale or growth at the end of the story it's going to feel forced because what makes the what makes the character arc field natural is when it's connected to something in the past if you don't connect it to anything and then try to create some sort of lesson it is it often feels sort of artificial or sort of tacked on and I see a lot of the time around the climax of the novel that I get the sense that the writer sort of tacking on the character that they sort of try to insert this lesson at the last minute but the pieces weren't put into place throughout the story and the way that you put that into place is that you make sure that it becomes clear preferably within the first 1 2 3 scenes what what the character flaw is possibly you would reveal where it came from but depending on the book you may not reveal the backstory until later on but the reader should have a sense of why the character has this flaw and then get a sense of how its manifesting in their life and that's what you really want to demonstrate early on in the novel within the first few scenes is how this flaw impacting their decision impacting how they're moving forward affecting their life in a negative way and it may not be a tremendously prominent element of the novel depending on the genre that you're writing it may be fairly subtle but so long as those pieces are in there even if they're only just barely in there when you get to the climax it won't have that tacked on or that artificial feel like you pulled out the character arc just out of nowhere just to create a character arc because you felt like you had to or because you read that books are supposed to have character arcs so you found a way to sort of stick one in if you don't establish it early on you may as well not try to create a character arc in the end because it just won't feel authentic and it can actually be worse than no character arc at all if you realize that you don't have a flaw for your protagonist the best way that you can add one is sort of think about the theme or the idea that in either inspired you to create the book or one that you feel suits the plot and in suits your overall goal or the vision that you have for the novel if you have a hard time finding any logical place for that flaw to come from dig into the goal the motivation the backstory how do these things all connect together and if you can create that clear line of logic between all of those factors that's when you're going to create a very complicated but very clear and well drawn character so I hope this video helped you to understand the character flaw and how it will work within your novel tomorrow I'm going to be going over how to create realistic characters in the last video in my protagonist series

Channel: Ellen Brock

Views: 82,533

Rating: 4.9808125 out of 5

Keywords: writing, characters, flaw, fiction, characterization, character arc, novel, writing characters, character flaw, how to write, how to, writing advice, writing tips, novel boot camp, ellen brock, editor, editing, realistic characters, strong characters

Id: lrtvEYVmA9E

Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 07 2016