Ink Blots: Thoughts on Writing from the Tentacle Pen

Chapter Three - Flaws Do Not Make a Characters

One of the pieces of advice I keep seeing made is to give your characters flaws to make them more believable. I think this is the wrong approach. It doesn't really encourage well rounded characters but instead perfect or bland characters "spiced up" with a few harmless flaws. Real people aren't like this.

Flaws are important, but so are strengths, interests, personality quirks, voice, and background. Taking any otherwise flawless character and making them clumsy doesn't make them any more interesting. To illustrate I'm going to give two character examples, you tell me which is more interesting.

Example #1: Emily is a typical 24 year old who just moved to a new city to take a job as a nurse. She's average height, slim, with long blond hair and blue eyes. She likes romantic comedies and when not at work spends most of her time at Starbucks. Despite being shy and a bit clumsy she quickly makes friends with her fellow nurses and catches the eye of an attractive surgical resident. He's tall with dark hair and eyes and how does he have time to work out while working 30 hour shifts?

Example #2: Jamie is working hard to make her dream of being a doctor come true. She's finally finished medical school, even though she was the first in her family to even attend college, and now she is embarking on her medical residency. Few would guess the young woman with all the tattoos and dark pixie cut was on her way to being a surgeon. She's had to work hard to overcome the preconceptions people have of her and it's hard for her to open up to other people. The long hours she has to put in at the hospital make it all but impossible to socialize with anyone outside of work, forget going to see an action movie or play her guitar. Thankfully she's made a few friends among her fellow residents. One in particular, a tall young man with a biting sense of humor and passion for science fiction might be becoming more than just a friend.

You can easily see the difference in these two examples. Nothing much makes Emily stand out, even with a couple harmless flaws (though clumsiness might not be harmless to her patients). She's too perfect and too ordinary, there's no internal conflict to her so everything is by neccesity going to be external drama. Jamie on the other hand stands out, and not just because I gave her a rather distinct look, but because there's more to her. We know she's a first generation college grad so she probably didn't come from a family with a lot of money. Her appearance means people judge her for not being what they imagine a doctor should look like and that means she has to constantly prove herself which adds even more stress to her life. Her flaws are more believable and relevant because they follow from her back story rather than just being tacked on in the hopes it makes her more interesting.

So how do you go about making a well rounded character like Jamie and avoid an Emily? First I think you should write down all the important information about your character to reference. Grab a sheet of paper or open a blank file and start by writing down the basics: name, age, and appearance. Then start filling out the details of who they are, what are their likes, dislikes, important people in their life (both good and bad), their problems, their dreams, etc. If you aren't sure what to include there are numerous character sheets available online, I suggest looking at a few and building your own based on the type of story you are writing. Then keep it updated as you write your story. You do not want to have a situation where you give two contradictory pieces of information about your character or have them act in a way that is out of character.

I strongly believe that it is characters that make stories really memorable. There are countless detectives in fiction but even over 100 years later it's Sherlock Holmes who is most famous and has been the subject of more adaptations than any other character in film and television. Why? It's not because of the mysteries he solved, some of them are brilliant but others haven't held up as well over time, instead his character is so strong and so interesting that people still keep finding it compelling. I'm not discounting the importance of  good plot, most novels are plot not character driven, but those characters are the foundation that holds up the plot. Unless your readers are invested in the characters, care about what happens to them, the plot isn't going to stand on it's own.