How To Discover Your Character’s Flaw To Create Strong Story

 

Photo Credit: Pixabay.com / darksouls1

Why does your character need a flaw?

The more you can humanize your character, the better your reader can relate to them, which deepens your reader's connection to the entire story.  

When you can take this flaw and tie it into the core TRUTH of your story, it will grab them and keep them reading to find out what happens next. 

The best part is that flaw your character has helps generate meaningful conflict for the story, and helps you push past bumps or moments of being stuck. 

Flaws can be misbeliefs or lies the character holds about themselves or others. Maybe your character grew up in the foster system and believes themselves unlovable.  

This makes them feel unlovable and unwanted.  

• They might spend their whole lives trying to prove themselves worthy or lovable. Every choice they make, even the simplest, can affect every action and motivation derived from the flaw to drive the story or create active conflict. 

• Maybe they pick the wrong people to involve themselves with and get in trouble proving that point to themselves over and over, and this leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy.  When, in fact, it is their unwise choices or negative perspective of life that create these situations. 

• Or the opposite: they push away when other people  get too close, which proves to the character they are unloved and unwanted. 

This can create a nice growth ARC for your character throughout the story, and it helps generate conflict connected to the story core. 

The flaw can also help you maintain character consistency and give them internal motivation to help you create a deeper reader experience. 

A flaw might be that your character is stubborn, strong willed, and determined to do everything alone rather than ask for help. 

• Maybe they get angry easily and are quick to judge.

• Or perhaps a deep need to control everything stemming from a childhood trauma, which puts their relationships, job, or mission in jeopardy. 

This character flaw carries the story arc for the character, teaching them the lesson they need to learn, which is to work as a team, and/or to trust others to succeed.  

I just saw a good example of a story flaw (which is a disability) on a TV series, The Good Doctor, season six, episode 16: The Good Lawyer. 

She has a disorder called OCD. She freezes up sometimes in crucial situations, for example, a sound or something else that doesn't go in cycles of three. It totally debilitates her, causing her angst or hardship. 

They linked this disability to a childhood trauma and fear, even though the character knows it is not totally rational. It affects her behaviors, choices, and shapes the life she is currently living.    

How knowing this can help?

Knowing the flaw can create strong motivation and internal conflict for your character. This causes them to act out their choices by taking action, which can create external conflict and situations tied to the flaw or misbelief. 

In the example above for the OCD lawyer, why did the character want to overcome her flaw?  She wanted to be normal and a trial lawyer.  She wanted to be a lawyer, not just a researcher for lawyers. 

Another way to find the flaw is through the theme. 

A novel can have many themes throughout the tale, but there is only one through-theme that drives the story to the end. That through-theme can be represented in your character’s growth arc.  

Finding the character theme is simply the way the theme affects your character at the beginning of the story vs who they become by the end of the story.  

What is the story theme?

Abby Emmons says, “The theme is universal, and the theme means truth.” Here is a great video about the theme. 

Google and Oxford Languages: Theme noun

• 1. the subject of a talk, a piece of writing, a person's thoughts, or an exhibition; a topic.
  "the theme of the sermon was reverence"

Theme examples from NFI.EDU: 

• Love

• Death

• Good vs Evil

• Revenge

• Survival

• Prejudice

You will want to break these down into components. Figure out why they are meaningful to your character, how they shaped your character and motivate your character. (Check Abby Emmons' video linked below in the next section to learn more.)

Connect your character's deep need or desire to a theme, and then flip it on its head to show the polar opposite. You can use it to show drive and motivation through choices and false beliefs about their world or other people. 

In the OCD example, the character’s deep need was to help people.  She was a trial lawyer because a lawyer helped her as a child, but because she has OCD, she thought she could never do that, so settled for being a researcher for trial lawyers. 

In the beginning, the choices she made were around avoiding people and she focused on research. However, this left her frustrated, until she acted despite her flaw, and it became her strength which made her a better trial lawyer with a unique perspective.  

A tip for finding the flaw. 

Abby Emmons says, “Flip the theme to find your character's flaw. Look at your story's truth via the main theme, flip it, and make it a LIE.”  More in this video about why. (More study related video ref: Enneagram.)

We can sometimes use tropes and cliches in the same way as themes to find the flaw.  

Example tropes: 

• The Chosen One: FLIPPED: The character is the chosen one, but doesn’t believe or know it, or just shows up as an unlikely hero/heroine. We often see this trope in fantasy. 

• The Girl Next Door: The girl next door does not believe the boy she is crushing on would look at someone like her.  Because she sees herself as ugly, overweight, or wears glasses or something, she thinks, makes her not attractive enough.  In reality, it is a confidence thing—her character flaw is low self-esteem.  All this connects back to the theme and drive within a story often seen in romance or women’s fiction. 

Example cliches: 

• Too Good To Be True–The Jaded One. Things are too good to be true, so they do not accept the love that is offered or friendship, or they create conflict via mistrust and being difficult to deal with. We might also consider this a trope or theme. 

• A Loose Cannon. The character might have anger issues that cause them problems and embarrassing situations. Or maybe they are too impulsive which causes them to act without thinking, putting them into dangerous situations, or shows a lack of good judgment. These things can also be a character arc connected to the theme. 

Conclusion: 

Understanding your character's flaw and how it connects to your main truth or theme, can help build stronger characters and stories. Knowing that connection helps you leverage conflict and story arc to drive the story through to the end and keep the reader engaged.  

Back to the Basics

Years ago, as a newbie writer, I thought a story had to fall like fairy dust from the sky to the page or else I was a failure as a writer. If it wasn't coming to me like magic, I was obviously a talentless hack. But then, as I rubbed elbows with fellow writers and read helpful tips from famous writers, it finally occurred to me- writing isn't simply talent. It's also hard work paired with education.

I have been the slush pile reader for several writing competitions this year and I couldn't help but think as I read the entries that there was a lot of talent in all these stories, but sometimes, something was missing. They were good, but not yet good enough. I will admit, as a writer, I cringed when that thought went through my head. I mean, I have personally heard that more times than I can count and I surely don't want to be turning into one of those people who tell writers this is good, but not good enough.

So, how does a writer go from good to good enough? Personally, I'm still studying and learning, but in analyzing the ones that didn't emerge from my slush pile, I can say it was mostly for a lack of the basics. There might have been a great voice, but the plot was weak. Great characters, but no conflict.

That's when I decided for this week’s IWSG post, I would recap what I think are the most important elements a story- for other readers and for my own better WIPs too.

The Basics:

1.       Conflict. Conflict raises the stakes. Without any trials for characters to face, there would be no character growth or plot arc (beginning, middle, end). But conflict doesn’t have to be Rambo-esque. Person vs. person can simply be the interpersonal frustrations of two characters (most every romance ever).  A character can also have conflict with nature (To Build a Fire), fate (Harry Potter), self (Fight Club), society (The Hand Maid’s Tale), technology (Blade Runner), or even the supernatural (It).

2.       Theme. Our high school English teachers weren’t wrong—a story needs to have a point. Be it a moral lesson or a comment on relationships or society, there needs to be a reason for someone to take the time to read the story.

3.       Characters. Duh, right? How is there a story without characters? Since that’s a given, let’s go a bit deeper. Flesh out those characters. Who are they? What’s their back story, even the tidbits you’ll never share. What are their hobbies, pet peeves, favorite color? Make them real. Add some flaws. Then make them grow (AKA character arcs). If they’re staying static, either you have a flat character who isn’t meant to inspire, or you need to dig deeper.

4.       Setting. It’s more than just the time and place. Used wisely, it sets the tone and adds dimension to the story. In my Coulter Men series, the first book is about an independent single mom who lives on an island; book two, the hero is an isolated, barren-souled man living in Montana; book three the heroine is hiding her identity and living a lie in the heart of Washington, DC.

5.       Point of View. Who is telling the story? Probably the person the writer wants the reader to most identify with. I will often shift POV from the guy to the gal to get a he said/she said sort of banter going. In order to maintain some mystery, it’s often better to hold the POV cards a bit tighter. If the reader knows every thought of every character, it could be like setting unwrapped presents under the Christmas tree. What’s the fun in that?

Those are a quick rundown of my favorite. What elements of a story do you think are the most important?

Picture credit:

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

Don't forget to join in the IWSG Book Club discussion on Goodreads.

Our August/September book is Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice by Betsy Lerner.
Discussion Fun Day will be September 25, 2019.
Until then, enjoy this freebie created by one of our book club moderators, Juneta Key: Story Study Checklist (Click on the link to open and then save the PDF to your computer.)



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