A Character Doesn’t Need A Flaw To Be Compelling.

A character doesn’t need a flaw to be compelling.

In writing discourse, I often see the advice to give your protagonist and such a weakness of some kind, a personal ‘flaw’, otherwise they’ll be boring. Which, I’m gonna do the controversial thing and just…disagree. Straight up.

That’s not to say the advice can’t be useful. It is, for a lot of new writers. But it’s not the ONLY way to write good characters. In fact, I think overly relying on it is a detrimental to a writer’s work. It limits a writer’s options, subconsciously. If a character can only be interesting with flaws, then flaws are what makes a character interesting…and then everything else gets underdeveloped.

When I say ‘everything else’, I mean things that are easily overlooked. Things like philosophy and worldview. Things like how their traumatic backstory changes how they see, experience, think and feel. Not just in terms of trauma. In terms of mindset. Stuff that is harder to develop, takes a bit more than than just making lists of strengths and weaknesses.

Because the way one thinks is so, so different to personality, and if you don’t consider it? All the characters will simply share your beliefs. That’s bad. That’s very bad. Characters need diversity. They need to have different values. Things like whether or not it’s worth to go to war over a trivial village. Things like how they view authority, those beneath them, those on their level, among other things. Beliefs won’t necessarily be political opinions.

Like, a character can become interesting without having a single personality flaw. They can lack flaws and still not be glorified.