But you also have to be able to allow them to fall and not have their mess cleaned up as quickly as possible. You have to allow them to be wrong, to "not get it," to be a little annoying, or incapable, or clumsy or afraid or allow the wool to be pulled over their eyes from time to time.
I think this is the key point. For me, writing flawed, believable characters is not so much a matter of formally assigning flaws to them (this character has a hot temper, this character is suspicious of everyone) so much as just letting the characters screw up, fail, and be wrong in more or less equal measure with each other.
That, and it's also important to keep in mind that most character traits are not always a flaw or a virtue. One thing I absolutely love, on TV or in books, is seeing something that is normally considered one of the character's better traits come back to bite them, or seeing something that is usually a flaw work to their advantage. In fact, most of the traits that we think of as classic hero traits (bravery, impulsiveness, loyalty, a strong moral compass) can be "flaws" under the right circumstances -- someone who is very upright and moral might run into problems with his marriage because his wife feels that he holds her to an unrealistic moral standard, or someone who always throws herself into danger for other people could actually be the cause of the entire party being endangered if she misjudges the situation. There was a writing-meta post a little while back that really stuck with me, about how a lot of fantasy writers give their character a background as a runaway or a child thief in order to give them cool thief skills and underworld contacts, but don't also deal with it as a realistic lifestyle including the down side of having been raised that way (emotional problems, trouble relating to other people, etc).
I think that in a lot of cases, what makes the difference between a caricature of a hero, and a well-rounded character, is simply the writer recognizing that any of the protagonist's qualities, "good" or "bad", can have good or bad consequences depending on the circumstances, and putting him or her in situations that bring both the good and bad aspects to the forefront.
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chiming
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Date: 2011-09-22 04:09 am (UTC)From:I think this is the key point. For me, writing flawed, believable characters is not so much a matter of formally assigning flaws to them (this character has a hot temper, this character is suspicious of everyone) so much as just letting the characters screw up, fail, and be wrong in more or less equal measure with each other.
That, and it's also important to keep in mind that most character traits are not always a flaw or a virtue. One thing I absolutely love, on TV or in books, is seeing something that is normally considered one of the character's better traits come back to bite them, or seeing something that is usually a flaw work to their advantage. In fact, most of the traits that we think of as classic hero traits (bravery, impulsiveness, loyalty, a strong moral compass) can be "flaws" under the right circumstances -- someone who is very upright and moral might run into problems with his marriage because his wife feels that he holds her to an unrealistic moral standard, or someone who always throws herself into danger for other people could actually be the cause of the entire party being endangered if she misjudges the situation. There was a writing-meta post a little while back that really stuck with me, about how a lot of fantasy writers give their character a background as a runaway or a child thief in order to give them cool thief skills and underworld contacts, but don't also deal with it as a realistic lifestyle including the down side of having been raised that way (emotional problems, trouble relating to other people, etc).
I think that in a lot of cases, what makes the difference between a caricature of a hero, and a well-rounded character, is simply the writer recognizing that any of the protagonist's qualities, "good" or "bad", can have good or bad consequences depending on the circumstances, and putting him or her in situations that bring both the good and bad aspects to the forefront.