Flawed with Purpose

Not a one of us is in this life is perfect, which is a fact that’s beyond obvious. Some would even say that to be flawed is to be human. I don’t know if that’s true (or if anyone actually says that), but what I do know is that last month, I myself fucked up. For the past few months, I’ve made these entries into a series of sorts on the different major elements that go into writing a novel, and last month I tried my best to distill one of the most crucial aspects of fiction into a single, one-to-two-thousand word blog entry. The topic was on characters and the various things to consider when populating your story with them, and while I think I poured over some salient points, I still somehow neglected to even mention what I’ve always considered to be one of the most important aspects of writing characters: their flaws.

I’m terrified of being online sometimes, I only started this blog to help hold myself accountable on my publishing journey and have a place to post updates - but every time I hit the publish button, I shudder while imagining all the imperfections that lurk in my words and how each entry could be the one that pulls back the curtain on any credibility I might establish forever. Alas, within a few hours of posting last month’s entry, I realized my mistake. While this is a most cringey oversight on my part, I will roll with the intrinsic synergy here and acknowledge my own flaws by doing what I’ve always threatened to do in this blog, and that is to do a deeper dive on a previous entry. So this month, we’re talking character flaws - that is, of course, right after the monthly writing updates.

This month I didn’t write shit. This isn’t quite true, but I did take a break from my current work in progress to devote time to a step in my publishing journey that I should have taken long ago. For years, I always thought self-publishing was going to be the route I would take to get where I wanted to be as an author. However, after dipping my toes into the process and even coming up with a business plan, something about the chaos of last year caused my brain to shift. At long last, I decided to send out some query letters for Codetta, the novel I’ve dedicated the most time to polishing over the years. I’ve always had some sort of bullshit outsider-complex fucking up my mentality, and I suppose that was why I always assumed I had no chance in traditional publishing. However, after taking the time (and I’ve actually done some of these steps several times over the years now) to polish up the most recent version of the synopsis and hook for the query letter, I think I realized that there are parts of this process that I actually enjoy now. Maybe this makes me not a real writer (judging by the typical opinions on Twitter), but I dunno, writing a synopsis can be kind of fun? Either way, this is a massive step for me, and I’m absolutely stoked for the rejections to begin piling up.

There is no getting around it, a character needs flaws. As mentioned previously, it is one of the most critically important elements of character writing. As there’s no such thing as a perfect person in reality, so should it be true within the world of your story, at least if you want to keep readers intrigued. A good character flaw is not simply a trivial or arbitrary deficit on the outer most layer of your character’s demeanor, appearance, or behavior, but rather a clue that hints to the reader about the deeper levels of profundity that the character in question possesses. Flaws make the fictional feel more real, more relatable, and they also tend to have a backstory of their own. A flaw doesn’t just make a character more interesting (though they tend to), a well-written flaw makes your story all the more worth telling.

While I did manage to talk a bit about character arcs in my previous entry, arcs and how to write them is another core concept worth delving much further into in its own right. Arcs are of course the main through line of growth and development a character goes through as they act on and react to the events within the plot. However, since flaws didn’t come up quite very much at all in my entry, I didn’t go into sufficient detail in explaining how arcs and flaws relate and build off each other. A flaw is not just a superficial detail, as mentioned, but often plays a crucial role in both the inception and curve of the arc, as well as texturing and complicating the character change along the way. Flaws so often represent, either directly or in mere flickers, the bigger issue that the character must face if they are to live happily ever after.

Yet another crucial part of character writing that could use an entire entry (and I believe I have written on this at some point in this blog) is the concept of wants and needs. To summarize it as succinctly as possible, wants represent the (occasionally superficial) desires that prompt the character into action, while needs are the essential (often internal) problem that the character must resolve if they are to achieve what is necessary to live their best lives after the story concludes. Flaws are often the outward manifestation of both these things, they represent aspects of the need, and also stand in the way of the character achieving their want so easily. In many ways, you can often conceive the entire outline for a novel beginning with the seed of character flaw. I once dubbed this “wabi-sabi outlining”, referencing the Japanese concept that imperfection and beauty go hand-in-hand. Often times, the emotional impact of a story’s ending falls on whether or not the character learned enough during their arc to overcome their weaknesses in the crucial moments of the climax, and depending on how you plan things out, all of that can originate from the questions of what is the character’s flaw, what’s the backstory to this flaw, how does it hold them back, how does their antagonist play off (or mirror the flaw), and do they overcome it?

Essentially, a good flaw can lead you directly to the emotional core of your entire story, and while there are no requirements that all good stories must be written with this in mind, it is a tried and true method of composition. It’s seeing ourselves in characters, relating to their struggles, and feeling like a part of their victories or tragedies that give a narrative emotional weight. While flaws alone don’t make a character interesting or understandable, they do provide hints about a character’s past and future, all the while coloring their present with conflict and intrigue. So, just as I have not been afraid to claim and learn from my own flaw (mostly being the belief that I can summarize important concepts of fiction in a reasonably brief blog entry), you too shouldn’t shy away from delving deep into those beautiful, messy flaws that give a character their ultimate definition. Next month we’ll continue on with our series on the elements that go into writing a novel, so I hope my lessons from the journey continue to be of use on your own. Thank you again for reading and joining me along the way.