059: Another Common Character Mistake and How to Fix It
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Another common character mistake and how to fix it
Hello, welcome to the blank page to book podcast. I wanted to do kind of a follow up episode kind of a part two, I guess to an episode that I did a while back, that was called a common character mistake and how to fix it. And this is another common character mistake and how to fix it. And in that episode, I talked about the mistake of not letting us have much access to a character's internal world, to their thoughts to their feelings, how they're reacting to things internally. So you can check that episode out, if you'd like to hear about that. This episode is going to focus on another character mistake, which is having characters that are too perfect. I'm going to talk about this, how I see this show up. And then reasons why this can happen, how this can happen and how to fix it. Because this is this is a big one that can really derail the story. If you have a character who is just absolutely perfect. With no flaws at all.
There are a lot of things that can happen, the reader can just stop reading, because they're like, I'm not invested in this character, they respond perfectly, they always make the right decision, they have no conflict, like why am I reading this. And it really can have an impact on the momentum of the story. If there's not conflict, if they're doing everything right, then that can provide a lack of momentum that can affect the pacing and the conflict and just all kinds of things. So this is something that's important to pay attention to no matter what genre you write. Okay, let's talk about how I see this in manuscripts that I work on that I edit. This can show up as characters who respond perfectly in every situation, they handle things so well, they always make the right decision, they cope. They're extremely resilient. Anything that happens in the story that gets thrown out them, they just handle perfectly. Yeah, they just they really respond perfectly. They are the perfect person, as far as their relationships go. So they might be the perfect spouse, the perfect daughter, the perfect friend, the perfect employee. And they are so giving and loving to the people in their lives, that they just have these incredible relationships. Now the other people might be train wrecks and be messy and have flaws. But our main character shows up so well for these people. And there's just a sense that yeah, there's just this sense that they're a little bit too one dimensional, because they don't have flaws. Every person on the face of this earth has at least one character flaw.
There is no perfect person, there is no perfect person who responds perfectly in every single situation. People in real life are flawed and messy and chaotic and choose wrong and make mistakes. And so you need to make sure that your main character is acting that way as well. So, I want to talk to you about like how, why this can happen. Why this can happen that we get these kind of flat perfect one dimensional characters. One big reason for why this can happen and this is something that debut authors, new writers can fall into sometimes it can happen if the main character is a self insert, meaning that your main character is very similar to you. You have drawn upon your own experiences you have drawn upon your own personality and relationships and life and infused either a little bit of that or a lot of that into your main character.
Now, there's nothing wrong with drawing from your own life experiences and taking things that have happened to you as inspiration or taking aspects of yourself and using that as those as inspiration for your character. That's fine, up until a certain point. If your main character is too similar to you to yourself, you're going to have a very tough time seeing that character accurately portraying them accurately. And there is a tendency to make them a little bit too one dimensional. This can also happen if you haven't really thought through who this character is. Now I'm a big fan of doing character work. I have a character profile that I'll include in the description of this episode, if you want to get a copy of a character profile template that you can use to answer all kinds of questions about your characters, and to really flesh them out. And I think that that can be helpful. Even if you are someone who identifies as a pantser, where you don't like to do outlining. You don't want to do all the plotting and brainstorming. You just want to go into the story. And that's fine. But I think it's worth spending a little bit of time even just a tiny amount of time thinking through your main character like at minimum, what what is this character's personality? Like? What are a few things that happen to them before the story starts, like their backstory? What's their motivation? And then what are their character flaws? Or at least one? I mean, even if you can just pinpoint one, that's a big deal. What is what is this person's flaw? What is their weakness?
Even if you spend some time thinking through that, whether it's in the beginning before you start writing, or as you're drafting, and as you're getting to know the story, I think that's so helpful. Now, of course, you can do this after, if you're a pure pantser. And you were just telling yourself the story, and you want to get the rough draft out and then go back to flesh in the details and really make the story solid, then you can absolutely do that after you can take some time to get to know the characters while you're drafting. And then go back in and polish it and fix kind of fix your character issues. That's fine.
But at any point, what I'm saying is that I think it's worth spending some time on your main character to figure out who they are, and what their weaknesses are. So when you're thinking about a personality, what are their strengths? What are they? What comes easily to them? What are they good at? But then also, what are their flaws? What are their weaknesses? What are they? Maybe, what maybe can't they see that other people can see?
So yeah, I think this can happen if you just don't spend any time really focusing on your characters, and you're purely focused on the plot, which don't get me wrong plot is extremely important. But even if you are writing super commercial fiction, where the focus is mainly on the story, even in those novels, in those types of books, there's at least a sense that you are reading about a real character, the character seems authentic, which means that the writer has done some work either in drafting or editing, whatever, they've done some work to help flesh out who this person is, right. And I think one other thing that can happen is a writer might give their character a flaw. But it's not enough. It's not a real flaw. The flaw will be something like they're very stubborn. Which Yes, that is not always a great trait to have. It's not great to be stubborn in every single situation and never be willing to compromise and be bullheaded. Yeah, that is a flaw. But it can also be an asset too, you can have a character who is stubborn and very determined and very ambitious, and very in touch with what they want.
So being stubborn, yes, it's a flaw. But it's I would add at least one more flaw or weakness, if you feel like that is your main character's flaw? And the same thing, this is the other one that I see more more often is, their, their flaw or their weakness is that their they care too much about other people. Which again, yes, if you have a self sacrificing character. Sure. You know, that can be that's a flaw that's a weakness. But it's not strong enough. I hope I'm communicating this properly, that it really needs to cause some stress or some anxiety or like some problems for the character. And yes, you can create problems by being too self sacrificing and caring more about other people. But that's also something that our society at least tends to reward, especially in women, which is a bummer, and that's a whole nother conversation. But if you can only identify one flaw and it's something that's like, yes, it's a flaw but also it's not that bad. Do some more digging, really unearth what, what the flaw can be. This is something that I had to dig into with a character with the main character in my first novel, my first book I ever wrote, the main character was an alcoholic, and I used a lot of my own experience, too. I infused a lot of my own experience into this character to portray how she would show up what her relationships would be like, but I had to make her distinct enough from me that I wasn't doing a self insert. And part of that required coming up with flaws for her. So my character, that character was a liar. She was dishonest, not just evasive and not telling the full truth, but she would straight up lie to people. She was also manipulative, she figured out how to manipulate people around her.
And, yeah, she just she was just not a good person. And a lot of that was because of her disease because she was in active addiction. But she was not a good friend, she she lied and was extremely manipulative, she wasn't able to show up for the people in her life. It cost her her job, it cost her her relationships, like the drinking did, but also these personality traits that I gave her really cost her. So when you went wherever you're at right now, with your writing, whether you are brainstorming or drafting or you have already written it and you're in the revision process, just make sure that you can articulate what the flaw or flaws of your main character are.
And if you're having trouble, if you can't quite articulate what that is, then that's a sign that you need to do a little bit more work to infuse more of those weaknesses into your character. Don't be afraid to make messy characters, it doesn't mean that you need to be like walking disasters on and be alcoholics or anything like that. But just don't be afraid to make them messy. I mean, people in real life are complex and complicated and messy and don't respond perfectly and have messy relationships. And you absolutely need to make your main character reflect that. Again, no matter what genre you're writing in, if it's a human, if your main character is a human, then they need to have flaws.
All right. Good luck with this. Again, if you're if you're wherever you are, in the process, take some time and think through how you could infuse flaws or weaknesses into your character and how it will show up and what it will cost them or what the consequences will be in your story. I really think this is one of the best uses of your time, is to think through all of these things for your main character, because your story is going to be stronger, the readers are going to be able to connect better to your characters, even if they don't like them. Even if they don't, that we don't we're not trying to get readers to necessarily like our characters, but they're going to connect to them and understand them and have a strong response to them. Whatever that response is, that's what we want. So good luck, and I'll see you next week.