Character Flaws

From a discussion on The GITS Club, a question from jl:

Hi there, new to this board and personally starting on a new screenplay. I have ideas for the story, but I’m not satisfied with my main character having enough depth yet.

So I’d like to ask: what are some of your favorite character flaws?

It seems a lot of movies I’ve seen recently have had the flawed character start out as someone who is too passive and does not stand for himself. But, it almost seems too cliche at this point.
I’m curious to hear of the characters that have stood out to you in having an interesting flaw.

The replies are interesting and I encourage GITS readers to take a look. Here’s what I had to say:

This is an interesting thread on many levels. One need only look at 1-hour dramas on TV to see a preponderance of flawed Protagonists. The reasons for such characters are multiple: Makes the character more human, more identifiable, more sympathetic; gives the character room to grow over series arc; provides a specific point of reference upon which to brainstorm episode ideas; and in general, makes the character more interesting.

However it’s a bit tricky because all too often, I read scripts where it’s clear the character flaw feels rather slapped on, as if the writer thought at some latter stage of story development or received a note from a script reader that the character in question is not interesting enough, seems too perfect, etc, then plucked some flaw out of mid-air and applied onto the character, referencing the flaw maybe 4 times in the script — each of those times standing out to my eyes as sore thumbs.

I am reminded of a conversation I had with a screenwriter, as he told me about a project he was writing for New Line. He said that in a recent script meeting, he and his partner got a note that the execs didn’t feel enough “sympathy” for the Protagonist. I said, “Let me guess. They suggested you add a significant death in the guy’s past.” He laughed and said, “Exactly.”

That’s an example of what McKee calls “outside in” storytelling, rather than what I keep harping on at GITS: Go into the story, dig into the characters, find their core essence / center of being, and discover their flaws organically in that process.

If you allow that no person is perfect, that should extend to movie characters as well. Therefore if you dig into a character long enough, logic suggests you will discover their flaws.

What I like to do — and what I promote with my students — is to open a Word file for each primary character, then do a one-on-one first person interview. You literally type out a question ala, “What are you doing right now,” then sit for a moment, trying to get into that character’s mindset, and type up a response, “I’m sitting outside at a Starbucks, drinking an orange juice and eating an egg bagel sandwich.” That’s a starting point which you can follow up with any number of questions: Do you do this everyday? Why orange juice, why not coffee? Doesn’t it bother you to spend so much money at a place like Starbucks? Why Starbucks, why not eat breakfast at home? And so on. The idea is to develop a ‘relationship’ with the character. And as their answers reveal themselves, you begin to get a sense of who they are. If you do that long enough and dig deeply enough, it’s almost certain that they will surprise you with a response, perhaps suddenly saying out of the blue, “I am so sad” or whatever.

Robert Towne says the single best way to zero in on the core of a character is to ask this question: What are you afraid of? And I think that’s right. Because humans will do almost anything to avoid things they fear, avoid pain — which means much of who they are, their personality and habits are tied to avoiding that which they fear.

Consider Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs. What is her major character flaw? I would argue that it is childhood guilt she feels about the death of her father. When a parent dies, a child will often assume some responsibility for their death, even if they are not culpable at all. Why? Because guilt they can live with, it’s something they can control; the uncertainty of life, which can take away a parent in a split second, is too frightening to incorporate into one’s logic. It’s Clarice’s guilt that causes her to scoop up one of the lambs at that farm in Montana, a desperate attempt to save it — and symbolically her father — from slaughter.

So Clarice has all that going on in her as well as the shadow of her father’s death looming over her all the time. So why does she want to become an FBI agent, working homicides? Sure, she wants to catch “bad guys,” probably tied to the legacy of her father’s work as a sheriff. But I also think it’s a way that she can avoid that gnawing fear she has deep inside — about having to confront her infantile sense of guilt.

In sum, I agree that character flaws are — in general — a good thing for a writer to be cognizant of and work with re their characters. My point is the best way to do that is not conjuring up possible flaws as abstractions, but rather by digging into the characters.

To be clear: I’m not suggesting anyone in this thread is going about their process in the ‘wrong’ way, I just saw this as an opportunity to — once more — make the point of how critical it is to dig into our characters. That’s when stories can come alive.

What do you think? How important are character flaws? What’s the best way to source a character flaw for / in a character?

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