The “dark and mysterious stranger” type of love interests seem popular these days. You know, the characters that appear out of a dream and transform the protagonist’s otherwise mundane life. There’s nothing inherently wrong with them, but they often share one fatal problem – they’re perfect. Their appearance – beautiful and sexy and perfect. Their love for the protagonist – pure and perfect and wholly devoted. Their motivations – often veiled at first, but perfect and noble at their core.
Here’s why flawed characters are better:
Perfect characters are unbelievable. That may seem counter-intuitive, since these stories are often wrapped in some manner of fantasy or sci-fi. Some argue that because the situation is fictional anyway, there’s an allowance for characters that are beyond reality. Here’s the problem with that: readers are willing to suspend their disbelief, but that suspension has limits. Stories can throw all manner of plot devices at them – trolls, mages, time travel – and readers will accept them without much question because those things exist naturally in fiction.
People, however, do not exist only in fiction. Readers won’t run across trolls in their daily life, but they’ll sure run across lots of people. That makes it far easier to spot a fake. This isn’t saying that a character can’t be heroic, or virtuous, or beautiful, or hopelessly in love. But if they always say, think, and do the perfectly right or romantic thing, that level of unreality will kick a reader out of the story faster than a troll or a time machine ever could. Because, on some level of our psyche, perfection always rings false.
Perfection also nullifies character arc. If a character is already at the pinnacle of perfection, what growth can they experience? How will the events of the story change them? Characters endear themselves to us when they endure adversity, learn from their mistakes, and come through as better people. We make the journey beside them, cheer for their triumphs, cry for their tragedies, and grow along with them. That’s when they become real.
The point: characters that are flawed, but make you love them anyway, are a far more powerful force because readers can allow themselves to believe they’re real. Even when they close the cover and put your book on a shelf, the characters who became people will stay with them forever.
My main character is so flawed, I wondered if she was even credible. (I’m told she is.) When I first started writing about Adina, she was flawed (as an English teacher, I knew flawed would be more interesting in perfect. This is why students HATE Beth in Ordinary People. They think she comes off as perfect. In reality, I think a sophisticated reader cn see she is terribly flawed But i digress…) Anyway, I have had so much fun created my broken main character. And it makes the PAYOFF so much better when she has her BIG MOMENT — which is not to say that she is suddenly unflawed, but people want to watch a character change. Take a stand. Do something outside of his/her normal comfort zone. We want them to do what we wish we could do in our real lives.
It is very nice to meet you. I’m glad Ellie got me over here! 😉
Great observations, Renee! I agree, people usually want to see characters grow and break out of their limitations. Thanks for coming by and commenting 🙂
Ryan, I totally agree with you. I think flawed protagonists/characters are much more interesting than perfect one. Going with the theme you started with the post, I’d rather see a character pop out of thin air who is malevolent rather than of perfect spirit. That’s why Terminator 2 is awesome! The two terminators come back from the future to destroy the future leader of the resistance…although the audience isn’t quite sure who the good guy is until a quarter the way through the movie. Then we also find one of the terminators is reprogrammed to learn, which, by definition, means becoming more human (it is such a solid story arc), we actually root for the once-evil robot!
Anyway, great post, Ryan! Keep up the good work!
I love that example, Jack. The Terminator in T2 has a great arc, and he’ a machine! Also makes me think of Data from Star Trek: TNG. His quest was always to be more human, and that endeared him to the audience.
Thanks for stopping in!