I’ve basically been using people I know for basic character designs. If I feel like I should add in a certain trait—be it a good or bad one—then I try to balance it by adding another one that’s the opposite.

But, er, I don’t know if this works well, as my current writing is of shoddy quality.

Oh, yeah. I should’ve mentioned that if I do add another trait to try to balance them, I don’t just go, “Huh, the shy, dogged nice guy needs a flaw—hey, let’s make him cocky!” I try not to be random with this sort of thing.

You hadn’t posted yet when I started typing that

Oh, okay. I was being all defensive in case it was directed to me; I’m sorry.

Oh, okay. I was being all defensive in case it was directed to me; I’m sorry.

No worries, I probably would’ve read it the same way you did if I hadn’t written it myself.

At any rate, since I can’t help myself, I’ll give a similar ramble to one I did in the other thread, regarding specifics of the application of that stuff I typed. If anyone somehow remembers that, don’t waste your time reading this. Sorry if it ends up getting too long.

I’ll use my male lead as an example. For a little background, he’s a sword for hire, who typically works for yakuza gangs to assassinate high-profile targets in rival organizations, although he’s hired for a new, different job at the time of the story that he doesn’t like.

Basically, his primary asset is his intelligence/absurdly fast learning speed, which can be a really stupid power as we’ve all seen in Inheritance. I don’t consider it imbalanced in my own guy’s case because aside from two other weird situational traits, his brain and his wide array of techniques are basically all he has. While other upper-tier characters have things like super strength/speed, telekinesis, and other nonsense, his physical talent is pretty average so he’s dead without the hyperintelligence.

Since his mental ability is such a core part of his character, it stands to reason that it’s also the root of his flaws. Since intelligence is his best asset, he tends to overvalue it as a trait even outside of combat, which means he ends up underestimating people who arrive at their decisions differently(i.e. the female lead, who runs mostly on instinct early on).

He also never actually masters anything he learns, because even for a genius it still takes years of dedication for which he doesn’t really have the determination, and only learns maybe 75 or 80% of something before moving on. That sort of restless inability to see things through becomes a habit for him that spills over into the rest of his life, so by the time the story starts, he’s spent time being a swordsmith, a vigilante, a soldier, a pirate, and muscle for the yakuza, despite being a little older than twenty, and he’s never able to be comfortable for long in one line of work before he moves on out of habit.

He also tends to suppress his own instincts and emotions because his mind has become so compartmentalized. When the story starts, he’s to the point where he has serious trouble recognizing them, and when they break out of whatever mental compartment he’s got them tucked away in, he has no clue how to deal with them. When you get down to it, he’s really much more emotionally immature than the female lead even though it doesn’t look that way at first glance.

There’s also the thing about misapplying virtues to turn them into situational flaws. In my guy’s case, his application of deductive reasoning when he has an incomplete picture of all the relevant data can lead to him drawing incorrect conclusions, and being totally blindsided when things don’t play out as he’s assumed they will. To be more specific, there’s a major undercurrent of “who can we trust?” going through the whole story, since pretty much everybody’s after the female lead. At one point, he trusts a guy he’s on good terms with to look out for her while he does something else because, based on what he knows, the guy has no reason to sell them out. The guy does end up selling them out for a totally logical reason, but my lead wasn’t aware of the factors that led to such a decision.

Yeah, that was as long and rambling as I expected it to be, but I can’t help myself. I will say that writing all that stuff out for a character is a good way to get to know them, though.

I personally think that characterizations are what I do best, so this is quite a big issue. After all, how can one tell if their character’s flaws are realistic or not? I think it’s important to not only have one major flaw, but other smaller ones as well. I would say more, but homework is taking over my life… I’ll come back and post more. (eventually)

A character’s flaws, just like their virtues, should have some basis in the character’s history- their genetics, their childhood, their life events, their personality, that sort of thing. For example, a paranoid character’s parents were killed when she was a very small child, so she lives in fear that the murderer will come after her, too. Someone who is suspicious of everyone was betrayed by someone they considered a close friend. A character who is doesn’t react much to unusual/stressful/terrible events underwent severe emotional trauma or has a job/position for which they can’t allow emotions to interfere with judgment (special forces soldier, researcher, judge, etc.).

And flaws need to complement virtues. If a character picks up things very quickly, maybe they suffer from information overload- they pick up so much useless trivia, it’s hard for them to remember the important parts of life. Or someone who has the ability to break down any problem to its roots annoys everyone around them because they overanalyze everything.

Hmm… I would say also in that situation

In the story I’m currently planning out, I happen to have characters who seem to have nothing but faults:

hot-tempered
a little bit of a worry-wart
isolated from others (although that’s just the effect of ganglands)
somewhat of a grump
deathly scared of horses (main transportation form…)
suspicious
looks for the worst in people first

her only saving graces are that she’s fiercely loyal and she’ll go back for anyone who’s in life-threatening trouble, even if she hates them normally. Probably there are a couple more, but I can’t think of them right now o.O

Of course, I’m making her sister possibly traitorous, she’s got frequent muscular spasms that she has to hide, and she ends up killing someone when she’s trying to escape from a raid. So yeah.

LIke I said above, the line between faults and virtues are often a case of context. Let’s look at steph and RVL and show how a bit of “relabeling” makes one see virtuous.

hot-tempered
a little bit of a worry-wart
isolated from others (although that’s just the effect of ganglands)
somewhat of a grump
deathly scared of horses (main transportation form…)
suspicious
looks for the worst in people first

Nah, he’s passionate, through and cautious.

prone to anger
cruel
arrogant
a cynic

Well I can’t do anything with the last 3. But those are obviously “decisive, confident, and realistic”.

Basically my advice for making faults in reverse. If you have trouble with the good traits, then take the bad and figure out when they would be good.

Hmm, for my child character I try to make him have more of the “childish” faults:

Doesn’t understand the consequences of his actions
Paranoid
Overreacts
ect. ( I can’t think of any more at the moment…)

But I think you have to have the character’s faults related to their age.

@Puppet – as well as their experience. A twenty-year-old with little to no contact with the broader world (grew up in a small town, never left home until they were older, no/limited Internet access, etc.) would be more naive than a twelve-year-old who grew up constantly moving from place to place or being shuffled around through foster families, etc.

“HMM, THIS CHILD IS NOT INTERESTING ENOUGH. I SHALL GIVE IT A PHOBIA OF PUPPIES FOR GIGGLES.”

Yeah, you’re right, I highly doubt God does that…

My sister and I are writing a manga, so we’re trying to specifically avert this pitfall by making our villainess go through a Gatsby-like makeover (complete with a Daisy and criminal contacts), and then turning into an EVUL villain after she kills her “Daisy”.

I’m retconning a lot of my work to do this, too – I originally had my villainess be a sadist because it helped the plot along.

He has a phobia of riding horses (because he spent half a night trapped under a horse’s corpse after being struck down in a skirmish)

I like how you’ve justified it. ;)

I like to give my characters a strong weakness that directly keeps them from getting their goals. Then, I let them struggle to overcome it. This may not even be the central plot; a subplot, but something that gives her something interesting to do in which the reader can emotionally invest.

An ambitious teenager who dreams of becoming a real estate tycoon, but she has ADHD.

Even if the story ends up being about her looking for her kidnapped boyfriend in an abandoned amusement park island, it provides something else interesting.

(WTF, did I just write that?! XD I come up with some funny ideas when I write here. Might as well keep going.)

The story bounces back and forth between last month, when the sweet and honest boyfriend was helping her making better schedules and studying with her, and the present where she is researching leads when the police have mysteriously given up…

Oh noes! XD I feel kinda happy. Well, that’s enough out of me.

My female lead’s a lot like that too. I think it helps when you have an impulsive character that shoots from the hip most of the time, it helps to have them split time between being right and wrong with their snap judgments. If they’re always wrong, they look like idiots, but if they’re always right, they look like Sues.

That said, it makes her character arc fairly easy to write, as she learns to rely on her brain as much as her heart.

Heh. I’m really rather ephemeral with character creation, a lot of the time they just walk fully-formed into my head.

But the one universal failing that every one of my characers has: my characters are all human, and are therefore fallible. They make mistakes, they act irrationally, they draw the wrong conclusions, they see what they want to see, they let emotions guide their actions, THEY CANNOT SEE THE FUTURE or calculate the effects of thier actions or words. They are sometimes selfish, sometimes cruel or concieted, or forgetful. They sometimes succumb to greed, sloth, jealousy, passion, wrath, and all the other things that humans succumb to.
But at the same time, they sometimes have all the positive traits of humans: they can be selfless, kind, considerate, compassionate, successful, intuitive, cooperative, courteous, decisive, diligent, dependable, polite, generous, and all the other positive traits. Never all at once, and never to a superhuman degree (because they are, after all, human). And never in isolation of the ‘bad’ character traits.

Notice how all the ‘bad’ traits up there are nearly all related in some way to self-centredness? And nearly all the ‘positive’ traits are themed around helping and being considerate to other people? They way I see it, there are two types of personality traits: EGO, which includes selfishness, pride, greed, gluttony, jealousy, and all the rest; and EMPATHY, which comprises sympathy, compassion, politeness, generosity, courtesy, et al.. Give your characters a measure of both, and it will take you far.

Agreed. Very nicely put Nate. ;)

1 method I enjoy is “How would he/she/it react?” where you imagine a variety of situations and then see how the character would deal with it.

I used this in my character profile sheet for a number of generic situations…hold on, I think I used ‘How they deal with 1)stress 2)anger 3)betrayal 4)injustice (perceived or otherwise) 5)guilt 6)unrequited love.’

Of course, those are pretty broad.

“How would Harry deal with being on hold with tech support?”

I actually wrote a fanfic where Harry had to use a computer to type up his reports because it it was “Go Without Magic” week. Then, after a long, grueling time on his laptop, it crashes. Harry goes into a fit (he’s already underfed, stressed from work and his nasty boss, and annoyed with the computer because it is slow and he’s forgotten how to use them), and the whole thing is caught on camera.

Harry faints as soon as the swarm of reporters barges in.

I like cynical characters, maybe because I’m rather cynical myself.

Usually they have some kind of thing in their backstory that explains their cynicism and why they turned into a bitter bad guy/snarky good guy/what have you. Also, just because two characters are both cynical, it doesn’t mean that they’ll get along.
Right?

The other common flaw my characters tend to have is not being able to keep their mouths shut.

Writing characters is a lot like worldbuilding.

This is interesting to me. I spend so much of my time focusing on the macro elements of worldbuilding that I often neglect to build my characters. I seriously need to do some work on them, at the moment even my central characters are mostly nebulous.

@Taku:
I said that because it’s basically the same concept on a much more personal level. Say the Kingdom of Generic Fantasy Land is dissolved because dragons have launched a rebellion and taken over. The worldbuilding would be describing the political fallout of the military coup, the effects on the populace, etc. Characterization would be describing how a former dragon keeper changes upon fleeing the capital and living under constant pressure. In relation to the topic, maybe he only became a dragon keeper because he liked the prestige it brought him. Maybe the ego that he fed over the years works against him when he has to cooperate with others to survive. There’s so many paths that can be taken with characterization, because individuals react to the same events differently.

The whole weaknesses-are-related-to-strengths thing is realistic for the simple reason that it occurs in real life. I glanced at an article the other day that listed all kinds of basic personality types with their good and bad points.

For example, a person who is basically classified as “calm” has the advantage of not getting upset/worked up easily, but the disadvantage of becoming passive-aggressive/bottled up/so on.

I agree with the idea of making an advantage a disadvantage. It’s how character traits usually work for most real people anyways (very talkative people might be the life of the party and be very entertaining, but their inability to truly listen to others can definitely bite them in the ass later).

Well, with NaNo, this thread is rather relevant.

So far my character’s faults are being oblivious sometimes, which can make her accidentally mean or tactless. People do not find it adorable. She also has a lazy streak, an annoying need to always be right, and is, god help us, really uncoordinated. None of these things are considered cute.

I’ve been thinking about this part of my MC for a while. I’ve been thinking of making him something of a daredevil/thrill seeker. He’s a younger character, so a) this type of behavior tends to get him in trouble a lot, b) he gets easily bored with mondane tasks and has to learn patience and diligence, and c) he does crazy stuff to get people’s attention and needs recognition/affirmation from people. Would this count as a flaw?

Being a 7th Sea character, having hydrophobia would be really inconvenient.

@Apep – I gotta say, when I read that, the first thing I thought about was “...they’re foaming at the mouth and biting people?” I always forget “hydrophobia” has multiple meanings…

^^THIS. I don’t think anyone’s brought this up before. Everyone should read the above comment several times.

Ink, sounds really interesting. That’s a crazy way to go with an MC, which makes it very intriguing!

I’ve got a mentor figure I’m working with. I’m trying to work some flaws into him, but not make them too obvious at the outset. I’ve kind of settled on having him be a very driven character who is out for revenge. He’s very patient and methodical, but he has chosen to step into some very grey areas in his search for his nemesis in order to gain certain advantages. This becomes a defining point in the MC’s development, since he has to decide if he want’s to follow his mentor’s morally grey path, or take a more noble (but more difficult and possibly deadly) road.