Flawed Protagonists: Resources

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I've worked on two of my series for so long that I can't really even remember the genesis of the protagonists' personalities.  But I do remember creating their flaws.  Both protagonists of the series have flaws that are closely modeled on my own as well as flaws of people I know well.  I knew  how those  flaws trip me up and family up and it was easy to work those into the characters.  The funny thing is that the protagonists are nothing like each other except when it comes to their flaws.

Developing a third series this year, I had to really sit down and think about flaws and which might be useful for the new sleuth. The last thing I wanted to create was a Mary Sue/perfect protagonist.  I used a couple of tools to help me create Ann, including Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi's book The Negative Trait Thesaurus to help me really consider the direction I wanted to go in.

If you have a character that's too perfect, readers aren't going to relate.  We all have our flaws.  Even Superman had kryptonite.  It just gets boring reading about someone who never screws up.  And I think it would probably make for a very short book, too.

Writing about my own flaws and the flaws of people I knew was the easiest way to tackle it. I was intimately familiar with them and their outcomes and it was cathartic writing about them. I was under a deadline or two with my publishers and it was really a no-brainer.  But you can't just pick on the same flaws for every new series.

Besides the book, I used a few favorite articles to help me hammer out my new sleuth's issues:

September C. Fawkes' post, “Fixing the Mary Sue Character in Your Story”

Janice Hardy's “5 Traits to Help You Create Your Character's Personality”

E.V. Scarlet's “62 Character Flaws for Creating a Well-Balanced Character”

Amanda Patterson's “123 Ideas for Character Flaws”

K.M. Weiland's “5 Ways to Use the Enneagram to Write Better Characters” 

What kinds of flaws have you saddled your characters with? How did you find inspiration for those flaws?

Resources for Creating Flawed Protagonists:
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