Around the middle of the story, you’ll have a crisis point where your protagonist realises that they are at least partially responsible for making things work and attempts to change to overcome the antagonist. This does not, however, stop the character flaws from driving their course of action – the only difference is now they are driven by the attempt to overcome their flaws, rather than in ignorance of them.
What should be clear by now is that good stories are about flawed characters. This is, amongst other things, what makes writing Superman so hard – and what makes reading Mary Sue fan fiction so dull.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a protagonist who is a fantasy figure. Hell, Marvel managed to turn round my life-long hatred of super-heroes.
But story comes from their flaws, not their strengths. Their strengths just give them cool ways to overcome their problems (and what is cool REALLY depends on the genre – Jean Genet’s “Thief” makes best use of his talent for deception and amorality in a wonderful book that is also totally loathsome.) Flaws, flaws, flaws. All your characters should be acting from a broken place, or there’s no story.
So, how do we make the character’s flaw central to the story? By having it impact on the choices they make when they must overcome an obstacle to get what they want 🙂
Exercise
As an extension of the previous exercise, I want to examples of someone risking something they care about to gain something they want.
In the first example, I want them to fail because despite their best efforts (and they really should try) some flaw in their character prevents them from succeeding.
In the second example, I want the second same character risking something else they care about against a different obstacle, but this time they manage to overcome the flaw (extra points for providing as much temptation as possible) to achieve a mitigated (ie. imperfect) success.
Post your answer in the comments and I’ll respond with feedback!
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