Writing Realistically Flawed Characters

Everyone has flaws. Even if everyone doesn’t agree on what flaws are, all people have them. Faults, imperfections, defects, and weakness are all things that make people less than perfect. And flaws also make characters interesting to watch.

Superman is a perfect being, minus his weakness to Kryptonite. His vulnerability to a green rock is his flaw, but it is also a trait that keeps audiences invested in him. If he were completely perfect, he would be boring. He would win every battle and save every person in distress. And even though he’s technically an alien, he wouldn’t be relatable or interesting to human moviegoers if he were Mr. Perfect.

His moral code also comes into play as a flaw that makes him interesting. He battles evil in an imperfect universe, yet his code is to always do the right thing: never to kill enemies who would kill him and innocents. For the imperfect world Superman lives in, his moral code is flawed. And because it is flawed, he is scores more interesting because we get to see him struggle with doing good things in bad situations.

Superman is a good example of a flawed character that people have long enjoyed rooting for. Characters in screenplays should be flawed to reflect relatable humanistic attributes. In order to do so, writers must employ different tactics to make them realistic, relatable and remarkable.

People in screenplays should not only have flaws, but they need to have realistic flaws. They should have anger issues, selfishness, egotism, and biases because people actually exhibit those characteristics. Many people have these flaws and can understand if a character in your screenplay exhibits those characteristics during the conflicts of the script. We can understand Superman using his powers for good and also to woo Lois Lane, Lex Luthor being jealous of Superman and trying to kill him, and Lois Lane making terrible judgment calls by putting herself in danger to get the best news stories. So make the people in your screenplay flawed, but don’t just have them walk the walk.

Give your flawed characters distinct voices. Their flaws cannot only be exhibited through action alone. Have them say things that exhibit their flaws with a clear voice. A good exercise to use while writing your screenplay is to switch the lines of two or more characters. If the script still makes sense, your characters aren’t unique enough. Lex Luthor in 1978’s Superman: The Movie would never say “I'm here to fight for truth, and justice, and the American way,” but Superman would. And Lex Luthor definitely said the line “To commit the crime of the century, a man naturally wants to face the challenge of the century,” which Superman would not say. But not all characters in your screenplay have to speak like angels or demons. There have to be some in-between humans, too.

Flawed characters don’t have to be cartoonish and evil. Protagonists can be flawed. So can antiheroes. The hard part is conveying your characters in believable ways by having them behave in interesting ways that make sense in your screenplay, for the characters you’re creating. Superman has his more-or-less unshakable moral code, but a character who wants a promotion over another character might not operate by Superman’s moral code. They probably won’t. And they shouldn’t, if you want to create an interesting conflicted character for audiences to follow.

When creating your characters, make them like people you know. Even make one of them like you. Think about things you love, hate, dislike, tolerate, and why you feel like that towards those things and put those into the batter when making your flawed characters. Readers enjoy seeing how people with strengths, weaknesses and biases get in and out of sticky situations. Write characters who not only get in and out of trouble, but make them make us care about why they fail or succeed by making their flaws their selling points.