607 – Flawed Protagonists

We’ve all heard advice about creating flaws for our characters, but what does that mean in practice? This week, we’re talking about flawed protagonists! We discuss the factors that make some flawed characters compelling while others are reduced to being unpleasant. We also get into the ways flaws can be tricky to manage and why we believe adding a laundry list of them is a little excessive.

Show Notes

• Pluribus
• Why Literary Fiction is a genre
• How to Make Your Hero Guilty – but Still Lovable
• Understanding Character Karma
• 587 – Revenge and Forgiveness in Fiction
• Characters Don’t Need Flaws
• The Best Characters Eat Their Spinach — and Their Candy
• Frodo Baggins
• Othello
• Writing Character Arcs
• Stay for a Spell
• Do Characters Need to Be Likable?
• Save The Cat
• Katniss Everdeen
• Authorial Endorsement 101
• Tom Loftis
• Eleanor Shellstrop
• Five Ways to Make a Selfish Character Likable
• Chidi Anagonye
• The Tainted Cup
• Rick Sanchez

Transcript

Generously transcribed by Albert Gallego. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.

Chris: Welcome to the Mythcreant Podcast. I’m Chris. 

Oren: And I’m Oren. 

Chris: Now, we might seem like nice people on the podcast, but maybe as soon as we stop recording, we rant about how our podcast is trash and everyone who listens to it has terrible taste. And then when we get fan mail, we write back telling that person to get a life. Also, I should say I’m secretly writing a literary genre novel. That’s my true passion, despite what I tell everyone. 

Oren: It’s funny because, normally, the trope of doing that is writers do that with books that make them tons of money, but they hate ’cause, you know, making money is bad, actually. But our podcast doesn’t make us any money. [Chris laughs]

That would be extra funny if we had a character who’s like, “Yeah, I’m writing these completely unsuccessful books that nobody buys, and they’re secretly trash… and everyone who reads them is stupid.” We should do that. Some people insist that you can’t ever have too many flaws, so I think we should do that, have a character whose flaw here is both that they’re really judgmental and also just incredibly bad at deciding what they should spend their time on.

Chris: I’m also addicted to podcasting. That’s why I do it, even though I don’t like it, and also it’s not very popular and not earning me very much money. I said that because we’re watching Pluribus right now. 

Oren: Yeah. Plur- [they both mumble]. 

Chris: Plur- whatever. It’s Pluribus. 

Oren: It’s hard to look up posts about that because pluribus is a very commonly used Latin phrase, and it’s in an important U.S. motto. And so whenever I look it up, that’s what comes up. So it’s been hard to find actual commentary on that show, despite how popular it was. 

Chris: That’s a naming mistake, for sure. Gotta have a trademark-able, extra unique name. No, that’s a bad idea. So any case, this time we’re covering flawed protagonists because sometimes writers wanna write about people who are messed up. There’s lots to say about people who are messed up, and some people find them very novel and interesting or just find them relatable or empathize with their flaws. There are lots of reasons to wanna do this, even though it is tricky and can create problems. 

Oren: My favorite is when the flaw is only kind of a flaw. It’s like a little wink to the audience. We’ve been referencing the first episode of Pluribus in which our author main character thinks everyone who reads her books is a brain-dead walnut, and has no respect for them. And yeah we could say that’s a flaw, and maybe that’s part of a character arc. I’ve only seen the first three episodes, I don’t know. Fans tell me it’s part of a character arc, so we’ll see. But regardless of whether it is or not, a lot of people also feel that way, and the show is kind of winking at them, and they’re like, “Yeah, romantasy fans are brain-dead walnuts and are total trash.” So it validates them, and then we can do a little bit of an arc later if we want, and it’s no big deal. 

Chris: Turns out the flawed protagonist was the audience all along. 

Oren: Yeah, exactly. And so it works really well that way. I don’t really love that it does, but it does. You know, it would’ve worked on me if she had been writing a literary novel that everyone loved, and then she’d been like, “Uh, actually, literary fans are all snobs and, you know, don’t actually know what a good story is and can be tricked by just being told that the story is deep and meaningful.” That would work on me. I’d be like, “Yeah, okay, that’s a flaw, but also that’s- she’s so right.” [Chris laughs] So it’s just a matter of knowing who you’re appealing to, you know? 

Chris: I mean, that is one strategy for dealing with frustration. This is one of the issues that can happen with a flawed protagonist is, if they’re flawed in a way that makes it so they create problems for themselves or others or are bad at dealing with problems and you’ve got the audience invested in those problems and solving those problems as usually you would want to… it can be very frustrating. But one way to get around that is to just make them do bad things or sabotage themselves or others in ways that the audience can actually root for, and this would be kind of an example of that technique. It’s kind of a niche technique, but especially if this is something like getting revenge, maybe getting revenge isn’t productive, but if you make a villain hated enough, the audience is gonna be like, “Yeah, but it would be really nice just to see this person gets what’s coming to them.” So even though this is self-destructive, I can probably root for it anyway ’cause I get something out of it. You could have something like that happen. 

Oren: Of course, when it comes to flaws, we should acknowledge that there is a lot of misconception about them. That’s why if you go into any writing space, you will find a bunch of posts about how characters need flaws and how if a character doesn’t have flaws, that’s bad. You will hear the term Mary Sue thrown around a lot. And of course, in reality, many heroes do not have anything that would be realistically considered a flaw. What that discourse is usually actually getting at is whether or not they have too much candy, which is different. Like, Frodo doesn’t have too much candy, but he’s not really flawed in any meaningful way, not in a dramatic way. And I don’t think he would be a better character if he was. Someone like Othello is flawed, but Frodo’s not. Frodo’s just doing his best. 

Chris: And again, character arcs don’t require flaws either because… if a character, for instance, is grieving, I would not call that a flaw. That would be weird and judgmental. But they’re, of course they’re grieving, so it’s natural that they’re unhappy and having problems, and as part of their character arc, they can heal. But I certainly wouldn’t say they have a flaw that they have to overcome. 

Again, flaws, not really necessary, but writers like them for a variety of reasons. We can talk about what we would classify as a flaw, which is something that this person would be better if they did not have this trait. 

Oren: This would be a better person, and I mean that in the real-life sense, if they did not have that. Something like greedy or selfish or cowardly or judgemental. You know, these are things where they go beyond what might be a healthy version of that feeling. Like, there’s actually a place for judging people. You don’t wanna just completely take everything you see at face value. At that point, you might have a flaw of being too credulous. But obviously you can be too much of that, at which point we start calling them judgemental, and at that point it becomes a flaw.

With cowardly, it’s like, okay, if your character is scared of something that is dangerous, that’s not cowardly. Or if they run away from something that they can’t possibly defeat, that’s also not cowardly. But if they run away from something that they could probably have overcome if they had actually stayed to fight, you could say that’s cowardice, and you could say that’s a flaw to overcome.

Chris: And again, it doesn’t have to be something that makes them a jerk. I was just reading Stay for a Spell, and the character’s flaw is supposed to be that she’s too nice, and it’s a problem because she ends up doing what other people want instead of doing what she wants. Those kinds of meek characters… I like them, but again, with any flaw, it can turn people against a character. So that is one that could create frustration, right? If you have a character who is nice and lets other people walk all over them, that’s a situation where the reader could be invested in them solving their problems, and get frustrated when they just let people walk over them instead. 

As opposed to a quirk, which is what we call it when they have a trait that sometimes benefits them and sometimes disadvantages them. Quirks are great ’cause they tend to add a lot of interest. But you don’t feel like the quirk has to be eliminated. You don’t feel like it’s something that has to be a problem that has to be solved. It’s just a permanent interesting feature of the character that can create setbacks and advantages.

Oren: And we usually find it works best to focus on one flaw, especially at a time. ‘Cause if your character has a bunch of flaws, actual flaws as we’re describing them, that increases the chance significantly that your readers are just going to hate them and not want to read about them. But also it de-emphasizes the impact of any one flaw because you got all of them, so they just kind of become noise after a while.

I’ll never forget frigging “Save the Cat! Writes a Novel” recommending a laundry list of flaws, and… what are you talking about? 

Chris: That’s a bad idea. 

Oren: It’s especially funny after using Katniss Everdeen as an example in the beginning of Hunger Games. Like, she’s supposed to be flawed, and by flawed, you mean she’s a little grouchy? Is that a flaw? Wow, that’s, like, such a shallow definition of a flaw. 

Chris: I won’t say that you can never do more than one flaw because sometimes they can be kind of related to each other or connected together. But what does happen, and I’ve seen this in many works, is that when you have too many, it really muddies the waters when it comes to the character arc. It just becomes really unclear what their problem is, and what they need to learn, and then what the solution is, and when they have actually made progress… because we’re juggling too many things, and they tend to blur together. 

There’s just so much subjectivity, when it comes to a character’s personality and their emotional state, that we do have to focus on “Okay, what exactly is the issue here?” And if we have, like, five flaws, it’s really easy for those to blend into each other, and it just becomes, “wait, I don’t understand. What, what is their flaw? What do they need to learn?” And also, we’re not gonna be able to follow up on that many character arcs in the same book. That’s gonna be too much.

Similarly, we don’t want a flaw that’s super broad. Like immaturity, for instance, or selfishness are both flaws that can mean any number of behaviors. 

Oren: Yeah, you’d wanna zoom in a little bit. 

Chris: And that also just makes it really hard to deal with, whereas if we can pinpoint more specifically in what situations is this character immature, and how exactly do they act, or in what ways is this person selfish, and in what situations, and in what ways do they behave in a way that is self-centered, then it’s easier to address that and give that clarity, etcetera.

Oren: Say what we want about Pluribus, I do think it’s pretty impressive, especially in the early episodes, which is again, that’s what I’ve seen. They manage to give the protagonist, Carol, three pretty distinct flaws that so far haven’t really blurred together, which is always the concern. ‘Cause the first thing is that she is really disdainful of her readers, and again, that’s like a secret wink to the audience flaw, where a lot of the audience feels the same way, so you know, the impact is lessened.

Then she has serious anger problems, and then she’s also an alcoholic. And part of the way that they balance that is that her being an alcoholic doesn’t play a big role in these early episodes. It’s there, you can see it in the background, but it’s not brought to the fore the way her other flaws are. And then in the second and third episode, we focus much more on the anger problem because now if she gets too mad at the uwu murder virus hive mind, a bunch of people will die, so that’s a struggle that she has to try to keep it in check. And that one’s very sympathetic because the evil uwu murder virus hive mind is the most annoying thing anyone has ever invented. [Chris laughs]

So when she gets mad at it, I’m like, “Yes, it deserves for you to be mad at it. It’s the worst.” But she has to try not to because she doesn’t want to be responsible for people dying. 

Chris: I do have a little bit of frustration when she thinks of it as her fault when people die. Yes, you should learn to control your temper. That’s a good idea, but they’re the ones who decided to infect the entire planet with a virus where people would die if you got mad at them. That was their choice. That was their doing. Also, in doing that, they killed far more people than she does when she gets angry at them. So I don’t know… I get annoyed with that because when somebody brings up that it’s her fault and then she just accepts that, definitely feels like there’s authorial endorsement at that point, that we’re supposed to believe that it’s her fault that people get hurt when she gets angry. But it’s, it’s not her fault. 

Oren: Yeah, I mean, it’s hard for me to say at this point, ’cause again, this is a show that likes to keep its cards close to its chest, and at only three episodes I don’t really know where it’s going, and I don’t trust anything anyone says about this show. [Chris Laughs] Because I’ve seen how unhinged the discourse about it is.

Chris: Yeah. We’ve had so many instances where we’ll say something on our blog, and then somebody will be like, “Oh, but this book,…” in the comments. And if we have actually read that book, it is very often misrepresenting the story. And so now we just don’t trust what anybody says about any story ever until we go read it ourselves.

Oren: I will say, I don’t like Pluribus. I find it really boring most of the time. But I do find it believable that she thinks that it’s her fault, because she’s basically being constantly gaslit by everyone around her, both the hive mind and the other humans. To me it’s believable that she thinks that because she’s been bludgeoned into it. I don’t enjoy that. It’s not a show I would watch if I didn’t have a blog to talk about it on, but  it’s interesting. It’s kind of neat to see. 

Chris: Yeah, I do think, find it very hard when you have an unpleasant protagonist who bad things are happening to them. That is typically something that I do not enjoy seeing. At the same time, and we should talk about this more, we can talk about Widow’s Bay, one of the strategies for dealing with a protagonist who audiences just find them unpleasant and don’t really like them is to just have bad things happen to them because we get schadenfreude. We get satisfaction at seeing them punished for their bad karma.

And I will say with Pluribus, Carol is, as far as I can tell, just a very unpleasant person, and the Pluribus hive mind is a very unpleasant being. And so I’m just watching them make each other miserable

Oren: Yep. 

Chris: And also in many of these cases, the stakes seem relatively low, right? If there was another innocent person for them to hurt while they were going back and forth with each other, but I do get some amusement from that.

Oren: Oh man, Widow’s Bay. This is so… Such a cool thing. I hope you could do this in book form. So in Widow’s Bay we have the mayor, Tom, I think is his name, and he’s basically the mayor from Jaws, where he’s super obsessed with having the town make money, and the beaches are