Two Flaws You DON’T Want to Give Your Characters

I recently saw a post on tumblr that said something along the lines of ‘a perfect character is actually a character with flaws’. I completely agree. Most of my favorite literary characters are complicated people and some of them would even be classified as anti-heroes. But there are a few flaws that you could give your character, without meaning to, that will have my girlfriends and me tearing our hair out in a little French restaurant in Chelsea*.

*True story. We lost some hair density over these issues, just a couple weeks ago. Hair loss is bad. Don’t cause hair loss!

PROBLEM #1: JACK SPARROWING IT

Now, Johnny Depp is a great actor. When you look back on his career, you think of Edward Scissorhands and Finding Neverland and Blow. The man has a crazy capacity for sinking fully into whatever character he plays, so I’m not even placing the blame for this at the actor’s feet. This is a writing issue.
In the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Johnny Depp’s character was colorful, zany, complicated and a little crazy. We never knew what he might do next. He switched sides whenever he felt like it, but he was so charismatic and weird that we couldn’t look away… and couldn’t fully blame him for anything he did.

By the second movie, though, the character seemed a bit “quirky,” as if Jack Sparrow was playing himself in a movie. By the third movie, Jack Sparrow was Jack Sparrow played by Jack Sparrow played by Johnny Depp played by Jack Sparrow. He was a collection of quirks and quotable lines, with as much character development as a talking action figure. It was disappointing, to say the least.

I’ve Jack Sparrowed before. We all have. Recently I began a sequel to my last book, The Unlove Spell, a romantic fantastical comedy about a modern witch and her sexy Russian fae prince love interest. The Unlove Spell features a lot of quirky characters, especially since it’s a comedy. My first instinct, due in part to being extremely busy and overtired in general over the last few months, was to make plucky Marling even more plucky. Moody but handsome Viktor even more moody and handsome. Flamboyant Kyran even MORE cha-cha-cha.

It wasn’t until after I bemoaned to my sister that I was Jack Sparrowing my protagonists that she asked me, “Yeah, but are they fighting? Are Marling and Viktor bickering?” I realized that they were not bickering at all. They were acting all sweet and lovey with each other, complete with cute one-liners.

Resist capitalizing on quirks. Find opposition in your character’s personality. Maybe they’re plucky but maybe they also bicker with their boyfriend over dumb things. Maybe they’re flamboyant and obsessed with Marc Jacobs but they can also convince a room of people to do something with only their knowledgeable words and a flick of their well-adorned wrist.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO AVOID IT: Many times the cause of “Jack Sparrowing” is time. Maybe you start your novel around Christmas, all filled up with eggnog and happy feelings, but by summer you’ve lost your forward motion and you can’t remember much about who your character is.

*Re-reading the first chapter or introduction scene for your character on a regular basis can help you recapture their flare.
*Writing from the character’s point of view in fake journal entries can help you find their voice again.
*Asking a friend to ‘interview’ your character can aid you in finding new details about them that you might not have thought of yet.
*Writing a detailed description of your character from their enemy or rival’s point of view will clue you in to things you hadn’t noticed about them yet.
*Take something important away from your character and see what he or she does, even if you experiment with this only in a short story. Really, take something big away. Their love interest, their money, their favorite blow-dryer.

PROBLEM #2: WORSE THAN JACOB

My friend Kate and I were ranting about all of our issues with Twilight, and as I listed them off in a particularly heated manner, I finally spluttered, “Do you know what is worse than the corny dialogue, worse than the insta-love, worse than JACOB?” What’s worse than Jacob is, sadly, a very common thing in a lot of fiction right now, for some reason: unsympathetic, whiny, loner characters who hate on their potential friends for no good reason.

Bella spends a lot of Twilight internally rolling her eyes at people who try to befriend her. They talk too much, maybe, or they- GASP!- want to go shopping. God, what an awful thing to suggest.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to make friends with people who always put down their girlfriends in favor of a vampire stalker dude and hours of emo ponderings in front of a window in the living room. If you wouldn’t want to befriend someone like that, why would you want to spend a whole book getting to know them? It’s almost as if you can hear the character judging YOU, the reader, for wasting your time trying to get to know them. And writing about such characters becomes difficult and boring very quickly, making it likely that you will stall on progress with your book.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO AVOID IT: Some people are loners by nature or their profession even requires it. That’s cool. Just find someone or SOMETHING that your character loves or cares enough about to balance it out. Give your character a Watson to his Sherlock. Give her a beloved sister or a girlfriend or pet. Show us that your character has an attachment to something, and build on it, especially if the character is supposed to be sympathetic or our main focus.

*Write a letter from your character to someone they love. Let it get however mushy or stupid it needs to. Note why they like this person and then consider how this person could play a part in your book.
*Write a fake OKCupid profile page for your character and determine what kinds of people they want to attract. At least then you’ll have a better idea of who you can send their way for love or for friction.
*Describe your loner character from the point of view of someone who cares about them. This is especially helpful if your character is turning into a selfish, annoying brat and you can’t remember why you wanted to write about him in the first place. If someone else loves him, maybe you can too. And then, hopefully, all of us readers can love him one day.

And please, please, please, can we have less obnoxious, unrealistically anti-social teenage girls in fiction?

[divider]

Kendra L. Saunders is the author of the urban fantasy Inanimate Objects, short story collection Overlapping Visions and the upcoming dark comedy Death and Mr. Right (Spence City, 10/13). She’s conducted interviews with Jennifer L. Armentrout, Aurelio Voltaire, Dmitry Sholokhov, Fabio Costa and many others for ipmnation, Steampunk Magazine and The New England Horror Writers. She’s one cat allergy away from a stereotypical writer. Find her at www.kendralsaunders.com or on twitter @kendrybird where she loves to answer writing questions, talk about music and fashion and share insider tips from the publishing industry.