How do I find flaws in a character I'm building?
I have a particular character in my story who I feel is great. He's a retired monster hunter who settled down with his wife for his later years. He's all-around friendly, respectful, empathetic, wise, and still extremely strong compared to the average man (albeit pathetic compared to younger fighters). Overall, the typical Obi-Wan, who works as the conscience for my anti-hero and the passion for my reluctant hero.
But what irritates me is that I can find no obvious flaw in his character. He has bad manners (while remaining respectful of people), is extremely nostalgic for his old life and is often overlooked or forgotten by other characters. While those three traits are nice quirks, I don't really feel them to be flaws. How do I continue developing his character so that it has flaws, making him more well-rounded and realistic?
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Overbearing pride.
He's done a lot. He's seen a lot. He has a lot of experience. He's very accomplished, and he thinks anyone would benefit from learning from him.
The "nostalgia" and "being overlooked" you mentioned are the keys. He loved being helpful, loved being the strong protector, loved being the one everyone came to, loved the attention. It was for good reasons, but still. He enjoyed the spotlight, and now he doesn't have it any more.
Maybe he wants to teach the reluctant hero because he wants the hero's praise and adulation. He may genuinely have a lot to offer, but he's being a jerk about offering it because he's honestly a little desperate for the old days when everyone admired him.
He is very proud of what he did back in the day, and he wants everyone to remember it. It's not that his accomplishments are petty, because they are significant, but they were a while ago. So he feels like he has to remind everyone of what he did, often, and he's hoping to be asked to teach so he can be useful and admired again.
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Ask his wife
Either you're so much inside his head that you're not seeing him the way others do, or you're an outsider suffering from hero worship. You need to get into other people's heads and see him from different angles.
His wife knows (mostly) all his flaws. She may love him anyway, but she'll know what he's like to live with.
His kids (if any) will have a different version of him, and will see flaws their mom missed. If there's more than one kid, they'll have different sets of pros and cons.
Go around his town and ask others he interacts with. Not everyone will know his hero past. Is he grumpy with kids? Rude to service workers? Tips badly? Yells at jaywalkers? Or just completely forgettable?
Ask his family of origin. Do they live in the town or are they glad to only see him once a year or so? Or maybe never? Why is that?
Don't worry about finding his "tragic flaw" or whatever the English teachers tell you he has to have. Your goal of making him well rounded and realistic is a good one. Not everyone in real life is super flawed; maybe a few quirks is all he has. But chances are you'll get a different story if you look through the eyes of various characters, not just his or the narrator's/author's.
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What I do as I'm discovering my characters is to just write them into scene after scene. Don't worry about whether the scene has anything to do with your story. Put him in an argument with his wife. Sit him next to a drunk at the bar. Put a pebble in his shoe. Have the neighbor knock on his door at dinnertime. Just put him in a bunch of scenarios and write them. He'll reveal himself to you.
Then, because this is just discovery, we pitch all those scenes and get to work on the real story with a new understanding of the character. (This discovery phase could even change some foundational elements of your story.)
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/20124. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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