Does a character without huge weaknesses need improvement?
While reviewing my story and notes about her, I realiyed that my main character doesn't have any major flaws. She is a hothead and she has to hide where she comes from, but that's it. She isn't god-like powerful, she just does alright in most things, because she had a lot of training, so more a jack of all trades character. She does fail, but she's never completely incompetent.
So now I ask myself if readers may find her too boring.
If so, how can I improve her, without making the training seem like a waste of time?
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1 answer
Your MC does not exactly have to have weaknesses, the main thing is that she has problems. She can also have negative emotions.
Her problems have to be big enough that she struggles against them and readers believe she may fail to overcome them, or in most cases at least do not see HOW she will overcome them, and that is why they keep reading, to find out. (For example, in most detective stories we feel certain the detective will solve the crime somehow, but from or point of view it seems an impossible puzzle).
There must be some kind of uncertainty in the reader: If they know how it will all turn out, they get bored and stop reading. In Star Wars or Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter we never believed the villains would prevail; and the heroes had no terrible flaws or weaknesses (other than self-doubt), but the stories had a lot of uncertainty. And we always believed the heroes could at least be hurt.
She doesn't have to have weaknesses. Her problem does need to be daunting.
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