607 – Flawed Protagonists

The Mythcreant Podcast

The hosts explore the technical challenges of writing flawed protagonists, discussing how to prevent character defects from alienating reade

Key takeaways

• Too many flaws can muddy a character arc and turn them into 'noise' for the reader.
• A 'wink' to the audience can make a judgmental or unpleasant flaw feel relatable and even validating.

Main topics

• Defining flaws vs. quirks
• Managing character arcs

Notable quotes

The flawed protagonist was the audience all along.

Conclusion

Effective character flaws require careful management of tone and stake

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hi folks, this is your last chance to join my Conflict and Obstacles writing course. Go to mythgrands.com slash conflict right away. Welcome to the MythGrand Podcast. I'm Chris. Speaker 2 (0:09) And I'm Oren. Speaker 1 (0:11) 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 tastes. 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. Speaker 2 (0:32) 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 because, you know, making money is bad, actually. But our podcast doesn't make us any money. So that would be extra funny if we had a Speaker 1 (0:45) character who's like, yeah, I'm writing Speaker 2 (0:47) 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 and i'm Speaker 1 (1:10) 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 yeah yeah i said that because we're watching pluribus right now yeah Speaker 2 (1:21) pluribus whatever Speaker 1 (1:23) it's pluribus it's Speaker 2 (1:25) hard to look up posts about that because Pluribus is a very commonly used Latin phrase and it's in an important US 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. Speaker 1 (1:39) That's a naming mistake for sure. Gotta have a trademarkable, extra unique name. No, that's a bad idea. So in any case, this time we're covering flawed protagonists because sometimes writers want to 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 want to do this, even though it is tricky and can create problems. Speaker 2 (2:10) My favorite is when the flaw is only kind of a flaw. It's like a... A little wink to the audience. Like, 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, you know, 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 so the show is kind of winking at them and they're like, yeah, Romantici fans are brain-dead walnuts and are total trash. So it validates them. And then like we can do a little bit of an arc later if we want. And it's no big deal. Speaker 1 (2:58) Turns out the flawed protagonist was the audience all along. Yeah, Speaker 2 (3:01) 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 have worked on me if she had been writing a literary novel that everyone loved and then she'd been like, 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 she's so right. So it's just a matter of knowing who you're appealing to, you know? I Speaker 1 (3:29) mean, that is one strategy for dealing with frustration. So 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 gotten 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, you know, especially if this is something like getting revenge, maybe getting revenge isn't productive. But if you make a villain hate it enough, the audience is like, yeah, but he 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 because I get something out of it. You could have something like that happen. Speaker 2 (4:32) 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 any 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. Speaker 1 (5:16) Yeah. 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 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. So... Again, flaws, not really necessary, but writers like them for a variety of reasons. We could 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. Speaker 2 (5:50) This would be a better person, and I mean that in like the real life sense, if they did not have that. Something like greedy or selfish or cowardly or judgmental. You know, these are things where they go beyond what might be a healthy version of that feeling. There's actually a place for judging people. You don't want to just completely take everything you see at face value. At