: Re: 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

@Lee1909368

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The thing about character flaws is that people who have them will often think they are assets. Its possible you are looking at all your character's attributes and imagining them to all be positive assets. Perhaps you could look again, because it's up to you as a storyteller to pontificate on any issue, and not necessarily pass judgment in the most obvious manner. Ask yourself if there is a dark side or a weakness inherent in these attributes, then use your story world to bring that idea to life. In other words, think: my character is this, but the world needs that.

You could put a negative spin (via the story) on pretty much everything you stated. He's lazy, naive, cut off from the world's problems (purposely). He thinks everything's going to be fine, everyone's nice deep down, and the world doesn't need his input anymore. He's a physical guy, a gentle giant, when the world needs a cynical manipulator.

Of course, this may lead to a somewhat dark story. You might prefer to build a world where your hero's niceness, strength etc. are the solutions to the overall issue, and then work backwards to create reasons why he is initially unable to deploy those attributes. Those could be your flaws. Perhaps he has a learned behaviour to hide his niceness from all but his closest friends, or perhaps the world* perceives them as weakness, and he (wrongly) agrees, leading to his isolation.

*And when I refer to 'the world' I mean the most influential characters in your story, or the 'problem-space' not necessarily everybody in the story.

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