How Character Flaws Shape Story With Will Storr

[The Big Peat]

I found this interview a guy named Will Storr and I figured I'd stick it up here for discussion

Writing Tips: How Character Flaws Shape Story With Will Storr | The Creative Penn

How can you create characters with unique and interesting flaws that lead into plots that will enliven your stories? In today's interview, Will Storr explains the science of storytelling.

www.thecreativepenn.com

There's a crap ton of stuff in there, partly because he's touting his writing book, but I figured I'd pick out the main bit that struck me as most interesting,

The idea of Absolute Specificity for characters, particularly their flows. Don't just say they're controlling, say how and why they're controlling. There's thousands of controlling characters and drunk cops, but only so many controlling characters who do it because they think they're the only adult in the room all the time. To me, that's a really neat insight on how you can see the same character stereotype over and over but a few feel fresh and new while the others don't. Tons of young heroes cling to a code even when it's a bad idea, but only Jon Snow does so because it's his father's code except for the one time he was weak enough to father him, causing him a lifetime of pain.

Which also plays into the idea of creating stories around What Is This Character's Flaw And Can They Fix It. That idea isn't new but the more specific the flaw, the easier it is to do.

And what he points out about how the answer to that doesn't have to be Yes, I think that's obvious but sometimes goes unsaid. Comedy in particular often hinges around characters who screw up in the same way again and again. But it's useful for series too. I wonder if it makes sense for a character's flaw to change?


Anyway. Anybody else find anything interesting there, or that they particularly disagree with?

 

[sknox]

This one
>one action from a character should trigger the next action, which triggers the next action, which triggers the next action
reminded me of very similar advice I've heard elsewhere. But I would add that every action should also trigger a *reaction*. Let the reader see the characters dealing with (reacting to) the consequences of an act. Otherwise, it really is just things happening next to each other, as Storr says.

This one
>there are books where there's no damage, no flaws, just cardboard cutouts
bothers me. It comes from Penn, not Storr, but he agrees with her. I don't care for the dichotomy. Not every character needs to be a damaged character, and not every story needs to be an exploration of damage. I'd like to hear an author talk about characters who are ordinary folks trying to do the best they can. Or even characters who rise above their ordinariness. Samwise Gamgee is much-beloved, but he's not damaged. Mr Smith (in Mr Smith Goes to Washington) is an ordinary guy who in fact refuses to become flawed, and that's the story.

I'm a bit skeptical of advice from a fellow who, near as I can tell, has not written a fantasy novel. That doesn't disqualify him or mean he doesn't offer sound advice. By Skip's Skeptical Specs do come out (custom fittings available).

So when he talks about the character's flaw, I wonder why he doesn't ask about the character's strength. He gives that smartest person in the room example wrt Theresa May. But I could argue that she got where she did precisely because that's also a strength. Especially for a female, it (possibly; I don't know the woman) helped her hold her own in power politics.

Don't get me wrong, there's good advice here, but it's aimed at this: creating "... a really gripping, relentless plot..."

I get tired of relentlessness. There are other ways to tell a story. But we seem obsessed--well, the bloggers and advice columns seem obsessed--with basically making fantasy just another form of the thriller. It's there in the language they use to discuss it. It bothers me in particular when the Wise Sage offers or implies that really great storytelling must use these devices or have these characteristics. It reduces the wide world of storytelling to formulae and checklists. Which of course is how you get good blog headlines: 5 Essential Tips for X.

And oh boy, he editing Lawrence of Arabia down to sixty minutes. This is an art crime. Like saying that I edited War and Peace to a hundred pages and really got to the essence of the novel.

What did I like? Same as The Big Peat. Specificity. But not just about flaws, about strengths, quirks, behaviors, mannerisms. If we have details in mind, then we can bring them on stage effectively and memorably.

A final word about flaws. Why cure them? Not every story needs to be redemption. Nobody ever talks about curing a virtue. Not everyone is flawed consistently. Sometimes it shows and sometimes it doesn't. There are plenty of other ways to explore. But a blog post can go on only so long, then it has to wrap up. Joanna Penn's interviews and articles are consistently good. She's on my news feed. Recommended to all.

 

[sule]

>there are books where there's no damage, no flaws, just cardboard cutouts
bothers me. It comes from Penn, not Storr, but he agrees with her. I don't care for the dichotomy. Not every character needs to be a damaged character, and not every story needs to be an exploration of damage. I'd like to hear an author talk about characters who are ordinary folks trying to do the best they can. Or even characters who rise above their ordinariness. Samwise Gamgee is much-beloved, but he's not damaged. Mr Smith (in Mr Smith Goes to Washington) is an ordinary guy who in fact refuses to become flawed, and that's the story.

I'm really interested by the points you bring up here because it got me thinking about what a character flaw actually is. Because you're right, some characters aren't dominated by a vice or fear or something else that makes them 'damaged.' I think that a character's flaw isn't necessarily a bad thing that needs to be fixed; I think that a flaw can be a sensibility that puts them in conflict with their setting, and in that way the word 'flaw' might not be the best word to describe it. I sometimes call it a mantra, something that guides many of the decisions they make; in a good story decisions they make guided by that mantra inherently create conflict with the world they inhabit. For example, in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington the main character's 'flaw' is that he's a good-hearted, well-meaning person and he tries to see the best in other people. This isn't a flaw that he needs to be cured of (and it isn't 'fixed' by the end of the movie, at least not his own good-heartedness), but it is a flaw in the sense that the world he inhabits happens to be Washington, DC where it puts him in conflict with the political machine there. Sam's 'flaw' is that he's a loyal, normal guy without special abilities and that would be fine except that he finds himself in the middle of an epic fantasy.

It does seem like there are a lot of authors out there that think a character can't feel 'real' unless they are controlled by some vice or something else that needs to be 'fixed' when a 'flaw' can really just be something that grates them against the gears of their setting. In fact, I would go so far to say that a lot of these 'damaged' characters in fiction don't stand out because their flaw doesn't put them in conflict with something in their setting, it's just a thing the author attached to them because they thought that's what the character needed to feel real. (As an aside, I'll say that I feel that alcoholism particularly feels overdone in modern fiction and is often used in ways that don't inform the character's 'flaw' but is rather being used as a crutch by the author to show that the character has a traumatic past)

Anyway, thank you for giving me something to think about because thinking about why something works or doesn't work in a story helps me to grow as a writer and storyteller.

 

[The Big Peat]

This one
>one action from a character should trigger the next action, which triggers the next action, which triggers the next action
reminded me of very similar advice I've heard elsewhere. But I would add that every action should also trigger a *reaction*. Let the reader see the characters dealing with (reacting to) the consequences of an act. Otherwise, it really is just things happening next to each other, as Storr says.

This is very true. I was actually considering how to marry this up with the Scene-Sequel (or Action-Reaction) model Jim Butcher suggests. To me, it suggested a sort of beat model of -

Character Does Something (or Something is Done to Character)
Character Reacts to Immediate Consequences
---
Character Reacts to Impact of What has Happened After
Character Plans What They're Going To Do

Obviously not hard and fast all the time, but it makes sense to me.

This one
>there are books where there's no damage, no flaws, just cardboard cutouts
bothers me. It comes from Penn, not Storr, but he agrees with her. I don't care for the dichotomy. Not every character needs to be a damaged character, and not every story needs to be an exploration of damage. I'd like to hear an author talk about characters who are ordinary folks trying to do the best they can. Or even characters who rise above their ordinariness. Samwise Gamgee is much-beloved, but he's not damaged. Mr Smith (in Mr Smith Goes to Washington) is an ordinary guy who in fact refuses to become flawed, and that's the story.
...
So when he talks about the character's flaw, I wonder why he doesn't ask about the character's strength. He gives that smartest person in the room example wrt Theresa May. But I could argue that she got where she did precisely because that's also a strength. Especially for a female, it (possibly; I don't know the woman) helped her hold her own in power politics.

As ever, I never think there's one right answer or there should be only one way to do stories, but I think that once you relegate the wish fulfillment/sheer spectacle/emotional porn stories like James Bond where incredible person does incredible things and we go wow, then 9 times out of 10 the main character at least needs to be flawed, and that 99 times out of 100 damage is going to come into it somewhere and should therefore be given a role in the story.

Partly that's verisimilitude. I think we're in an age where most of us believe that almost everyone's carrying some sort of emotional damage that'll come out if forced to do remarkable things, particularly the most driven amongst us. If somebody doesn't have it, they won't feel real to a lot of people.

Partly though it's just if you're going to be showing conflict and the most interesting time in the Main Character's life then... why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you take the opportunity to have both the external and internal struggle? Sure, maybe you don't have to, but it's an obvious and easy way to add more to the story.

I'd also note that since I said main character, Samwise doesn't need to be damaged or overcoming his flaws. He can be the guy supporting the guy overcoming his flaw in Frodo.

I think what Frodo or Mr Smith maybe shows is that the flaw can be external, or one of circumstances. Frodo's flaw is that he just happens to have the One Ring and whether he is equal to the challenges it poses. And yes, the One Ring can be a strength, just like Lawrence of Arabia's conviction he was extraordinary could be a strength, and I think Storr is remiss in not linking weakness to strength but -

Strength doesn't have to be related to weakness. And it's not as good as driving narratives, and in stories where it's all about the sheer spectacle of watching the incredible person do incredible things, who cares where the incredibleness comes from?

I'm a bit skeptical of advice from a fellow who, near as I can tell, has not written a fantasy novel. That doesn't disqualify him or mean he doesn't offer sound advice. By Skip's Skeptical Specs do come out (custom fittings available).

The Hunger and Howling of Killian Lone - part sinister fairy tale, part gothic horror, to use the definition in the interview - sounds like it's at least arguably in fantasy territory.

That said - why does it matter?

The majority of the world's greatest sporting coaches teach at a far higher level than they played. Directors who never played major leading roles in major productions can be the make and break difference to getting the best performances out of them doing so. The idea that one must have done something to a degree that we know about it, to be able to teach about it, is flawed. I see no reason to think writing, or writing any particular genre, is any different.

The source shouldn't matter.

 

[sknox]

Fair enough, but each genre has its peculiarities, so the source will matter a bit. I was perhaps being overly grumpy. I wanted to like all that I read because the core message about being specific and about action-response is really important. But then I started focusing on other points and wandered off, at least in tone.

I do want to add that Scene-Sequel is harder to do than it looks. Or, at least for me, it's easy to overlook in the bustle of planning and writing, and it's easy to *believe* I've made a connection when it's not executed particularly well. It's not there in the words. But when I do it right, it feels like it's the only way to tell a story. But gosh I sure have figured out a dozen ways to do it wrong!

 

[HareBrain]

I do want to add that Scene-Sequel is harder to do than it looks. Or, at least for me, it's easy to overlook in the bustle of planning and writing, and it's easy to *believe* I've made a connection when it's not executed particularly well.

Yes, I find this is the biggest cause, for me, of having to revise the plan. And if I were ever to say "my character has taken over", it would most likely be because a reaction I'd planned just didn't seem credible for that character when it came to it.

On the subject of flaws, has anyone else heard the adage that a character's flaw should be the flip-side of their strength? It sounds good, but apart from some obvious examples (confidence/arrogance, strong moral code/persecution, mercy/licence) I've found it hard to think of examples.

 

[The Big Peat]

Yes, I find this is the biggest cause, for me, of having to revise the plan. And if I were ever to say "my character has taken over", it would most likely be because a reaction I'd planned just didn't seem credible for that character when it came to it.

On the subject of flaws, has anyone else heard the adage that a character's flaw should be the flip-side of their strength? It sounds good, but apart from some obvious examples (confidence/arrogance, strong moral code/persecution, mercy/licence) I've found it hard to think of examples.

I hadn't heard of it as an adage, but I wish I had, because I've been finding it makes more and more sense (and indeed, I think Skip pinpoints why well). I can think of a few more - courage/stubborness, generosity/overgiving, but I think it gets better when you get to specificity and stop talking about it as two sides of the same coin and as just one thing. It's a shame Storr used Theresa May because while it's a really great example, we're right in politics territory discussing it. I think one of the things Rowling did well with Harry Potter was showing his tendency to impulsively jump to conclusion and not back down was both his strength and his weakness, and how he he had to learn to temper it.

I do want to add that Scene-Sequel is harder to do than it looks. Or, at least for me, it's easy to overlook in the bustle of planning and writing, and it's easy to *believe* I've made a connection when it's not executed particularly well. It's not there in the words. But when I do it right, it feels like it's the only way to tell a story. But gosh I sure have figured out a dozen ways to do it wrong!

I sometimes think making sure the connection between A and B is obvious is the hardest thing. It's not, but it's definitely something that tends to come bubbling up on every beta read.

And yes on when it works. I'm doing a completely off the cuff story at the moment, and when I started remembering to think in those terms, it got so much easier.

 

[ginny]

I'm not sure who chooses what a flaw is or what is a flaw..
I have flaws--someone points them out to me every day.
Unfortunately(for them)I don't see them as flaws.

Flaws are like addictions--the person with the flaw has to see it as a flaw to fix it.
There are lots of people out there with flaws that will never be fixed, who are wondering why you haven't fixed your flaws.

I don't see any reason that flaws in characters in a story have to be fixed--and I don't think you should expect it even if you could tell them.