do you have any tips on WANTING to make your character bad/ making them have bad traits??? i always want them to be perfect but i REALLY need them to be imperfect but i’m a perfectionist sooo??? thanks

wordsnstuff:

I think that, when it comes to creating well-rounded, imperfect characters, the main struggle you face is thinking of them as actual people. In real life, we are aware that the people around us are, no matter what, the following three things:

• Facing something we don’t know about and cannot understand
• Feeling things we aren’t aware of and, again, cannot understand
• Riddled with contradictory personality traits that they struggle to find balance between every single day

In order for your character to be perfect, they need to have imperfections. Contradictions. Unfavorable traits. Otherwise, they’re just cardboard cutouts of people and will a. bore your reader and b. bore you. 

One of the hardest parts of being a writer is creating characters that you love and you feel really, really close to, and then taking the massive hammer of pain and conflict and smacking them with it. But it’s part of the gig. In order to see what your character is really made of, you have to break them, and that’s where the “bad traits” come out. 

If you are a writer, you have to abandon the idea of perfection. Your stories, characters, technique, development, etc. will never, ever be perfect. You know you’re successful as a writer when you can just not ever find satisfaction with a story because you know it can always be better. 

So, in conclusion, in order to create rounded characters that embody good and bad characteristics, you must put them in real life situations and let them react as real people would. You have to give them depth through private, personal, and internal struggles that the reader can see but not understand. You must also give up your desire for perfection because it will never bear fruit, and will oftentimes lead you down disappointing paths. Be a good parent to your characters. Accept their imperfections, because they only make the “good traits” better.

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