Everyone has faults. Some are endearing. Some are annoying. And some are an absolute dealbreaker. Confidence can be sexy, while cockiness can go both ways. When it delves into arrogance, though, it makes someone completely unlikable. Huge flaws tend to overshadow everything else, and they end up being all you associate someone with. Envy, lust, pride, wrath, greed, gluttony, sloth. There’s a reason these are called the seven deadly sins. It’s because all of these are fatal flaws. Mind you, this isn’t always literal. These flaws may not kill you, but they can usually lead to your downfall in one way or another.
It’s not hard to find examples of how these flaws affect characters. Open the bible to the first few pages, and we see ignorance and greed leading to Adam and Eve being cast out of paradise. A mixture of self-righteousness and anger leads to the very first murder just a few pages later. Reading further, you find that Moses had a pretty wrathful side, Saul had a bad case of Hubris, Samson had a weakness for the ladies, and, well, it’s safe to say that Judas was more than a little self-serving.
Fatal flaws can be played out one of two ways while writing. If your hero has a fatal flaw, you can tell a pretty compelling story about overcoming it. Gran Torino had Clint Eastwood playing a bitter, grumpy old racist mourning the loss of his wife. While the grief gave the character some sympathetic qualities, everything else about him was almost completely unlikable. We grow to feel for his character, Walt, as the movie goes on, and he not only forgives the punk kid that tried to steal his car, he takes him under his wing and tries to help him stay away from the gang influence that plagues their neighborhood. The interesting thing about this example is that it’s not Walt’s flaws that kill him, it was him overcoming them.
The flip side of this coin is when you use this trope while writing a villain. This gives the heroes a weakness to exploit when facing off against an antagonist. The rogue’s gallery in Batman seem to be built around this idea. Edward Nigma, the Riddler, suffers from an overwhelming need to prove that he’s smarter than the “World’s Greatest Detective”. Harvey Dent, Two-Face, leaves absolutely everything up to the flip of a coin. The Joker has no greater motivation than wanting to watch the world burn. All of these examples give Batman a hell of a head-start when trying to find their Achilles’ heels.
I’ve said before that flaws are what makes a character interesting, but too much of anything can be bad. Treat them like alcohol. Used in moderation, it makes things more fun, and certainly more entertaining. Too much, too often, and it becomes a huge, sad mess. Write responsibly, and have a designated editor. No one wants you behind the keyboard when you’ve gone a little overboard.
Trope Alert! 