Perfect characters make me nervous.
Not because I expect them to do something terrible.
Although, in fiction, that is usually a reasonable precaution.
They make me nervous because perfection requires an exhausting amount of maintenance.
A person who always knows what to say must never hesitate.
A person who is always brave must never look for the nearest exit.
A person who is always kind must somehow survive an entire morning without becoming irritated by someone walking slowly in front of them.
I find this difficult to believe.
People are inconsistent.
Fortunately.
We can be patient with strangers and impatient with people we love.
We can give excellent advice and ignore it completely when our own lives become complicated.
We can understand exactly why someone made a mistake and still refuse to forgive them for it.
None of this makes us badly written.
It makes us human.
When I think about characters, I am rarely interested in giving them flaws.
The word itself feels too organised.
As if somewhere there is a form.
CHARACTER FLAW:
Please select one.
Arrogance.
Impatience.
Fear of commitment.
Poor communication skills.
Sudden inability to make sensible decisions during the third act.
That is not how people work.
Our contradictions are rarely separate from our strengths.
Confidence and arrogance may live in the same room.
Loyalty can become stubbornness without changing its coat.
The person who notices everything may also find it impossible to stop looking.
Perhaps this is why perfect characters feel unfinished to me.
There is nothing beneath the surface arguing with what we can see.
I want the argument.
I want the person who says they do not care and then remembers a detail nobody else noticed.
I want someone capable of walking into a difficult room who still pauses outside the door.
I want friendship between people who occasionally find each other completely unreasonable.
Especially then.
Perfection creates admiration.
Contradiction creates recognition.
And recognition is dangerous.
It is the moment when a reader stops observing a character from a safe distance and thinks:
I have done that.
Or worse:
I would have done exactly the same thing.
That is usually where the interesting part begins.
So I do not trust perfect characters.
I suspect they are hiding something.
And if they are not, I probably have more work to do.
— D. Vaen