This week: The Foul and Flawed Main Characters Edited by: Joy  
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“Humanity can be divided into madmen and cowards. My personal tragedy is in being born into a world where sanity is held to be a character flaw.”
Mark Lawrence, Prince of Fools
“We’re all flawed. We’re all monsters. Our ugly parts are in different places, but they’re all the same.”
K. Weikel, Replay: Green
“I saw you before. All your flaws, your imperfections. Your body’s going to a lot of trouble to hide something, something inside of you. It must be very precious.”
Shaun Hick, The Army of Five Men
“There are threads of fiction intricately woven into our muscles. Fictional characters such as Superman, Black Panther, Wonder Woman etc., are birthed from something struggling to come to life from deep within us.”
Nike Thaddeus
Hello, I am Joy , this week's drama editor. This issue is about creating unforgettable main characters from the ranks of antiheroes and deeply flawed people. |
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Welcome to the Drama newsletter
Where would us writers be if it weren’t for the flawed characters and antiheroes? They make fascinating protagonists and antagonists. Especially when they are so relatable.
Just take a look at one of those pathetic and yet so lovable ones. Here are a few gems from the mouth of Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye. I especially appreciate the author’s genius when he makes Holden talk about himself.
“And I have one of those very loud, stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I'd probably lean over and tell myself to please shut up.”
“I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.”
Then, there is Rachel Watson, the drunk character from the book, The Girl on the Train.
“I never learn. I wake with a crushing sensation of wrongness, of shame, and I know immediately that I’ve done something stupid.”
“After a while, I learned that when you wake up like that, you don’t ask what happened, you just say that you’re sorry: you’re sorry for what you did and who you are and you’re never, ever going to behave like that again.”
Because Holden Caulfield and Rachel Watson can occasionally see through their own actions and motivations, not only they tell us about themselves but also, they touch our heartstrings and make us side with them. This is because transgression has some allure as there’s a tiny rebellious streak in every heart.
For that end, we like to add flaws to our most saintly story people. Yet, being lovable and human is one thing, and how much of the sins of story characters the readers will forgive is another.
I think the boundary lies somewhere on the degree of harm to others. Such characters can cause empathy but that empathy shifts from them to their victims when a great deal of violence is involved. Still, the readers can accept a good number and degree of unpleasant behavior as long as the intention behind the action is tolerable and some kind of a humor is injected into the situation.
In addition to humor, a not-so-desirable character can be made more attractive to the reader by having that character care about something very deeply, something that is common to all human beings such as arts, good food, helping the fallen or the poor, etc.
Here is an example from Maurice Leblanc’s Arsene Lupin, “Arsène Lupin, the eccentric gentleman who operates only in the chateaux and salons, and who, one night, entered the residence of Baron Schormann, but emerged empty-handed, leaving, however, his card on which he had scribbled these words: “Arsène Lupin, gentleman-burglar, will return when the furniture is genuine.”
Yet, above all, the insight of the character into events and into himself, especially what made him who he is, can endear him to the readers immensely. Another one from Anne Rice’s vampire Lestat on that point: “I am an unwilling devil. I cry like some vagrant child. I want to go home.”
Then, struggle an d vulnerability are for all human beings and when readers see the antihero or the flawed character reaching for a desire or a goal, and struggling, losing, or winning, they are more likely to identify with that character, such as when Edward Rochester is worried about losing Jane Eyre. “How can it be that Jane is with me, and says she loves me? Will she not depart as suddenly as she came? To-morrow, I fear I shall find her no more.”
Some of the elements that may make the flawed characters palatable can be:
 When the devil in the character is balanced by the angel that shows up occasionally, especially when the character is vulnerable to a kid or a dog or is loyal to someone. Just listen to Sam Spade in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon: “He said: "I'm going to send you over. The chances are you'll get off with life. That means you'll be out again in twenty years. You're an angel. I'll wait for you." He cleared his throat. "If they hang you, I'll always remember you.”
When the character’s moral code (or even the immoral one) is set straight or at least referred to in some way from the onset of the story.
The actions of the characters can become even more interesting if they are fighting with competing morals and goals within themselves. In Fyodor Dostoyevski’s Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov utters in regret about the old woman he killed, “She said nothing, she only looked at me without a word. But it hurts more, it hurts more when they don't blame!”
If the flawed character is hiding or facing some secret or deceit, that can add depth to him by creating a double (inner and outer) life. In Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, the protagonist-narrator finds out about her husband Max’s killing of his first wife only toward the end of the story from none other than the Maximilian de Winter himself.
"The woman buried in the crypt is not Rebecca," he said. "It's the body of some unknown woman, unclaimed, belonging nowhere. There never was an accident. Rebecca was not drowned at all. I killed her. I shot Rebecca in the cottage in the cove."
When a character is pitted against another character or situation that is truly evil or he commits wicked acts out of necessity or for a higher cause such as saving his family or country or keeping law and order (his version). In such cases, readers may accept this kind of wickedness an almost appropriate behavior. An example to such a character is from Hollywood, the one and only Dirty Harry, Harry Callahan, a rogue cop with a strong sense of right and wrong, who will not hesitate to break the law or act immorally to get the job done, and he has an attitude, too. “Having to wade through the scum of this city, being swept away by bigger and bigger waves of corruption, apathy and red tape. Nah, that doesn't bother me.”
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Drama: May 26, 2021 Issue [#10769]
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