Great characters start out wrong.
Selfishness. Cowardice. Arrogance. Codependency. Denial. Emotional distance.
Your protagonist carries a flaw that compromises how they interact with the world. Without a flaw, there’s no arc, no reason to care.
What’s broken in your character? One thing she can’t admit about herself?
This is a deep emotional deficiency, not just a cute quirk. Flaws are perhaps better thought of as fears rather than traits. A person who can’t connect isn’t merely cold, but terrified of intimacy. The person who controls others fears being vulnerable.
Here are some common flaw examples:
A character flaw allows us to see where, bent throughout the story, the character will ultimately snap.
What situation would be absolute hell for this person? This defines the engine of the story.
Let’s say your protagonist is a control freak. Think about the worst thing that could happen: a chaotic situation beyond her control. This could be anything from an alien invasion, an unexpected job loss, an obsessively clean person being forced to live with a slovenly roommate.
Let’s say he’s emotionally avoidant. Force him to engage in a situation where emotional connection is the only path forward. This could, for example, be caring for a dying parent that they’ve hardly ever known.
In such cases, note that the premise is designed to impact it directly.
The more that the plot or exposes and exacerbates the character’s deep flaw, the more natural the payoff at the climax becomes–because this will force the character to overcome an emotional problem as well as a practical one.
Lee Chandler is stuck in emotional paralysis after a tragedy.
The worst thing that could happen to him? Is that he’s forced to take responsibility again. To feel again. This is precisely what the story forces him to do.
The premise isn’t exactly high concept: a man returns to his hometown to care for his nephew. The emotional weight comes almost entirely from the balance between the character and his situation.
As the character’s emotional world is besieged, even quiet films can have great impact.
On the other side, let’s say you’re starting with a fabulous premise: a futuristic dystopia, a heist gone wrong, or a new take on the time-loop mystery.
A common trap is to treat characters like interchangeable parts. Story falls flat if you stick a generic protagonist into a complex world.
A high-concept or genre-heavy story must introduce a character who is uniquely unfit to handle the situation presented by the premise.
Ask yourself:
This will have to be someone whose internal struggle makes the story totally inevitable.
Louise Banks isn’t just an expert: she is grieving, emotionally walled off, and stuck in time.
Understanding the alien language allows her to experience nonlinear time at the exact moment her emotional arc demands that she let go of her past.
Here, the high concept becomes more than just a clever idea; it is a metaphor for Louise’s personal healing.
Once you understand the protagonist’s core flaw, flesh her out more:
As the flaw is deeply woven into the protagonist’s Weltanschauung, the audience gets emotional impact from the stakes. On one hand, we’d love to see the protagonist change; on the other, we can sympathize with her inability to do so.
Example: The White Lotus, Season 2 (Harper)
In The White Lotus Season 2, Harper (Aubrey Plaza) is skeptical, self-righteous, and guarded—this gives her strength in the world of liars she clearly inhabits.
Nevertheless, it is this same distance that prevents her from achieving intimacy with anyone–particularly her husband, Ethan. Her core flaw of mistrust matches the premise of her storyline: the deception and temptation offered by Cameron.
Mike White offers us no action-based climax. We don’t even know whether Cameron and Harper actually hooked up. The irony is clear, however, because Harper is the focal point of this entire storyline; the crisis of the storyline is in fact designed to poke at Harper’s flaw.
Work toward inherent irony: a clear disconnect between the nature or personality of your character and the requirements of the story itself.
This irony is certainly more obvious in comedy concepts. To use John Truby’s favorite example, in Tootsie, a sexist poses as a woman. It might also be tragic, in the sense that Walt’s desire to help his family alienates them from him in Breaking Bad. It might be a bit more intimate, like Lady Bird’s desire to escape blinding her from the good things about home.
The flaw, in any case, must seem emotionally cringe when run through the premise. For example:
Somehow, in some way, each beat of the plot will reflect this broader idea.
You’ve written a fascinating protagonist—neurotic, charming, damaged—but the storylies flat.
Fix: Consider what situation would expose their flaw. Consider what setting or plot would make them suffer, learn, and transform.
This is what people mean when they say “put your character up a tree, then throw rocks at her.”
Your concept hooks everyone you speak to—e.g. self-driving cars are used for assassinations, intentionally crashing when the right passenger enters. Or, a small Ohio town disappears without a trace–even in historical records.
And… your main character remains “some guy.”
Fix: This is where you pick a flaw that makes this situation totally unbearable for this person.
These are just spitballing, but see if you can come up with other characters:
The only person who can blow the whistle is the woman who sacrificed her marriage and family to see self-driving cars actually become viable.
The man is a known liar in his day to day life but he grew up in that town and is the only person who remembers it.
So the character has a psychological hang-up, but this has shit-all to do with the story.
Fix: Make this flaw part of every decision the character has to make. This flaw–like Baxter’s passivity in The Apartment–must complicate his ability to solve the problem that arises.
The only way out for this person–the only way to win the story–is if the person can overcome his flaw.
It’s not actually as hard as it seems to come up with flaws and premises that are reasonably opposed. Now it’s time to play with that some more.
Daniel Plainview’s greed and paranoia are never resolved.
The story, of course, aligns. However, the outcome is Daniel’s reckoning with inevitable consequence rather than overcoming his issues.
Transformation is not absolutely necessary–and it is essentially impossible for tragedy by the very nature of tragedy. However, the story must in any case turn the situation introduced by the premise into a moral test.
Use this checklist to evaluate your screenplay:
| Element | Question | Yes/No |
| Character flaw defined? | Do you know what your protagonist is afraid of or hiding from? | |
| Worst-case scenario identified? | Does the story challenge this flaw directly and painfully? | |
| Flaw affects decisions? | Does it complicate plot progress and create internal tension? | |
| Premise reflects inner arc? | Does the external situation symbolically mirror internal change? | |
| Change or consequence clear? | Is the flaw resolved or punished in the third act? | |
| Story emotionally inevitable? | Could no one else be the protagonist of this story? |
Five Examples of the Midpoint in Screenwriting: the Most Crucial Beat in Your Film When…
How to Write an Open Ending: 3 Classic Examples To hell with Aristotle–resolution is overrated.…
How to Write a “Fun and Games” Section (Rising Action) for Screenwriters Your characters have…
Screenwriting for Busy Professionals So, you have a job. Good. Contrary to what the film…
(you can assume that links are affiliate links) The Tyranny of Likeability When Writing Female…
Five Examples of the Break Into Two for Screenwriters Those of us who geek on…