Pen & Ink

Every character in your story, regardless of whether they are the bad guy or good guy, needs at least one flaw. Every human person has flaws, even if it seems like they don’t. Some are more obvious, and others are less. But if you want your fictional character to seem real to your readers, they have to have some flaws.

When I was younger, I always made my main characters perfect. They all had zero flaws. But now, when I read some of my old stories, I realize how little readers can relate to those characters. To really make your characters come to life and pop out of the pages of your book, they have to make some mistakes.

So what are your character’s main flaws? Here is a list of some character flaws to get you started:

1. Greed: intense and selfish desire for something.
2. Selfishness: lacking consideration for others; concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure.
3. Perfectionism: refusal to accept any standard short of perfection.
4. Dishonesty: behaving or prone to behave in an untrustworthy or fraudulent way.
5. Rudeness: lack of manners.
6. Arrogance: having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance or abilities.
7. Vanity: excessive pride in or admiration of one’s own appearance or achievements.
8. Thoughtlessness: not showing consideration for the needs of other people.
9. Cruelty: callous indifference to or pleasure in causing pain and suffering.
10. Dogmatism: the tendency to lay down principles as incontrovertibly true, without consideration of evidence or the opinions of others.
11. Stubbornness: having or showing dogged determination not to change one’s attitude or position on something, especially in spite of good arguments or reasons to do so.
12. Jealousy: feeling or showing envy of someone or their achievements and advantages.
13. Carelessness: failure to give sufficient attention to avoiding harm or errors.
14. Stupidity: behavior that shows a lack of good sense or judgment.
15. Grumpiness: bad-tempered and irritable.
16. Silliness: lack of common sense or judgment.
17. Anger: a strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility.
18. Conceitedness: excessive pride in oneself.
19. Disobedience: failure or refusal to obey rules or someone in authority.
20. Nervousness: easily agitated or alarmed.
21. Forgetfulness: apt or likely not to remember.
22. Humorlessness: not able to appreciate or express humor.
23. Ignorance: lack of knowledge or information.
24. Judgmentalness: the ability to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions.
25. Laziness: the quality of being unwilling to work or use energy.
26. Rebellion: an act of violent or open resistance to an established government or ruler.
27. Suspicion: a feeling or thought that something is possible, likely, or true.
28. Unethicalness: not morally correct.
29. Complaining: the expression of dissatisfaction or annoyance about something.
30. Cunning: having or showing skill in achieving one’s ends by deceit or evasion.