by Elaina Lyons

Want to know a pet peeve of mine? Perfect characters.

I get that, as writers, we want to make our main characters likeable. We want them to be relatable to our readers. But there’s nothing more annoying to me than perfect protagonists.

No one is perfect. The “good guys” aren’t perfect in real life. So why would they be perfect on the page?

My characters are flawed. They’re really, really flawed. They have glaring shortcomings that, admittedly, make them not-so-likeable sometimes. But it’s in our mistakes that we find our humanity. If everyone was flawless, we wouldn’t have much to relate to, and there wouldn’t be very much for us writers to explore.

There have been times I’ve questioned if my characters are too bad. Maybe their mistakes are just too unforgivable. Maybe they’re too corrupted. But I always come back to this Thomas Carlyle quote:

“Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin forever on their axis, advancing nowhere.”

We are imperfect beings, and that is what makes us unique. Your characters should be no different.

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