Obnoxious – highly irritating and unpleasant. Example: Tom Sawyer in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.ġ3. Mischievous – playfully troublesome rascally or roguish. Example: Charlie Kelmeckis in The Perks of Being a Wallflower.ġ2. Example: Gervaise Macquart in L'Assommoir.ġ1. Example: Percy Weasley in Harry Potter.ġ0. Humorless – having no sense of humor solemn. Example: Valentine Michael Smith in Stranger in a Strange Land.ĩ. Gullible – easily fooled or persuaded to believe something.

Gossipy – inclined to spread rumors or talk about others behind their backs. Example: Bertie Wooster in Jeeves and Wooster.ħ. Foolish – lacking good judgment or common sense. Clumsy – uncoordinated and fumbling often accident-prone. Example: Lily Bart in The House of Mirth.Ĥ. Capricious – given to flights of fancy and impulsive behaviors. Example: Mary Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.ģ. Boring – dull, tedious, uninteresting (not to be confused with a flat character, who’s not even developed enough to be boring). Awkward – socially uneasy and uncomfortable. If you’re looking for a minor flaw to round out your likable protagonist, this section is for you!ġ. Others do have the potential to harm, but rarely evolve to that extent. Most of these character flaws are more annoying than harmful some are even a little endearing. List of character flaws The almost-good 🤷🏻‍♀️ With all that in mind: here are 70 fascinating character flaws to use in your story, with examples from literature to demonstrate each one. Pro tip: Choose a flaw for one of your characters, then try a few character development exercises to see how it might manifest.

Indeed, some of the most interesting stories result from subverting readers’ expectations for how a given flaw will play out! So while we’ve attempted to divide up the following list by degrees of severity, remember that a seemingly innocuous flaw can turn fatal if not kept in check, and that even the grimmest of flaws may still be managed. For example, in Little Women, Amy’s vanity is a small, amusing aspect of her character, out of which she (mostly) matures for Narcissus, on the other hand, vanity proves fatal. However, note that the outcome of a flaw depends entirely on the character’s handling of it! What functions as a minor flaw for one character could be a fatal flaw for another. Major flaws tend to be more like hypocrisy and envy, and a fatal flaw would be something like the propensity to self-sabotage, or extreme hubris. A minor flaw is something that has minimal impact on a character’s life a major flaw affects them more significantly and a fatal flaw causes that character’s downfall (though this is not always literal death - sometimes it’s moral death, the death of a relationship, etc.).Īs you’d expect, minor flaws are typically things like poor hygiene and forgetfulness. There are three types of character flaws: minor, major, and fatal. Each of these has certain expected consequences - but the beauty of flaws is that each will still present differently in different characters, depending on that character’s other traits, background, and circumstances. Nonetheless, “chatterbox” and “homicidal” both fall on the spectrum of character flaws! Between them is a vast ocean of unfortunate things a character can be: prideful, foolish, irritating, selfish, aggressive, obsessive, or simply naïve. A long-winded character may be unpleasant to talk to, but they’d surely be much more pleasant than a character bent on murdering you. Of course, the degree of this effect varies hugely based on the flaw itself. What is a character flaw?Ī character flaw is a negative quality in a character that affects them or others in a detrimental way. Not to mention that there are so many complex and fascinating character flaws to choose from, you might even find yourself excited to “mess up” your characters!īut before we get to our extensive list of character flaws, let’s go over what a character flaw is and the different types you’ll see in stories.

While it might be hard to bestow your precious characters with such defects, you’ll find they ultimately enrich your story: giving your characters deeper motivations, strengthening their interactions, and adding nuance to how they deal with the central conflict(s) in your plot. It stands to reason that if you want your fictional characters to be as well-rounded and relatable as actual people, you’ll need to give them a few character flaws. To err is human, in the words of Alexander Pope - or, in the slightly goofier words of Pam Beesly, pobody’s nerfect.

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