How do I make my character flawed?

Ahh I see...

Okay, so in Joel's case, I actually don't think he's a very good person. In fact, I think the Naugty Dog writers try to frame a lot of his behaviour as sympathetic or justified which I'm honestly unsure I agree with. That said, a lot of people clearly think Joel is a more sympathetic character than I do, because they get VERY angry about TLoU2...

But anyway. Joel is a damaged man, and his development is kind of that he learns to care about somebody again. He goes from being a caring family man, to losing his daughter and becoming a closed-off survivalist and cold-blooded killer, to getting a surrogate daughter and then becoming...er... a closed off survivalist and cold-blooded killer who cares about one person; Ellie. The narrative just frames this as sympathetic by only showing us Joel and Ellie's perspective and how everything affects them emotionally, while the many, many people Joel and Ellie shoot, smash in the head with bricks etc. are basically faceless "others", and it's framed as justified because Oh, they're raiders, they're cannibals, they're trying to save the world but actually if you read their files maybe the surgery won't work anyway etc. etc. It's..very exceptionalist. I actually love that in TLoU2 we get to see Abby's perspective of how the people Joel just murders his way through in TLoU were also humans with hopes and dreams and emotions, and how awful it is that he's perpetuated this cycle of hate and revenge.

Having your character have some flaws doesn't mean you have to go full Naughty Dog and have a narrative that constantly frames the violent or unpleasant actions of your protagonist as somehow okay, while the violent actions of anyone who opposes them are somehow not okay (In some ways, I think Uncharted is worse for this than TLoU... Nathan Drake kills a lot of people...). You're allowed to take a different approach and to hold your protagonist accountable; have other characters call them out, have them face appropriate consequences or feel appropriate remorse.

I could be wrong but sometimes you can take a character's strengths and convert those strengths into weaknesses if that makes sense. For example, let's say John Doe is an ambitious and determined character, which could translate into John's weakness being the fact that he has unrealistically high expectations and is unable to take no for an answer. Or another example is that Jane Doe is selfless and always wants to help others so her weakness is the fact that she helps people who don't want it and ends up making things worse for them. You don't have to manifest a weakness out of thin air, it should be an extension of who the character is.

what might help is if you think of "where do you want your characters to be at" by the end of your story-- what have they learned/ realized? grown into? then flip that to create your character at the beginning of your story.

Similarly, you can think of the obstacles that your character has to overcome, and write flaws based on the opposite of what it'll take to overcome the obstacles. I.e-- knight has to defeat the dragon, which require bravery. So your knight's flaw can be cowardly, and the quest can be about how they find bravery.

Remember, if your story doesn't bring change, it's a lot harder for your readers to invest.

The main thing about a flaw is it has to matter. Having flaws like "she is just too pretty, he's just too smart" or "he's afraid of random thing." is not a flaw the audience wants in a character. When people say they want flaws, they want things that not only impact the character, but impact the story too. A guy that lies but is never caught and doesn't give him problems because he always gets out of it is not a flaw. Same with a romantic partner that is abusive to the other but is always forgiven and is love unconditionally is not a flaw. It has to mean something or it seems shallow. The audience will spot that a mile away.

Flaws are, by their nature, meant to give us a negative reaction. Be it that we relate to those flaws or have seen it in people we dislike, they can make a character go from a moral compass to a total loser. So.. don't feel too bad about it. Unless you're directly endorsing actual hateful stuff, but that's against TOS.

That being said, it's very easy to tackle flaws in characters, and they can be anything from barely an issue (clumsiness, for example), to something that'd make you not want to ever meet them in real life (extreme narcissism, disregard for others, or being a huge bully). Those traits are usually used for antagonists, but having a main character with them, and having them deal and overcome with them can be satisfying.
Your main problem is with them having a good arc, right?
In my opinion, you should think about your goal for your character, as only you know that. Do you want them to improve? Get worse? Or do you just want them to have slight flaws to make them a more interesting character?All of those are valid.

Hopefully I'm not repeating anybody else's feedback, but I find the best place to explore the flaw of a character is when they experience failure.

Here's the thing about failure, and why it's so important for any protagonist to experience: it is only in failure that we see the protagonist's true self revealed. Their reaction to failure is both a revelation to the audience (and sometimes to the character), and the thing that will drive their growth to overcome their flaws.

So, the character tries to overcome the equal or greater force of antagonism that they are facing, and things go horribly wrong. What does your character now do? Do they double down on what they were trying? Do they blame others? Do they blame themselves far more than is reasonable? This is where the flaw of the character will best be revealed.

For example, one of my main protagonists in Re:Apotheosis is Atria Silversword, who is a mech pilot from an SF story who falls into the real world and ends up working with the Japanese Self-Defence Force for much of the story. Her main flaw is that she doesn't actually have any ability to cope with what is happening to her (discovering that she and her entire world are fiction, etc.), and she avoids dealing with it by throwing herself into her mission, and doubling down on her mission...and the end result is that she makes some very serious mistakes and somebody very close to her gets shot in the chest. You don't see this play out except in her reaction to failure.

So, hopefully that helps from a story mechanic perspective...

Idk if someone mentioned it, but it also works if you put it in a humorous way as well. That way it could help you trick your brain into making a flaw seem like a good thing.

Example: (One of my characters)

Flaw Greed:
He looked over to the cart with greedy eyes.

"That's all mine, no one touch it!".

He then drew his sword and started flashing it around as his eyes were taunting anyone to come near enough to taste the cold touch of the steel.

Flaw Greed humorous:
Before She could reach the cart to inspect its contents, He dashed over to it and hugged it.

"No, it's my loot. Don't touch!"

"Not again... When will you finally understand that it's your golem took care of the bandits, not you. Isn't that right Constantine?"

She shot a soft smile at the little golem who responded with an agreeing chirp after a few moments.

"See?"

"You devious little-....... Agghhh, I need some loyalty around here, sheesh."

(IDK I wrote this real quick but hopefully it you get the gist of it.)

Would I be correct in assuming that a part of you is afraid the audience would think you're a bad person because your character did bad things but you're portraying them sympathetically? That it means you're 'justifying' or 'excusing' the behaviour?

Others in this thread had covered how to write flaws pretty well imo, but this is a harder issue to overcome. I think people are always going to read condonement when none is intended in these kinds of situations*. For instance with Joel from TLoU, I Feel like the game was trying to frame his behaviour as sympathetic, but not justified. Like you're supposed to feel for him and understand why he does the things he does, but you're not supposed to believe it's morally correct.

But the line between 'sympathy' and 'justification' is different for everyone, and some people are going to feel the game's portrayal stepped over that line from the former to the latter (and some other people straight up believe the former implies the latter; that you can't sympathise with a character without condoning their actions and that if you don't think a character is a good person, then you mustn't like them or sympathise with them.)

On the other hand you get people who stan your morally ambiguous character and insist they did nothing wrong, which makes it even worse because now people are going to read those fans' opinions and think they reflect your intentions as the author; that you also believe your character did nothing wrong and those fans are interpreting things as you intended :'D

So I guess you could either play it safe and not make your sympathetic characters do anything too bad, or just make your character do whatever and try not to tell the audience what to think or care too much about whether the audience finds them 'sympathetic'. But I guess I'm mostly just trying to say that if you have these fears, you're not alone :'D

Don't write to tropes. Write people. I think a lot of the time when people try to give characters "flaws", it's one maybe two big glaring "flaws". People aren't like that in real life. A character might say the wrong thing at inappropriate times. Maybe they are neurodivergent and have a hard time understanding social cues. They could stutter or trip over their words in certain settings (which behavior is often used to convey a character as being shy or stupid) but they could be incredibly confident and articulate in a situation where they're comfortable.

The same goes for big "glaring" flaws like a character having a cluttered room or office. Have character A assume B is messy but then work it in that B needs the clutter to keep things organized in their heads. Little quirks add up fast to make a well rounded character.

I think you can start with thinking what are the desire of the characters, what they really want to achieve in your story. When you know their goals, you can try to make them "unable" to achieve this goal when the story starts. It can be due to their personality, external pressure, family and friends, etc.

For example, for my Webtoon Dawnbreaker, one of the protagonists Edith aspired to be an envoy (a job that requires flying), but in fact she was an acrophobic girl. She had extreme fear for heights and never coped with her fear properly at the beginning of the story, even shrugged it off when others brought up the topic, which made her becoming an envoy extremely difficult.

nah that's inappropriate/inconsiderate/hurtful/stems from insecurity etc.
But those ARE flaws, or the basis for a flawed action, aren't they? By rejecting scenes based on those reasons, it seems you're erasing the very flaws you sought to install. I believe you can soften the "edge" (if you think the character needs it) if the story also includes some introspection (the character recognizes their bad acts but may or may not be able to always prevent it) or by eventually having them correct themselves or be taught a lesson. Bad habits may make your character more realistic that always being a "goody two shoes".

One thing I love to do is give them itty bitty details that'll annoy the Hell out of you if you're next to a character that they're too stubborn to change. Like them chewing loudly or pronouncing a word a certain way. Makes the other characters go "W-why do you do that? Can you stop that?". :v

As for BIG flaws, I think if the writer is trying to make a story in general well... I think people should probably read-up on figures in history who've done horrible things but end up being forgiven on a mass scale? Just so it can add perspective and make certain redemption arcs realistic. They exist, trust me, and they're probably the most fascinating people imo.

I think when redeeming a character the thing you need to keep in mind is that there IS no one way in doing it (unless you're proving a point). You gotta keep people on their feet and that means redeeming characters in all sorts of ways. For example; a horrible character might end up turning into a goody-goody and that's okay. Because that character came to terms with his flaws and solved it HIS way. Individuality is key.

I think another thing I love is how a character is just like "I accept that I'm flawed... I'm not going to CHANGE it... but still". Either way, give the audience variety.

Honestly for my stories I try to weave the unapologetically crazy characters into my narrative? Like how in That Stick Figure Isekai, the Hand Arc is Naota getting #metoo'd for analyzing potential "girlfriends" by writing down their attributes like friggin' race horses (he kept record of their bathroom schedules ._.). He outright thinks he can get away with it since he's a harem character and disregards the stick figure girl's personal rights because they're nothing more than stick figures. The whole point of the arc was to show that the character that I made the audience cheer for is EXACTLY like the antagonist and the jokes the audience playfully laughed at earlier were red flags for this very moment (a play on the harem genre). It was like a little test. Would they raise their eyebrows or would they come to embrace this character simply because the narrative asked you to?

That said, I want to stress... there's nothing wrong with perfect characters. (Big Classic Superman/Giorno fan incoming :v) I've been hearing statements that they're boring and while I can see where they're coming from, I don't think there's anything wrong with leaning on that if you don't feel comfortable with writing flawed characters UNLESS (and this is a big unless) you're making a point or you have some direction that'll make people on board. In fact, you can make it to the point where they're so perfect it's comical.

I haven't introduced them yet, but there's characters in my story that... doesn't have any particular flaws. They're a huge contrast from the rest of the cast.

Those are my thoughts tho.

@darthmongoose I think with Last of Us 2, I would've loved the faceless other concept (I'm obsessed with that concept)... hadn't been for Ellie killing that pregnant lady. I remember Matthewmatosis making a comment where he's killing random people and was like "Well what if this random lady was pregnant?" or "this guy was close to finding the cure?". Comments like that. I get that's supposed to be the point, but you kill an ungodly amount of people up from what I recall. Like sure, the Uncharted games were comically bad with this.... but and I can't lie... it makes the games even more hilarious lol. I think Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale (which is canon now) made me appreciate it more where Nathan's arcade opening and outro playout like his games but in between... the gameplay... you're fighting raccoons... robots... dog rappers. In the end he casually calls them "freaks" which makes it funnier, but that's about it when explaining what happened. To Sully it seemed like another day (honestly, I hope they keep this as a running gag). Kinda like Yakuza. I WILL say if you like the different perspectives, Hotline Miami is a fascinating take on it. The way they transition between the two storylines made my eyes pop-out. I was like "WAIT. THAT'S NOT HOW THE NARRATIVE WAS SUPPOSED TO PLAY OUT" (Hotline Miami 2 is a little more risky with its content). No More Heroes has the same themes as Last of Us 2 (even uses animal symbolism, but the protagonist is outright a metaphor for juvenile teenage male players). It's cool seeing how Ellie and Travis end up in the same situation and how they deal with it.