You’ve heard the advice that characters should have both strengths and weaknesses to make them appear more “rounded” and multi-dimensional. It’s easy to think of those as very different aspects of a character’s personality.
But what if their strength is also their weakness? Any strength can become a weakness, depending on the situation. That simple idea can lay the groundwork for creating an interesting character fraught with inner turmoil.
Let’s say your character is extremely loyal. That’s a marvelous strength. But let’s brainstorm some situations where loyalty could be a weakness. Perhaps our hero doggedly supports a leader who is corrupt and who uses our character’s loyalty to serve evil purposes. Or perhaps our heroine’s loyalty to a friend helps that friend gets away with a horrible crime. Or maybe our protagonist remains blindly loyal to a lover, or an organization, or a cause that doesn’t share that loyalty and is perfectly happy to let our protagonist hang out to dry.
When could being logical and smart become a weakness? When the solution calls for faith, or hope, or heart, or intuition instead of logic, perhaps.
How about physical strength? That’s a great quality to have in a lot of situations, but plenty a hulking hero has learned that he can’t punch his way to a better relationship with his daughter, wife, or business partner.
Self-reliance? That’s all fine and dandy until the heroine realizes that if she’d just trusted her friend or asked for help instead of pushing others away and trying to go it alone, she wouldn’t be in the mess she’s in.
Think of Sherlock Holmes. His deductive reasoning skills are superlative, which makes him wonderfully successful at solving crimes. But his personal life and both familial and business relationships are mine fields he has trouble navigating, because he wants them to work logically (which is seldom the case). So his strength (logic) becomes a weakness in his interpersonal relationships.
In the same way that strengths can become weaknesses in certain situations, weaknesses can become strengths—often when least expected.
Perhaps you’ve got a secondary character—a neighbor, for example—who’s annoyingly nosy and intrusive. Maybe their intrusiveness (weakness) makes them especially observant, prompting them to reach out when they realize the heroine isn’t behaving normally, and that small act prevents the heroine from committing self-harm. Thank heavens for their nosiness!
In the movie Sky High, one of the superheroes-in-training learns their superhero power is to turn into a guinea pig. That apparently useless power (weakness) gets them relegated to “sidekick” status. But when the big rescue scene calls for someone to crawl through the air ducts, guess who everyone turns to for help?
Think about the protagonist, antagonist, and secondary characters in your story. List the strengths each has.
Then think about how each of those strengths might become a weakness and what situations might expose that strength’s flip side.
Then do the same thing for each character’s weaknesses. When and how might that apparent weakness transform into the strength your character needs, right when they need it?
By working with both sides of the strength/weakness coin, you can make your characters deeper, richer, and far more complex. Then, heads or tails, your story (and your readers) win every time.
[Photo by Schäferle on Pixabay.com]
