Crafting a complex and unique character is no easy feat. To really make readers care, we need to dive beneath the surface when it comes to our characters' personalities.

We know the importance of positive traits for characters, but flaws are just as vital. Negative traits trip them up, creating friction and damaging relationships, all while skewing their view of the world. This provides many problems for our heroes, especially as they chase their goals—which makes for compelling reading. Another function of negative traits is that they humanize characters for the audience. Readers have faults, too, and know what it’s like to make mistakes and have those not-so-proud moments. Flaws help characters come across as relatable and authentic. The third benefit of a character flaw (and a very important element of the character arc) is that it provides the opportunity for self-growth. To fully grasp how this works, we need a basic understanding of emotional wounds, since this is where many flaws are born.

Wounds are individual emotional hurts that occur when a character experiences a negative event. Wounds can form from a single painful episode or build up over time out of many smaller hurts. In character-driven stories, the hero should have a defining wound—a past event so emotionally damaging that it changes who he is. This negative experience triggers a psychological reaction: the need to protect himself from further emotional trauma. This need is so great that his behaviors change and new traits (flaws) are created as a type of emotional shielding, designed to put a wall between him and other people. The very idea of experiencing the same hurt again becomes a driving fear, one the character will do anything to avoid.