flawed, undecisive characters

mesh138 said:

In a novel I've just finished, the narrator is somewhat erratic, indecisive, and at times scattered. As readers and writers, I'm curious as to your thoughts on this. Do you prefer chracters who are stronger, making choices and living with them... or can a story succeed with characters who struggle to choose between what is wrong and right, and even then aren't so sure. Any suggestions of published novels with characters like this?

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Sure, it can work. But it is difficult to judge whether something works without reading. As for indecisive characters -- John Barth's THE END OF THE ROAD comes immediately to mind. I'm sure there are many more.

Flawed, indecisive characters could work, but still, he/she must take actions. It doesn't mean the character should be passive. Passive (main) characters make for a boring read. But if your story is strong enough, you may compensate that.

Read "The Good Soldier" by Ford Madox Ford. The indecisive, naive, rather silly narrator is part of the book's greatness.

mesh138 said:

In a novel I've just finished, the narrator is somewhat erratic, indecisive, and at times scattered. As readers and writers, I'm curious as to your thoughts on this. Do you prefer chracters who are stronger, making choices and living with them... or can a story succeed with characters who struggle to choose between what is wrong and right, and even then aren't so sure.

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It depends on the genre and the ability of the writer to create believable characters. By and large, perfect characters are booooooooring.

That said, I hate wimpy characters who can't stand up for themselves until the last couple of chapters. For example, women writers--it's usually women--who write about nasty ex-bosses annoy me. The heroines of The Nanny Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada (both terrible books) suffer through indignity after indignity on the job, yet they stick with their abusive bosses. If it's so horrible, just quit!

Any suggestions of published novels with characters like this?

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It's not a novel, but few characters are more indecisive or flawed than Hamlet.

Jackie

There are more flawed and indecisive people than there are perfect, self assured heroes. Your characters should have humanity, not be cardboard cut-outs; therefore flaws etc are part of the deal.

flawed characters ar enot a problem. indecisive charcters can be.


I would say thyere's nothing inherently wrong with indecisiveness, and many great stories focus on characters who don't know what they want. on the other hand, indecisiveness shouldn't prevent the characters ffrom taking action, so something needs to be pushing them to act to keep the story going.

this was an interesting thread, because while one of my books features a moderately indecisive protagonist, the other features a protaognist who main flaw is OVErdecisiveness. since i realized a while ago that my two WIPs are parallell but opposite in themes, this only makes sense.

Characters need flaws to seem real. Excessively perfect characters can seem, well, kind of like Mary Sues, cases where the author is living out some private fantasy. It's possible to write entertaining fluff this way - Clive Cussler comes to mind, where it's blatantly obvious that Dirk Pitt is Cussler's idealized version of himself. Then again, the rest of the books are just as over-the-top as his excessively perfect hero. If you want believeable characters, they need some sort of flaws to make them human.

Indecision can be a useful flaw, as long as it doesn't bog things down with spending way too much time in the character's head and not enough in the external world. To go back to Hamlet, while he is trying to make up his mind, there is also all sorts of plotting, scheming, and other interesting things going on.

How flawed is ok?

I'm outlining/plotting a murder mystery. My main character, Alina, has a bit of an anger management problem. Ok, she's a *****. I overheard this in my head:

Detective Tim Scott looked down as his notepad for a moment. His lips tightened. "Excuse me." He waited a few seconds, and Alina watched his partner shoot a questioning glance his way. "I really have to ask. Are you always this ... cranky?"
"No. You caught me on a good day." Alina pressed fingertips against her forehead. Great. Mouth off to the cops. Perfect way to stay out of jail. She forced her best and brightest smile. "My bad. I'll be nicer." After a few minutes of this, as her cheekbones began to ache and his eyebrow remained up, she let the smile drop. "Gimme a break, ok? You come here telling me that my very best friend is dead. And you think that I killed him."
"We don't think anything, Miss Pittman." Alina glanced at the female officer. Taggart on her name tag.
"Mrs. I'm a widow, Officer Taggart."
She paused, then wrote. "What was your husband's name?"
"Edward." Alina closed her eyes, waiting for the inevitable next question.
"What was the cause of death, Mrs. Pittman?"
"I beat him to death with a suede flogger, used a Violet Wand to fry the body into ashes and flushed him down my toilet." A vein on the side of the cop's neck pulsed, and Alina took a moment of perverse pleasure in the redness of his face. So much for being nicer. "He died in the Ottawa hospital. Cancer. Advanced and rapid lung cancer. I was six months pregnant. I went into labour the day of the funeral and the baby was stillborn. After the house was sold, I came here."


I would consider her flawed! My husband read that and said, "Well, that attitude's going to endear her to the cops." Oh, yea, the part about floggers is because she's a professional dominatrix (suede floggers don't hurt and a Violet Wand is a harmless form of electricity). But you know, she's incredibly honorable and loyal, intelligent, honest to a fault, always keeps her word, determined, a self-starter. She's the sort about which you say "Well, I'm glad she's on OUR side."

Any thoughts? Can I make a main character out of this woman?

Well, if Mae West could get away with answering, "Young lady, are you showing contempt for this court?" with, "No, I'm trying my best to hide it," readers might like your character, too...