Characters' Weaknesses

I finally, after spending most of my life writing, understand a little something about character weaknesses.

Nope, not character flaws. WEAKNESSES.

My character flaws are WAY too numerous to list here. I'd need a whole separate blog for that. But among my more serious flaws are a perpetually worrying nature, an inability to quiet my mind, impatience, and a tendency to isolate myself from the people I love the most. I could go on, but I'll save the self-flagellation for another time. I work on my flaws. Like every human being, it's my journey and I make progress in leaps and bounds and then baby steps.

But I have character weaknesses. Those are my deepest, deepest vulnerabilities. I have an incredible FEAR of evil. A stark terror of it. I sat out on my porch at 4:00 a.m. on yet another sleepless Friday night, to listen to the pouring rain, one of my favorite sounds. I knew I was illuminated by the kitchen window light, and I had the deep fear that I was being watched. Because my house was broken into a year ago into while my children slept, and the person took nothing (not one thing) but appeared more interested in simply being in the house, I no longer sleep nights. I have locks. I have three dogs. I have a noisy parrot who squawks (loudly!). But no matter, I cannot sleep, and am not sure I ever will again. My fear is so deep for my children that when night falls, I become hypervigilant. And so this is my WEAKNESS.

The difference is that a weakness isn't necessarily a flaw. It is a GOOD thing that my fear of the unknown and uncaught intruder makes me, as a mother, more protective. I love my dogs, but there are nights I think of finding all three good homes and getting a Doberman. But this weakness could, by a villain, be exploited. Were I easily manipulated, it could be exploited by a gun salesman, say. Or it could be bent and shaped so that I made other decisions.

So it is with characters. I now see--clear as day--that there is NO POINT in having a character weakness unless it is exploited in the novel. None. Otherwise it's useless chattering back story.

Think about it. Remember in the movie The Exorcist? (I chose one almost everyone knows.) Remember when Father Damian hears his mother's voice coming out of Linda Blair. Her pathetic pleading? Please, Damian? And remember how the Exorcist himself had TOLD Father Damian that the demons were liars. That they would know and find and exploit and tempt him through his weakness. That he must not SHOW weakness? Damian's love for his mother wasn't a FLAW. It was a weakness.

In my demon book, I realize the ex-priest gave up on his faith--but he cannot allow the demons to destroy the faith of millions of people. He still loves humanity. A version of "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do." I see that unless I have the bad guys exploit that HIDDEN weakness (who would guess on first meeting an alcoholic ex-priest that he gives a crap about ANYONE'S salvation, since he doesn't care about his own) there is no point in that weakness existing.

So what is your character's hidden weakness? Not flaw. NOT flaw. The weakness is that which, threatened with having their kneecaps broken, they will reluctantly reveal.

Sorry. I guess I never did get The Roofer out of my system. Forget the kneecaps. What's their weakness?

Invincible

The following is my favorite quote . . . I wear it engraved on a silver dogtag:

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within

me there lay an invincible summer.

--Albert Camus

In my life, I learned, in a hospital bed, what I was really made of. For every hard knock life has handed me, I have learned my human spirit is invincible. I may have a dark night of the soul, but in the morning, I always have faith in God's grace.

And to me as fiction writer, this Camus quote has great meaning to character development.

I think the most compelling character is one whose GREATEST WEAKNESS must be overcome in order for them to triumph and discover their invincible summer.

It is one thing to discover inner strength. It is another thing entirely to overcome your greatest weakness in order to save the day.

Think about it. In every action movie, when the hero exposes a weakness early on, you KNOW that is what he is going to have to deal with in order to win--like Indiana Jones and the snakes in the first movie. ANYTHING but snakes was his motto. Of course, he ended up with thousands of those things slithering around his ankles.

Very often, in my books, my heroine's weakness is an inability to be vulnerable. An inability to let anyone in. And it is only by learning to trust and rely on someone else--usually her motley created family of misfits--that she can catch the bad guy, achieve happiness, overcome her childhood traumas.

Why is Batman the most compelling, to a huge number of comic fans, of the superheroes? Because he is the most wounded. The one with the darkest internal struggle.

In my next Nocturne, the hero is a Vicodin addict. Only by overcoming his own internal pain can he win.

As readers, we root for the horse with the longest odds.

Thoughts? What is your character's GREATEST weakness . . . and does he or she need to overcome it in order to succeed? I seriously think, in order to write the most compelling book, that it's not enough to triumph over circumstance . . . but that weakness.