Character flaws list: 130 flaws from minor to fatal, with examples

A character flaw is a trait or habit that hurts the character or the people around them, and that the story puts under pressure: pride, cowardice, jealousy, recklessness, a need for control. Minor flaws make a character feel human, major flaws drive the plot, and a fatal flaw brings the downfall. The 130 below run from minor to fatal and then by kind, and each comes with what it costs the character in the story, because a flaw that never costs anything is only a description. The fatal group is all classic cases, so a few flaws from the major group appear there again, at full price.

Every flaw is a negative trait, but not every negative trait is a flaw. For the wider list, sorted by who each trait hurts, see the negative character traits list; for positive and neutral traits too, the character traits list has 300.

Minor, major and fatal flaws

The same flaw can sit at any level. Impatience that makes a character leave a line one person from the front is minor. Impatience that makes her sign a contract unread is major. Impatience that makes her cross the ice a day too early is fatal. The level is set by what the story lets the flaw cost.

“Fatal flaw” and “tragic flaw” are usually traced to Aristotle's Poetics, which describes a tragic hero whose misfortune comes “not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty” (in S. H. Butcher's translation). Aristotle's word is hamartia, an error, and later readers turned it into a flaw of character, such as Othello's jealousy or Hamlet's indecision. Either way, the downfall comes from something the character does, not from bad luck.

Minor flaws

Minor flaws cost small things: an evening, a little dignity, a chance. They make a character easy to recognize and easy to forgive, and in comedy they can carry whole scenes.

1. Chronically late: misses her best friend's toast and hears about it for a year.
2. Nosy: finds out about the surprise party and spoils it by acting too surprised.
3. Bad with names: calls the client by his competitor's name.
4. Easily distracted: misses the turnoff and the first ten minutes of the interview.
5. Picky: sends back so many dishes that no restaurant in town will seat him.
6. A bad liar: blushes when the detective asks where she was, though she was innocent.
7. Talks too much: describes the deal to a stranger on the train who works for the rival.
8. Impatient: leaves the line one person from the front.
9. Vain about glasses: won't wear them and drives past the exit sign.
10. Superstitious: won't fly on a Friday and misses the reunion.
11. Impulsive with money: buys a canoe on the way to the bank.
12. A trivia know-it-all: corrects the quizmaster and gets the team disqualified.
13. Sarcastic: the joke lands; the friendship doesn't.
14. Stubborn about small things: refuses the map app and arrives an hour late to the reading.
15. Gossipy: passes on a rumor that turns out to be about her own husband.
16. Easily bored: leaves the stakeout an hour before the suspect shows up.
17. Disorganized: can't find his passport at the gate.
18. Sentimental: keeps the letters that give the affair away.
19. A procrastinator: submits the fellowship application one minute after the deadline.
20. Overcautious: checks the locks so long she misses the train.
21. Thin-skinned: quits the writing group over one comment about her commas.
22. Can't say no: agrees to host Thanksgiving, the book club and the bake sale in one week.
23. A show-off: dives off the high board to impress his date and loses his trunks.

Major flaws

Major flaws are the ones a plot is built around. Each should be able to cost the character the thing they want most, and in a good story it nearly does.

24. Pride: won't admit he was wrong, so the wrong man stays in prison.
25. Cowardice: runs from the fight, and his friend is beaten in his place.
26. Jealousy: reads the messages, misreads them and ends the marriage.
27. Greed: takes the bribe that funds the rest of the plot against her.
28. Impulsiveness: proposes on the second date and spends the book undoing it.
29. Dishonesty: the first lie needs a second, and the book is about the tenth.
30. Selfishness: keeps the inheritance that was meant to save the family farm.
31. Need for control: won't let the team act without her and loses the case while she's at the dentist.
32. Arrogance: waves off the young engineer's warning about the bridge.
33. Recklessness: drives too fast with the evidence in the trunk.
34. Stubbornness: refuses to leave the house while the fire comes over the ridge.
35. Self-righteousness: reports a friend for a small crime and loses her when it matters.
36. Distrust: turns down the help that would have saved the business.
37. Vanity: chooses the flattering adviser over the honest one.
38. Envy: wrecks her sister's audition so she can't have what she wanted herself.
39. Cynicism: dismisses the whistleblower as a crank, and the factory poisons the river.
40. A violent temper: punches the landlord and loses the deposit, the lease and the custody hearing.
41. Obsession: gives up her marriage, her savings and her friends to find one painting.
42. People-pleasing: promises both sides of the deal what they want and is caught between them.
43. Ambition: climbs over her mentor to get his chair, and the chair comes with his enemies.
44. Naivety: trusts the charming stranger with the family's secret.
45. Indecision: waits so long between two job offers that both are withdrawn.
46. Prejudice: misjudges the quiet newcomer and backs the real thief.
47. Avoidance: never opens the bank's letters, so the house goes to auction.
48. Workaholism: misses her son's childhood one late night at a time.
49. Possessiveness: stops his sister leaving town, and she never forgives him.
50. Hypocrisy: preaches honesty from the pulpit while hiding the church's debts.
51. Self-pity: waits to be rescued while the rival takes the business.
52. Rigidity: follows the old plan after the river has changed course.
53. Self-sacrifice to a fault: gives up art school for the family and blames them for thirty years.
54. Laziness: lets the junior do the research and repeats his mistake in court.
55. Secretiveness: hides the debt from his wife until the bailiffs knock.
56. Snobbery: turns down the decent man for his accent and marries the con man with the good vowels.

Fatal flaws

A fatal flaw brings the character down, usually with others. These are the classic cases, all from works in the public domain. In many of them the flaw is visible early, and several characters are warned outright.

57. Hubris: Oedipus insists on finding the killer of King Laius, who turns out to be himself. Sophocles, Oedipus Rex (c. 429 BCE).
58. Ambition: Macbeth kills his king, then anyone who threatens his hold on the crown. Shakespeare, Macbeth (c. 1606).
59. Jealousy: Othello takes a handkerchief as proof and smothers Desdemona. Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603).
60. Indecision: Hamlet delays his revenge until the court is strewn with the dead. Shakespeare, Hamlet (c. 1600).
61. Pride and rashness: Lear divides his kingdom by who flatters him best and banishes the daughter who won't. Shakespeare, King Lear (c. 1606).
62. Impetuousness: Romeo kills Tybalt in a rage, then poisons himself minutes before Juliet wakes. Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (c. 1595).
63. Wrath: Achilles withdraws from the war in fury at Agamemnon, and his friend Patroclus dies wearing his armor. Homer, Iliad.
64. Ambition without responsibility: Victor Frankenstein creates life, then runs from his creature the moment it opens its eyes. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818).
65. Obsession: Captain Ahab hunts the white whale until it sinks the Pequod and only Ishmael survives. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851).
66. Vanity: Dorian Gray wishes his portrait would age instead of him, and the wish turns him cruel. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890).
67. Clinging to the past: Gatsby builds a mansion and a legend to win back Daisy, who has moved on. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925).
68. Bitterness: Miss Havisham stops the clocks at the moment she was jilted and raises Estella to break hearts. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861).
69. Vengefulness: Heathcliff spends twenty years taking revenge on two families and gains nothing he wants. Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847).
70. Rigidity: Inspector Javert can't reconcile the law with the mercy Valjean shows him, and the contradiction destroys him. Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862).
71. Overreaching: Icarus flies too close to the sun and the wax on his wings melts. Ovid, Metamorphoses (8 CE).
72. Greed: Midas wishes that everything he touches would turn to gold, his food included. Ovid, Metamorphoses (8 CE).
73. Romantic discontent: Emma Bovary chases the life in her novels into debt and ruin. Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1857).
74. Intellectual pride: Raskolnikov decides he is extraordinary enough to stand above the law, and kills to prove it. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (1866).
75. Lust for power: Faustus sells his soul for twenty-four years of knowledge and magic. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (c. 1592).
76. Arrogance: Arachne boasts that her weaving beats Minerva's and is turned into a spider. Ovid, Metamorphoses (8 CE).

Several of these characters see the flaw before it's too late, which is part of the tragedy. Macbeth names his before he acts:

Victor Frankenstein, telling his story to the explorer Walton, makes the same confession after the fact: “Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge.” And Gatsby, warned outright, refuses the warning. “You can't repeat the past,” Nick tells him. “Can't repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!”

Moral flaws

Moral flaws wrong other people. They make the strongest antagonists and the most dramatic redemption arcs, and readers will judge them, so the cost has to be visible.

77. Cruelty: wins the war and loses the soldiers who saw what he did.
78. Disloyalty: sells out his oldest friend and spends the book being watched by his new ones.
79. Cheating: wins the race, and every race after it is suspect.
80. Vindictiveness: the revenge costs more than the injury did.
81. Corruption: takes the first envelope, and now they own him.
82. Callousness: sells the land with the family graves on it.
83. Moral cowardice: knows the truth and says nothing at the hearing.
84. Exploitation: uses the grieving widow's trust to buy her farm cheap.
85. Entitlement: takes the scholarship meant for the poorer boy because his father knows the dean.
86. Hunger for power: rigs the club election, then the next one, then the town's.
87. Amorality: doesn't see why the lie was wrong, only why getting caught was a mistake.
88. Fraud: fakes the trial results, and the treatment doesn't work.
89. Infidelity: the affair stays secret until the neighbor's doorbell camera.
90. Avarice: saves every penny and buys nothing, not even his children's affection.
91. Ingratitude: forgets who paid for his education the year they need help.

Psychological flaws

These are habits of mind: beliefs and fears that bend how a character reads the world. They connect most directly to the want, need and wound behind an arc.

92. Fear of failure: never sends out the manuscript, so it can never be rejected.
93. Fear of abandonment: always leaves first.
94. Low self-worth: turns down the lead role because “they made a mistake.”
95. Perfectionism: misses the deadline polishing the part nobody will read.
96. Denial: calls her husband's six months of late nights “a busy patch at work.”
97. Defensiveness: can't hear the warning because it sounds like criticism.
98. Pessimism: doesn't buy a ticket for the train that would have got her out in time.
99. Suspicion: reads a friend's silence as a plot and ends the friendship.
100. Emotional repression: tells no one about the grief until it comes out at the wrong wedding.
101. Escapism: plays games until dawn while the business fails.
102. Rumination: replays the argument for a week and misses the apology.
103. A rescuer complex: keeps saving the brother who never has to change.
104. A victim mindset: blames the market, the weather and the bank, never the plan.
105. Unresolved guilt: turns down every happiness the plot offers, as a penance.
106. Conflict avoidance: lets the bully run the committee because a fight would be worse, until it isn't.
107. Grandiosity: announces the expansion before the bank has said yes.

Social flaws

Social flaws cost the character allies, information and goodwill: the help that isn't offered, the warning nobody gives.

108. Tactlessness: tells the truth at the wrong moment and becomes the family's villain for a chapter.
109. Aloofness: no one comes to her defense, because no one knows her.
110. Shyness: lets someone else take the credit in the meeting.
111. Social climbing: drops the old friends and finds the new ones never liked her.
112. Coldness: his daughter calls the family lawyer, not him.
113. Neediness: wears out the friends who might have helped when it mattered.
114. Rudeness: the waiter he insulted turns out to be the only witness.
115. Can't apologize: the feud outlives anyone's memory of how it began.
116. Attention-seeking: after the false alarms, nobody believes the real one.
117. Conformity: goes along with the crowd at the moment it turns on someone.

Limitations and blind spots

Not every flaw is a moral failing. Some are gaps in skill, knowledge or judgment that the plot can exploit, which makes them useful in thrillers and adventure stories.

118. Can't swim: the shipwreck chapter writes itself.
119. Can't read people: believes the con artist and suspects the friend.
120. Bad with money: the inheritance is gone by chapter ten.
121. No sense of direction: gets lost in the city on the one night it matters.
122. Afraid of heights: the only way out is across the roof.
123. Helpless with practical things: can't change a tire on an empty highway at night.
124. Poor stamina: can't climb the hill in time to warn them.
125. A blind spot about family: sees through every con except her son's.
126. Doesn't speak the language: misses the warning shouted in Portuguese.
127. Bad memory for faces: doesn't recognize the man from the train.
128. A technophobe: can't open the file that holds the evidence.
129. Underestimates danger: walks into the storm in sneakers.
130. Inexperience: has never lost, so doesn't know how to.

How a flaw drives a character arc

A flaw is the visible half of a belief. Jane Austen names Emma Woodhouse's in the first chapter of Emma (1815): “The real evils, indeed, of Emma's situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself.” The rest of the novel makes that flaw expensive. Emma talks Harriet Smith out of a good proposal, misreads Mr. Elton completely, and at the Box Hill picnic mocks Miss Bates in front of everyone. Mr. Knightley takes her aside afterward. “It was badly done, indeed!” Her change starts on the drive home.

Under the flaw sits the lie, the belief that makes the behavior feel reasonable to the character, and under the lie sits the wound that taught it. The guide to character development covers want, need, wound and the three kinds of arc. In that model, the flaw serves the want and blocks the need.

What happens to the flaw decides the arc. In a positive arc the lie breaks and the flaw loosens, as Emma's does. In a negative arc the lie wins and the flaw grows, as Macbeth's does. In a flat arc the protagonist's flaws stay minor, and the story is about changing everyone else. The character profile template has a row for each of the four columns above and a table for the arc.

How to choose a flaw for your character

1. Start from the want

   Choose the flaw most likely to sabotage what the character is after. A woman who wants to keep her family together and can't stop controlling them has a story; one who wants the same thing and is always late has a quirk.

2. Make it active

   A good flaw makes the character do something: lie, interrupt, take over, walk out. A flaw that only makes them feel bad gives the plot nothing to show.

3. Give it a reason

   Decide the belief behind it and, briefly, where the belief came from. You don't have to put the reason on the page in chapter one; you need to know it so the flaw behaves consistently.

4. Show it early, while it's cheap

   Let the flaw cost something small in the first chapters: a missed toast, an awkward silence. The reader learns the pattern before the stakes rise.

5. Raise the price three times

   Each time the flaw shows, make it cost more, until it threatens the thing the character wants most. A useful place for the highest price before the climax is just after the midpoint.

6. Decide the ending first

   Does the flaw break, win, or kill? Choosing before you draft the middle lets every scene in between lean toward that ending. If the draft finds a different ending, revise the middle to match.

Once there's a draft, ask the Strokes Assistant to review a run of chapters and list where the flaw shows and what it costs each time. Where the price stops rising, you have the scenes to revisit.

Mistakes with character flaws

• Cosmetic flaws. Clumsiness that only ever makes a character endearing, or “cares too much,” or “works too hard.” These are compliments in disguise, and readers know it.
• Flaws that never cost anything. If the arrogant surgeon is always right, his arrogance is a personality, not a flaw.
• Flaws that vanish without a scene. The reader needs to see the character choose differently at a moment when the old habit would have been easier.
• Too many major flaws. A character with five serious flaws reads as a list. Pick one or two for the plot to push on and leave the rest as minor texture.
• A flaw unconnected to the plot. A gambling habit in a story where money never matters is a detail. Tie the flaw to what the character wants.
• A condition presented as a flaw. See the notes above on mental health and disability.