In this video, I use examples from my Josie Prescott Antiques mysteries (https://janecleland.com/mysteries/) to highlight my approach to integrating character weaknesses and how consistency is essential to creating realistic characters that resonate with readers.
Good luck with it!
Jane Cleland here. An interesting question about character consistency when showcasing a flaw or a weakness: Characters need to be consistent, but shouldn’t they have weaknesses? And how do you show those weaknesses while maintaining character consistency?
Whether you call it a weakness or a flaw, your character needs to have elements about their makeup that show them as human. We all are an amalgam of strengths and weaknesses—attributes that we’re proud of and attributes that we are not so proud of, things from our past that we’d just as soon leave in the past, and so on.
I think the issue here is the word “consistency.” Whatever the weakness or flaw that you want to introduce to your character to help them be three-dimensional, you need to implement that consistently. There’s no disconnect between having a flaw and maintaining consistency.
As an example, take Josie Prescott in the Josie Prescott Antiques Mysteries. She’s impatient—she’s always in a hurry. It serves her well a lot of the time, and sometimes it makes her miss things. It makes her too jazzed up to really pay attention to the here and now. That is consistent with her personality and it’s consistent over the series.
You can do it. I know you can.
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