[Aiwendil]

Some very interesting discussion of perfect and flawed characters. I quite agree with Nurumaiel that it is a mistake to overcompensate and, in an effort to avoid perfection, to pile all kinds of flaws upon a character. In fact, I would go so far as to say that there really is nothing disastrously wrong with a perfect character. That is, the mere fact that a character is perfect is not itself detrimental to a work. However I think that there are three dangers with such a character:

1. The work will suffer if the character is annoyingly perfect. There is a natural human tendency to simultaneously admire and dislike those that we perceive as better than us. To an extent, you may be able to inspire admiration for the character in the reader. However, if the perfection of the character is dwelt upon, this can easily turn to dislike.

2. A perfect character is less likely to be believable. Now there are people who are incredibly talented at a wide range of things and who have no discernible flaws. But there are not many of them. Populating one's story with such characters is therefore simply not realistic. There are exceptions - if you provide some reasonable explanation for the fact that your world is filled with this kind of person, you may make it believable. For example, Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars dealt with an incredibly advanced and incredibly stable society the inhabitants of which had long ago eliminated most flaws. To take perhaps a better known example, look at the characters in Star Trek's semi-Utopian future (particularly in The Next Generation).

3. Perhaps most importantly, a perfect character is less interesting than a flawed character. Now this is not necessarily a problem unless your story relies on its characterization to provide interest. A strongly plot-based story can get by with less interesting characters than a character-based story (obviously). Minor characters also need not be profoundly fascinating if that burden is shouldered by the major characters. But all too often, I think, inexperienced writers rely too much on uninteresting characters to provide interest. Worse, some actually expect that the reader will be interested in a character precisely because that character has a long list of talents and virtues and no flaws (though it does occur to me that one might generate an interesting character by taking perfection to the extreme - that would be a special, and curious, case).

I also don't think that it is necessarily flaws that make a character interesting. Flaws can be just as boring as talents if they are simply facts. My theory is that what makes a character interesting is complication. A character who is an incredibly good swimmer and has a fear of heights is not particularly interesting. But a character who is an incredibly good swimmer and has a fear of water is. The interest, then, is not generated by the mere fact that the character is flawed; it is generated by the complexity of a character with two apparently contradictory features. Complexity need not involve flaws. A character can also be made interesting by giving him or her complex views on some important subject, complex or contradictory desires, disparate conscious and subconscious opinions, and so forth.