Most writers are well-aware that a main character needs a shortcoming. Christopher Vogler and other high profile story gurus often talk about a lack:
It can be very effective to show that a hero is unable to perform some simple task at the beginning of the story. In Ordinary People the young hero Conrad is unable to eat French toast his mother has prepared for him. It signifies, in symbolic language, his inability to accept being loved and cared for, because of the terrible guilt he bears over the accidental death of his brother. Itâs only after he undertakes an emotional heroâs journey, and relives and processes the death through therapy, that he is able to accept love.
Christopher Vogler, The Writerâs Journey
First, thereâs the issue of the Heroâs Journey as an ideology: One issue with the âHeroâs Journeyâ: its insistence on individualism v. collective strength and community. Yes, the âheroâ has help but those who help are relegated to the side, their purpose mostly reduced to further the heroâs goals, often at the expense of others.
Tricia Ebarvia
Aside from that, Voglerâs advice does not go far enough. Go one step further and break it in half.
Everyone who gives writers advice about characterisation has something to say about this topic. Author of the book Story Genius Lisa Cron says that itâs the characterâs internal struggle that makes the external struggle important.
What about childrenâs books? Do they follow the same rules?
Mostly, but not always. Some picture books do not feature characters with shortcoming. These stories tend to be of the carnivalesque variety. A few standout examples feature the reader as main character. These postmodern meta examples do not follow the general rules of story.
Childrenâs books for older readers do follow the same rules as those applied to narrative aimed at adults. Modern picture books which win big awards are also likely to follow these rules.

CHARACTER SHORTCOMING
Iâve seen plenty of students come in and say, I want to write a novel about blah blah blah. But you just canât do it. You can only write a novel about a character who does something wrong, and see what happens from there. Novels are compendiums of bad behavior, and literature is the gossip about it.
Ethan Canin
Beautiful Mess Effect: We tend to view our mistakes & vulnerabilities with shame because we think they make us look unappealing. But research suggests our mistakes & vulnerabilities actually make us more relatable and endearing to other people. So donât be afraid to be human.
@G_S_Bhogal
According to the rules of story structure aimed at screenwriters and writers with an audience of adultsâŚ
Every Main Character NeedsâŚ
- A PSYCHOLOGICAL SHORTCOMING: What are the fundamental flaws?
- A MORAL SHORTCOMING: How does this character treat others badly? (Lacking empathy, overbearing, two-faced, greedy, lying, selfish etc.) The Seven Deadly Sins feature prominently in this part of the shortcoming.
Sometimes students seem shy about writing about people who do the wrong thing â weâre all taught to do the right thing and focus on the right thing. But all of literature is about people who do the wrong thing, despite themselves. What would the story be if they did the right thing? No story at all. Fiction wants to look at all the things that go wrong.
Chang-Rae Lee
HAMARTIA
Aristotle had a similar concept and called it âhamartiaâ:
Hamartia is a term developed by Aristotle in his work Poetics. The term can simply be seen as a characterâs
Wikipediaflaw orerror. The word hamartia is rooted in the notion of missing the mark (hamartanein) and covers a broad spectrum that includes accident and mistake, as well as wrongdoing, error, or sin. In Nicomachean Ethics, hamartia is described by Aristotle as one of the three kinds of injuries that a person can commit against another person. Hamartia is an injury committed in ignorance (when the person affected or the results are not what the agent supposed they were).
A COMMON MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE WORD HAMARTIA
But the word âflawâ in that definition can lead to misunderstanding for people familiar with the term âfatal flawâ. âFatal flawâ is a phrase coined by English literary scholar A.C. Bradley. Aristotleâs hamartia refers specifically to a characterâs error of judgement. Importantly, hamartia refers to a characterâs actions, not to something within the character themselves.
Shortcomings In Character Archetypes
Like anything, this âruleâ that characters require a weakness has developed some tropes. As an example:
Common Shortcomings of Young Women
This trope comes from the Gothic tradition.
The story of the poor girl who overcomes obstacles and makes a good marriage in the end, what might be called the Horatia Alger story, is very common in nineteenth-century fiction, especially fiction written by women. This heroine does not have to begin in absolute poverty â even Cinderellaâs family must have been middle-class or her stepsisters wouldnât have been able to go to the ball in such style. But she does have to be in some way underprivileged at the start of the book, and she must go through many difficulties before she can marry the prince.
Occasionally she is poor in other than the economic sense, as with some of Jane Austenâs heroines: Catherine Morland of Northanger Abbey is poor in intellect; Marianne Dashwood of Sense and Sensibility is naĂŻve and muddleheaded; while Fanny Price of Mansfield Park is ⌠poor in spirit. Charlotte Bronte, even more daring, made the heroine of Villette plain.
Alison Lurie, Donât Tell The Grown-ups: The power of subversive childrenâs stories
The shortcoming of being âplainâ continues to be explored in young adult fiction today, as beauty privilege continues to be a thing in modern society.
An Outdated Way Of Showing Character Shortcoming
In the simple thriller form the antagonist is marked out by their desire to control and dominate the lives of others. They donât follow the moral codes of the community; more often than not theyâre an embodiment of selfishness. They are also, historically, often marked by physical or mental deformity. Le Chiffreâs maladjusted tear duct in the film of Casino Royale is the modern equivalent of Dr Noâs missing hands or Scaramangaâs third nipple in the Man With The Golden Gun. In a more politically correct age, the physical flaw (clearly an outer manifestation of inner damage) has been scaled down to a level society finds acceptable. If the antagonist is internal, the same principles apply: the enemy within works in opposition to the hostâs better nature â it cripples them. It stands in opposition to everything they might be.
John Yorke, Into The Woods
BEWARE: AVOID USING DISABILITY AS NARRATIVE SHORTCOMING
As mentioned above: The two-fold shortcoming required for a good story is psychological and moral. A shortcoming that exists as a result of disability is not what weâre talking about here.
One of the reasons own voices stories are so important: Too many writers are making use of a disability as a shortcoming. Most people will recognise when a writer is falling into this trap with physical disability, but like invisible disabilities themselves, most people donât seem to recognise it happening when invisible disability is used as a narrative shortcoming.
What if a blind personâs blindness were used as their shortcoming? What if a wheelchair userâs inability to walk up stairs were used as their narrative shortcoming? The ideological problems are far easier to pinpoint when the disabilities are obvious to outsiders.
To spell out the ideological issues in the clearest way I know how: In a story, a main characterâs shortcoming will be challenged over the course of the story. The main character will either grow or not (in the case of a tragedy). The reason disability cannot work as a shortcoming: A disability is a part of someone, often part of someoneâs identity, and is not something to be overcome, and not something tragic if itâs not âovercomeâ. Nor is it okay for one characterâs disability be used as the basis for another characterâs arc.
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.
John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Character Shortcoming and Romanticism
The Ancient Greeks thought of love differently from how we do today. The Ancient Greeks thought that love was an attraction to virtue, perfection and accomplishment.
Then the Romantics came along and changed storytelling from the middle of the 1800s onwards. We are still living under the ideas of the Romantics today. Romantics believe all sorts of misguided things about love, and one of them is that each of us has a soul mate, a perfect match for us, and once we find that person and get together with them, true love means we never criticise each other and find the ability to gloss over each otherâs shortcomings. Therefore, to criticise oneâs spouse is considered the inverse of love, which itâs really not at all. It means we care enough to criticise them, and feel safe enough, within our mutual love, to do so.
It seems to me that modern love stories oftentimes straddle those two notions of love. The heroine and love interest in a romance genre story will each be given shortcomings, sure, but only âfakeâ, adorable shortcomings.
The willingness to please, a tendency to clumsiness, a sardonic sense of humour. That sort of thing.
Do Childrenâs Book Characters Need A Moral Shortcoming?
Or any shortcoming at all?
The short answer is that, yes, an interesting modern childrenâs book character needs at least a psychological shortcoming, and the story might also support a moral shortcoming. This wasnât always the case, as youâll already know if youâve read from the First Golden Age Of Childrenâs Literature. It was the amazing Edith Nesbit who changed all of that.
All of Nesbitâs characters have both virtues and flaws: not only are the childrenâs actions always a push and pull between their better instincts and their baser impulses, but the various authority figures they encounter are equally complicated. The magical Psammead creature is peevish, the Queen of Babylon is kind-hearted but imperious, and the upstairs scholar is helpful but blind to the magic he experiences.
The Toronto Review Of Books
Until Nesbit came along, adults who wrote for children believed children read stories as medicine. The viewpoint characters therefore had to demonstrate impeccable behaviour, or else be punished for wrongdoing, learning to be good along the way.
Perhaps a better way of wording this storytelling requirement: Children in stories shouldnât always âdo the right thingâ.
[Julia] Donaldsonâs books are not for childrenâs benefit, but their enjoyment. âHer stories are never twee,â [David] Walliams said. âThere is often real danger, and her characters donât always do the right thing. The result is that the books are proper page-turners.â The quick-witted hero always bests the villain, the brave snail/fish/stick overcomes great peril to find their way home.
The Guardian
Must Childrenâs Book Characters Treat Others Badly?
After looking at a lot of childrenâs books with this exact question in mind, the answer is no. There are several reasons for this:
- Some characters in childrenâs books represent the Every Child. When a reader is meant to paste themselves onto the character we donât want that character to be too specific. For similar reasons a lot of picture book characters are cartoon-like and minimalist. (For more on that see Taxonomy Of Detail In Character Illustration.) Even in stories for older readers, these Every Child characters are given a âcosmeticâ shortcoming rather than a psychological and moral one, which makes them far more generic and less interesting. For instance, a common cosmetic shortcoming in young adult romance is âclumsyâ. Bella Swan is one example. Even in stories for adults youâll find the Every Man. Susan from Desperate Housewives is clumsy but this clumsiness functions to provide comedy. Susan has many other psychological shortcomings. She is unconfident and needy but also fake-nice and backstabbing. Susanâs clumsiness has nothing to do with storytelling.
- There are gatekeepers of childrenâs literature â people responsible for buying the books and putting them into childrenâs hands â who choose literature with the philosophy that characters in stories need to serve as role models for good behaviour. These people might approve of characters who treat others badly but only if that character is punished. For more on that see Picturebook Study: In Which Baddies Get Their Comeuppance.
- The wish to avoid child characters as morally corrupt may derive from JudeoChristian thought. It is believed people enjoy an âage of innocenceâ. Strictly speaking, weâre better off using the phrase âage of accountabilityâ because the Bible does not suggest at any point that children are sinless, but rather that children canât be held accountable for certain things due to their inexperience. Thirteen is the most common age suggested for the age of accountability, based on the Jewish custom that a child becomes an adult at the age of thirteen. This is no doubt related to The Magical Age of 12 in childrenâs literature. (Thereâs nothing in the Bible, however, to suggest thirteen is a significant age.)
- Complex, rounded characters simply arenât necessary in all types of stories. For action stories with exciting plots, or genre fiction â such as mysteries and thrillers â all the reader really wants is a great story. In fact, the characters canât change all that much if the book is part of a series. Series fiction is very popular with young readers and the best-selling books are all part of a series, year after year.
The view that badly behaving childrenâs characters must be punished is increasingly challenged, mostly by writers and publishers who refuse to believe in the concept of the young reader as tabula rasa (blank slates), who trust children and young adults to read critically and not blindly follow their main characters into bad situations. The modern main character in childrenâs stories will most definitely have both a psychological shortcoming and a moral shortcoming. In other words, they will be treating others badly in some way.
This wasnât always the case, and if you take a look at books from the First And Second Golden Ages Of Childrenâs Literature youâll find many more Mary Sue/Pollyanna types, who have been written as model children for young readers to emulate. These characters are not well accepted by contemporary young readers.
The idea of child readers as tabula rasa was particularly strong in the Victorian era, and if young readers didnât want moral stories they really only had the Gothic to turn to. These stories offered all the bloodshed, villainy and titillation lacking in the âstories for childrenâ.
Not all writers of childrenâs stories are interested in this concept. Hayao Miyazaki has never formally studied screenwriting or storytelling technique, and goes about creating his Studio Ghibli films in his own auteur fashion. Miyazakiâs main characters donât tend to have a strong external desire. He doesnât bother with that. They do have psychological needs, however, and by the end of the story they havenât necessarily got anything they wanted â but by immersing themselves in a new world, they have grown emotionally.
For this reason I feel the very concept of desire is a Western one. In Japanese language, to say âI wantâ something is considered childish and youâll rarely hear those words (even though the grammar and words for desire exist). Instead, a Japanese interlocutor will avoid the assumption that you are a spoilt baby with desires and ask you what you âneedâ. English: âDo you want a drink of water?â becomes âDo you need a drink of water?â I believe Hayao Miyazaki brings his specifically Japanese sensibilities towards âdesireâ to the table when creating his main characters â Chihiro doesnât seem to want anything in Spirited Away â she is simply there, and if she works hard, things will come good. Desperately wanting to turn her parents back into humans would probably work against her cause.
Common Character Shortcomings In Childrenâs Books
They may be common but that doesnât mean you canât keep using them:
- Naivety. This is arguably the biggest shortcoming any childrenâs book hero has. Itâs a good one, too, because the child canât help it. Failure to understand the world is an easy shortcoming to improve upon over the course of the story, providing ample opportunity for a character arc. Hence, every story is a coming-of-age story.
- Cheekiness. These characters are fun to be around. They wonât let horrible adults get away with treating kids badly without at least a little backchat. Judy Moody.
- Talking too much/getting distracted. In short, developing executive functioning. Anne Shirley grew up in an age when children should be seen and not heard. There are many modern Anne Shirleys, always getting into trouble but adorable nonetheless.
- Shyness. Then you have your socially anxious characters who donât find themselves in trouble with authority but who must learn to stand up for themselves and others, and for what they truly believe in.

Below are some modern and not so modern case studies of shortcoming and desire in (Western) childrenâs literature.
That said, the most popular, award-winning, beloved contemporary picture books for children often feature characters with a moral shortcoming.
- The fish in This Is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen full on steals someone elseâs item of clothing. (Bear in mind that he is punished pretty heavily for it⌠behind the reeds.)
- The boy in This Moose Belongs To Me by Oliver Jeffers wants to deprive a wild creature of its autonomy. Who Wants To Be A Poodle I Donât by lauren child is similar in that the adult character/child stand-in is not letting her pet dog behave like a dog.
- Millie by John Marsden and Sally Rippin stars a girl who doesnât listen to her parents.
- Wolf Comes To Town by Denis Manton is an example of a baddie wolf who is in essence a serial killer. Guess Whoâs Coming For Dinner? by John Kelly and Cathy Tincknell is similar but better known, for having won a big award.
- Pig the Pug by Aaron Blabey stars a selfish dog who hogs all his toys, contrasted with the caring, sharing Trevor.
- In some of the older types of stories, the main character sometimes gets into bother by failing to follow the rules set down by the parents. The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack and Kurt Wiese is a good example of that. Today, failing to obey rules/parents/teachers is not considered a moral shortcoming. Rather, weâre in a period where we glamorise and encourage independent thinking and questioning of authority, of which I generally approve, except a lot of these stories also seem to punish those characters who do do as theyâre told. (Usually nascent Hillary Clinton types.)
Psychological shortcomings are also common:
- The bear in I Want My Hat Back is ridiculously unobservant (i.e. stupid). Rosieâs Walk is the grandmother of this kind of story.
- Mog The Forgetful Cat by Judith Kerr â the psychological shortcoming is in the title.
- Wolves In The Walls features a child character who is anxious/scared. This is the psychological shortcoming of pretty much any monster picture book. The Dark by Lemony Snicket and Jon Klassen is a monster story which doesnât mention monsters.
- Z Is For Moose by Kelly Bingham and Paul O. Zelinsky features a moose who basically throws a temper tantrum because things donât go his way. Max of Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak is another child who faces his own temper, though in a completely different kind of story.
- Sometimes the psychological shortcoming is one of the âhigh levelâ ones, from the seven deadly sins. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle is greedy and gets a sore belly.
Even in childrenâs books, the most interesting and beloved characters do have both kinds of shortcoming. This character isnât necessarily the viewpoint character.
- Scarface Claw by Lynley Dodd  âScarface is mean to the dogs but this particular story shows us that he is also a scaredy-cat underneath.
- Olivia by Ian Falconer is basically a narcissistic little girl in a pigâs body. While I personally have no love for Olivia, she is very popular. (Sheâs much more appealing than her parents.)
THE RISE OF THE ANTIHERO
When main characters (heroes) have very clear and reprehensible moral shortcomings, we then call them âantiheroesâ. In recent times, stories with antiheroes have proved very popular with audiences, notably in prestige TV.
Howard Suber in his book The Power Of Film argues that there is no such thing as an antihero, only those who act heroically and those who do not. Another problem is with the misleading name. Suber has noticed the word âantiheroâ suggests a character who is âantiâ (against) the hero, but this is not what it means at all. Characters called âantiheroesâ are ânot yet heroesâ.
Christopher Vogler has said the same thing:
 Definition of Antihero
Anti-hero is a slippery term that can cause a lot of confusion. Simply stated, an anti-hero is not the opposite of a hero, but a specialized kind of hero, one who may be an outlaw or a villain from the point of view of society, but with whom the audience is basically in sympathy. We identify with these outsiders because we have all felt like outsiders at one time or another.
The Writerâs Journey, Christopher Vogler
Perhaps Suber and Vogler would prefer the term âunheroâ, though the unhero is a comic character and doesnât tend to rise above his ordinariness:
The un-hero is most similar among the types of heroes to the everyman, with a key exception: he rarely ends up being a proper hero. Generally, the un-hero is in all the wrong places at all the wrong times and does more to hinder the cause of good/justice/world-saving than to help it. Somehow though, through cosmic confluence or the intervention of a more traditional hero, everything works out in the end and the un-hero is heaped with the credit.
This is generally a less serious heroic form and should be reserved for a less serious work.
J.S. Morin
The Function Of The Antihero
Antiheroes are fun to watch. We get to see characters breaking boundaries weâve fantasised about breaking in our own lives. A lot of the time, antiheroes have the witty comebacks. They are ace with a handgun, always prepared and very organised. These people would actually make great workmates if they were working on the side of good.
In thematic terms, antiheroes play another role. By transgressing social norms and legal boundaries they ask the audience to reflect upon what is okay and what isnât okay. Breaking Bad did this very well, though I believe the writers overestimated the reflective powers of a vast majority of their viewing audience. If youâve seen Vince Gilligan interviewed, youâll know that he expected his audience to stop siding with Walt and take the side of characters such as Skyler after a while. This didnât happen for much of the audience, who are like ducklings, falling in love with the first character they are encouraged to bond with. Breaking Bad and the discussion that happened online around that time, with much hatred directed towards the character of Skyler, and to the actress who played her, offers insight into the Duckling Phenomenon.
A Brief History Of Storytelling That Lead Us Here: To The Age Of The TV Antihero

In the 19th century, you maybe spent an hour a day reading a novel, two hours a month watching a play. That was all the storytelling done by professionals for you. People now see that much storytelling every day. Theater became Broadway, then radio, movies, and TV. It all happened in the 20th century.
All the arts in the 20th century exhausted themselves technically. By the time Ad Reinhardt painted a canvas black from edge to edge and said itâs a painting, the form was over. Music had been explored down to noise. Every technical possibility had been explored. All possible techniques.
So I was thinking, Since all the arts have reached the black canvas, what was going to become of story? Where would writers go in the 21st century?
I realized there is one aspect of human nature that really hasnât been exploited and explored: evil. You have dark characters like Iago, great villains who are diabolical and evil, but itâs a pure evil. Human beings are very rarely pure evil, and storytelling hadnât truly explored the complexity of realistic evil.
And then, a few years later, came all these great long-form series, which opened an exploration of evil. There was The Wire and The Sopranos and Breaking Bad, even Mad Men. With all these great series, you get complex, good/evil characters.
Robert McKee in a Vice interview
Rise of the Female Antihero
When storytelling gurus talk about antiheroes, youâll notice they offer male characters as examples. But before we had Tony Soprano, we had Carrie Bradshaw. It can be argued that the main female characters of Sex And The City were antiheroes in their own way â Carrie would alternately seem sympathetic but next minute sheâd do something most of the audience wouldnât identify with at all. This is an essential element of the fictional antihero.
More recently we have a complex, fascinating female antihero in Animal Kingdomâs Janine Cody (aka Smurf). The discussion around this character is often about what makes a âgood motherâ, a discussion I donât remember James Gandolfini being asked to comment on. Society has higher expectations for mothers than for fathers, and this is reflected in stories.
I expect we will see more female antiheroes on screen. Because of that gendered expectation differential, itâs actually better sometimes to have a female antihero, if you really want the audience to pass judgement. Imagine how different the discussion would have been if Skyler White had been the main character of Breaking Bad.
I see this double standard pop up all the time in novels [âŚ] We forgive our heroes even when theyâre drunken, aimless brutes or flawed noir figures who smoke too much and canât hold down a steady relationship. In truth, we both sympathise with and celebrate these heroes; Conan is loved for his raw emotions, his gut instincts, his tendency to solve problems through sheer force of will. But the traits we love in many male heroesâtheir complexity, their confidence, their occasional bouts of selfish whimâbecome, in female heroes, marks of the dreaded âunlikable character.â
In Defence Of Unlikeable Women
More recently, in her book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, philosopher Kate Manne has coined the word âhimpathyâ to explain the extra empathy we afford men as a patriarchal default. It is therefore more difficult to write empathetic male anti-heroes than empathetic female antiheroes. Anyone who successfully manages it should be applauded. Then again, if we as readers donât âlikeâ or âempathiseâ with a female antihero, perhaps itâs not actually the fault of the writer? Perhaps we are himpaths.
So, what exactly makes someone an anti-heroine on film? A âcatch-allâ definition is this: someone who does bad shit for good reasons. A woman whoâs flawed, but in the most relatable and almost inspiring of ways (because arenât we all?), and whose decisions and development unfold on screen independently of their male counterparts.
Theyâre the Thelmas and the Lousies, the Beatrix Kiddos. Weâre now saying buh-bye to the Disney princesses from our youth, who were (and remain; sorry Emma Watson/Belle) almost impossibly virtuous, beautiful and small-waisted. The anti-heroine of today is messy, gritty and imperfect in a more ways than one, often navigating her life with a moral compass that could probably use a service.
We donât love that Veronica from Heathers literally kills a whole bunch of people, but her reasons for doing so resonate with us (in any case, who DOESNâT love our girl Wynona, even when sheâs a murderous high-schooler?). Gone Girlâs Amy Dunne is arguably batshit, but is there anyone who hasnât thought of a real-life application for her âcool girlâ monologue at least once since hearing it for the first time?
âThree Billboardsâ Shows The Anti-Heroine Is Finally On The Rise, Junkee
See also: âHeathersâ Blew Up the High-School Comedy, an archived New Yorker article
Further Reading On The Antihero
- Are You Sick Of TV Antiheroes from LA Times
- The Top 10 Fictional Antiheroes from Litreactor. It would seem most antiheroes are male, but this list includes some women.
- A great definition of antihero, and a list of examples, can be found at TV Tropes.
- The Likability Trap: We like to root for the antihero, but not for the antiheroine, from Bitch Media
- A Day In the Life of a Troubled Male Antihero from Toast
- Writing The Antihero (And Why So Many Authors Get It Wrong) from The Passive Voice
So much about a character is invisible, in fiction as in real life; but what lies beneath the surface will affect every aspect of your story. If you really take the time to figure out who youâre dealing with, much will become clear.
CLAIRE MESSUD
Chick TV: Antiheroines and Time Unbound 2021
Yael Levy examines the underexplored antiheroine of early twenty-first century television in Chick-TV: Antiheroines and Time Unbound (Syracuse UP, 2022). Levy advances antiheroines to the forefront of television criticism, revealing the varied and subtle ways in which they perform feminist resistance. Offering a retooling of gendered media analyses, Levy finds antiheroism not only in the morally questionable cop and tormented lawyer, but also in the housewife and nurse who inhabit more stereotypical feminine roles. By analyzing Girls, Desperate Housewives, Nurse Jackie, Being Mary Jane, Greyâs Anatomy, Six Feet Under, Sister Wives, and the Real Housewives franchise, Levy explores the narrative complexities of âchick TVâ and the radical feminist potential of these shows.
New Books Network
CHARACTER NEED
There is probably a finite number of human needs, though so many youâll never be short of material. Take a pyramid youâre probably familiar with, Maslowâs hierarchy of needs (misappropriated from Native Americans). There are a few problems with this hierarchy, so it pays to look at it critically:
The modern integration of ideas from neuroscience, developmental biology, and evolutionary psychology suggests that Maslow had a few things wrong. For one thing, he never gave much thought to reproduction. He conceived of âhigher needsâ as completely personal strivings, unconnected from other people, and totally divorced from biological needs. Parental motivations were completely missing from his hierarchy, and he placed âsexual needsâ down at the bottomâalong with hunger and thirst. Presumably, sexual urges were biological annoyances that could be as well dispatched by masturbation as by having intercourse, before one moved back to higher pursuits like playing the guitar or writing poetry.
Psychology Today
CHARACTER PROBLEM
Every hero needs both an inner and outer problem. In developing fairy tales for Disney Feature Animation, we often find that writers can give the heroes a good outer problem: Can the princess manage to break an enchantment on her father who has been turned to stone? Can the hero get to the top of a glass mountain and win a princessâs hand in marriage? Can Gretel rescue Hansel from the Witch? But sometimes writers neglect to give the characters a compelling inner problem to solve as wellâŚThey need to learn something in the course of the story: how to get along with others, how to trust themselves, how to see beyond outward appearances. Audiences love to see characters learning, growing, and dealing with the inner and outer challenges of life.
Christopher Vogler, The Writerâs Journey
In childrenâs stories where there is no psychological or moral shortcoming and wonât learn anything or change in any psychological way by the end of the narrative, your character will (probably) have a Problem. This problem is external to their psychology. Stories like this donât tend to be as emotionally interesting, but are appropriate for, say, humour, which only needs a character to serve as the Every Child.
- In Stuck by Oliver Jeffers, the boyâs problem is that something is stuck in a tree and he canât reach it down.
- Dogger by Shirley Hughes is about the problem of losing a favourite toy.
- Nickety Nackety Noo Noo Noo by Joy Cowley and Trace Moroney features a resourceful, heroic girl who is perfect in every way, but her big problem is that sheâs been abducted by an ogre.
Thereâs another kind of story where the âmain characterâ is the reader. Where Is The Green Sheep? by Mem Fox and Judy Horacek is one example of this: The readerâs problem is that the book asks them to locate a green sheep, but thatâs impossible until turning the final page. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown is another example of a perennial favourite which doesnât seem to follow any of the usual rules of story â again, this book addresses the young reader directly. The child is the character, saying goodnight to the items. This is more secular prayer than complete narrative.
Do all childrenâs book characters need a Problem, if they donât have a moral or psychological shortcoming? Again the answer is not always, actually.
- The Biggest Sandwich Ever by Rita Golden Gelman and Mort Gerberg is a carnivalesque story in which a man turns up and makes an enormous sandwich. In a carnivalesque story, there doesnât have to be a problem as such, because the unsupervised play itself is the story â equivalent to the big struggle scene in a more common type of story. A carnivalesque story is a âtoy storyâ â all about play and enjoyment with no âbroccoliâ. However, even in The Biggest Sandwich Ever, the characters do face a problem by the end: After stuffing themselves full of sandwich, they are now faced with the task of eating a giant pie.
- More! by Peter Schossow is a wordless picture book which celebrates the joy of walking (flying) along a beach on a windy day.
By the way, sometimes the initial problem exists only to get the story rolling. This is what Hitchcock called a McGuffin.