Perfection.

There is no such thing as perfection.

In the writing world, the closest thing you can get to perfection is imperfection. An imperfect character with realistic flaws relate more to the reader than some perfect, great, amazing, and wonderful character who has it all. There is no character in any single piece of literature that doesn't have something ed up with his or her life that provokes and interests the reader.

Sure, it's fun writing about a perfect character who has everything you don't, but writers have invented terms called 'Mary Sues' and 'Gary Stus'. You've heard of them, right? Perfect characters are bland, boring, unrealistic, and they make me hit the back button faster than Tablo can rap. Explaining what perfect characters are can be a little confusing and complicated, but let me put it into perspective.

I usually come across many You/Male Idol fanfictions on AFF, and most of the original characters (which I hardly call original because they're more like cookie-cut copies of each other, have these as their character profiles:

Name here (You!)

• Pretty
• Nice
• Caring
• Smart
• Loves bubble tea

Yes, it's very possible for someone in the real world to have these personality traits because nice people exist, but do you know how boring nice characters are in a piece of literature? First of all, character profiles shouldn't even exist, but we'll cover that in another chapter. All characters should have a flaw, and I've seen so many authors trying to get away with that flaw being any of the following:

• Poor, but very kind!
• Wears glasses
• Unpopular butsomehowverypopularamongstallthekingkas
• Orphaned (because having parents is so last year)

Your character's social status, fashion sense, popularity, and family can be contributing factors to a character's flaw, but don't make them petty excuses to make it seem like your character's not a Mary Sue or Gary Stu. Don't be one of those authors that think "Oh, since she/he's a and an unpopular nerd, people won't think she/he's a perfect character! But, I'll make her/him be super attractive and suddenly gain so much popularity by catching the kingka's attention! Yay!"

Dear God, please no and have mercy on your soul.

Don't use flaws as an excuse to polish up your character's positive traits. Flaws are what makes a character interesting. Instead of using your positive traits to give light to the character's bad ones, use their flaws to make their positive traits even more precious.

If a character is perfect from the beginning, there is nothing to fix. It's game over. Nothing to see here. Nothing for the readers to be curious about. If Peter Parker (Spiderman) was instantly some hot-shot, super attractive, and totally-not-awkward superhero from the very beginning, the movie would have been a lot shorter. If Mary Jane was your typical, perfect female character who didn't have conflicting thoughts from time to time and some insecurity issues about her potential as a Broadway star (if you watched the movie, she was cut from the musical because she was incapable), the movie, like I said, would have been a lot shorter.

Those weren't my best comparisons, but you get the idea.

Perfect characters are a good story's worst enemy, so throw them out. We can definitely start by tossing out those repetitive, boring, and totally useless character profiles.