When a Character's Greatest Strenght Becomes Their Greatest Liability

One of the things I’ve been thinking about as I continue to work on my pilot script for FIREBIRDS - - now a quarterfinalist in the Final Draft Big Break Screenwriting Contest - - is the relationship between a strength and a flaw. 

The most interesting character flaws aren’t always weaknesses.

Sometimes they’re strengths pushed too far.

Michael, the conductor and co-lead of FIREBIRDS, is fiercely principled. He believes in the art and the work. He believes in the people making it. He refuses to compromise when he thinks something matters. And he has a deep disdain for organizational politics.

 That conviction is one of the reasons people follow him.

It’s why musicians trust him.

It’s why audiences love him.

It’s also what makes him dangerous.

He pushes when diplomacy would serve him better. He refuses to bend when it might protect the people around him. And he can be absolutely right about the principle and completely wrong about how to fight for it.

That tension is much more interesting to me than giving a character an unrelated “flaw” simply because the story needs one.

A strength pushed past its useful limit can become arrogance.

Loyalty can become blindness.

Ambition can become obsession.

Courage can become recklessness.

The trait that allows a character to succeed can also be the trait that threatens to destroy them or others they care about.

That’s where the contradiction lives.

And contradiction is usually what makes a character interesting.

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I’m writing stories set in the beautiful, treacherous, and deliciously dysfunctional world of the performing arts.

From the inside.

Ethan Danov

Conductor | Screenwriter

Creator, FIREBIRDS