flōh, flawe, flay, flaw

& making the problem the solution

Last year, my Substack entries focused on practical advice, tips for writing, exercises, choosing subjects to deliver on. I was striving to impart as much useful information as possible. This year, I’ve adopted a more introspective approach where I try to respond more to what is happening around me. This week alone has been a whirlwind of important and difficult world events. Donald Trump was inaugurated, Elon Musk's Nazi salute at yesterday’s ceremony stirred controversy, and we lost the visionary film maker David Lynch. In contrast, in the literary world, Peter Gizzi's triumph in winning the T.S. Eliot Prize offered some hope and positivity. These subjects are undoubtedly ripe for exploration, yet I find myself struggling to add anything that hasn’t been articulated with greater sophistication and nuance by others.

Instead, my recent cinematic experiences have sparked an observation that I’d like to share so that I might be able to offer some thoughts about writing, more specifically on character flaws and contradictions.

This past week, I viewed three remarkable films: A Real Pain, Baby Girl, and A Complete Unknown. All three films have flawed characters. There is nothing new about characters being depicted as flawed, fallible, an anti-hero. But among these, A Real Pain resonated deeply with me, particularly due to a beautifully crafted scene that intricately portrays the complexities and intimacies of the relationship between the two main characters. In this scene, one of the characters grapples with a mix of contradictory emotions towards the other, emotions rooted in the latter's flaws and his struggle to thrive in the modern world.

In July’s post on character, I barely mentioned flaws, just one bullet point that suggested characteristics can be contradictory, advising to remember that a person can be selfish and kind, lustful and prudish, and that to be human, is to be full of contradictions.

(The next paragraph isn’t exactly a spoiler, but you might want to stop reading and watch the film if you were planning on that, before continuing).

In A Real Pain, imperfections make the character of Benji (played by Kieran Culkin) utterly lovable, brilliant, charismatic, charming, with unfiltered behaviour and unpredictable energy and conversation. But Benji’s character is also unexceptional. He has a lack of direction, vision, ambition, and is unable to participate, strive, contribute, or move beyond his own pain and self-sabotaging behaviours, and as a result, he is dysfunctional.

The scene in question, Benji’s neurotic cousin, David (played by Jesse Eisenberg), underlines Benji’s character traits, the terrible ineffable truths that make him quite so delightfully fallible. It is a powerful and poignant outpouring of a range of emotions he has gathered over many years: a mixing pot of love, envy, frustration. It is apparent that these character defects can also be conceived of as strengths and qualities, and David admits his envy is tied into his neurosis, that he himself could afford to loosen the leash over his own life.

The last time film dialogue had such a profound impact on me was in Anatomy of a Fall where an intense argument captured the competitive tension between two writers, who are husband and wife. This scene not only highlighted their rivalry but also underlines how layers of resentment can accumulate over time, embedding themselves within relationships. The reason both scenes are so memorable is that they both seem to have turned a significantly thorny relationship into authentic, heartbreaking writing. In an interview, Jesse Eisenberg explained that he wrote this character as he wanted to work through some of his issues in his male friendships.

As well as demonstrating the authenticity of human emotion, the therapeutic function of writing is operating, allowing the writer to disguise, encode, and conceal the pain of our relationships or the world, to embed them into his character. The work becomes revealing, truthful, authentic, it profoundly connects. (Perhaps for me, it is because I have known and loved someone very similar to Benji.)

But we probably already know that representing struggle is possible and commonplace, but I think there is something else here, that is to do with identifying a core issue, that is a struggle at play, and exploring how that very struggle can lead to an insightful resolution.

I am reminded that when I was finishing my PhD on representations of chronic illness, at one point I became stuck, because the issue of linguistically innovative language possibly removed access for the very people I wanted to reach. After consulting with my wonderful friend, and author of Unwell Women, Elinor Cleghorn, I decided to make the question of access and privilege the conclusion. It was an elegant solution to the problem.

Interestingly, the Old English for flaw is flōh, meaning "a fragment, piece," which likely evolved into flawe or flay, denoting "a flake of fire or snow, spark, splinter," probably derived from the Old Norse flaga, "a flag or slab of stone, flake." Over time, the word evolved to signify 'a defect or imperfection.'

It is often this splinter of an idea, the trouble at the borders, the character trait, theory, or argument that you struggle to grapple with in life, that yields a solution. By embracing our flaws, both in our friendships and in ourselves, we may uncover the breakthroughs that lead to more authentic narratives in our writing.

Character Exercise:

Try to capture the essence of someone that you know. Perhaps it is someone that you’ve made up, that you met once and have never seen again. Think about how you would evoke their way of being, of acting, of the effect they had on other people. We are different people depending on who we associate with. How might strangers, or friends view or come to know their multiple characteristics?