It seems like writing about good people makes the book boring. If the characters have flaws, plus some dramatic situations are added, readers are happier.

Is that true?

Writers keep bumping into this subject like furniture in the dark, then apologising to it.

Yes. Mostly yes. But not for the lazy reasons people repeat at workshops.

Writing about “good people” isn’t boring because goodness is dull. It’s boring because goodness is often written as finished.

Sanitised.

Declared instead of tested.

When a character arrives already morally laminated, the story has nowhere to bruise them. And stories need bruises. They need pressure points. They need the moment where the reader leans in and thinks: Ah. So, this is where it hurts.

The Problem Isn’t Goodness. It’s Certainty.

Readers don’t dislike good characters. They dislike certain ones.

A character who knows who they are, what they stand for, and how to behave in all circumstances is not a character. It’s a brochure. There’s no friction, no miscalculation, no private hypocrisy humming under the surface. Nothing catches. Nothing stains.

Goodness becomes boring on the page when it is:

• Untested
• Unchallenged
• Rewarded immediately
• Performed rather than chosen

A “good person” who always does the right thing without cost is not admirable. They’re decorative. They exist to reassure the reader that the universe is fair, which it isn’t, and the reader knows it.

Stories don’t exist to confirm moral comfort. They exist to disturb it slightly. Or violently. Preferably violently, but with style.

Flaws Are Not Accessories. They Are the Engine.

Flaws are often treated like seasoning. Sprinkle a bit of temper, a dash of insecurity, maybe an addiction if you’re feeling edgy. But flaws are not cosmetic. They are structural.

A flaw is not “something wrong with the character.”
A flaw is the strategy the character uses to survive the world, which now no longer works.

That’s why readers respond to flawed characters. Not because they enjoy watching people fail, but because they recognise the pattern. We all carry outdated survival mechanisms like family heirlooms. We cling to them long after the house has changed.

A character without flaws is a character without history. Or worse, a character whose history has been neatly resolved before page one. Which is a strange place to start a story, narratively speaking.

Drama Is Not Noise. It’s Revelation.

There’s a misunderstanding that drama means explosions, affairs, murders, earthquakes. Those things help, yes. They shake the furniture. But drama is not about volume. It’s about exposure.

Dramatic situations force characters into decisions they’ve been avoiding. They strip away the polite versions of themselves. They ask uncomfortable questions like:

• What do you protect when you can’t protect everything?
• Who do you betray when loyalty becomes impossible?
• What belief do you abandon when it starts costing you something real?

A good character in a dramatic situation does not become boring. They become legible. The reader finally sees the machinery.

Without drama, goodness remains theoretical. With drama, it becomes a liability.

The Myth of the Likeable Protagonist

Somewhere along the way, publishing convinced writers that readers want “likeable” characters. This has caused irreparable damage.

Readers don’t want to like characters. They want to understand them. Or recognise them. Or be disturbed by how much they resemble them.

Likeability is a marketing term, not a literary one. It produces characters who apologise too much, explain themselves constantly, and never fully commit to a terrible decision. These characters hover in a moral waiting room, afraid to touch anything.

Flawed characters, on the other hand, touch everything. They make messes. They rationalise. They act before thinking, and think too late. They do one beautiful thing and then ruin it with a smaller, pettier one.

Readers follow them not because they approve, but because they’re honest.

Goodness Without Conflict Is Just Manners

Politeness is not morality.

A character who is “good” because they are agreeable, calm, generous, and endlessly patient often reads as emotionally inert. They don’t want enough. They don’t resist enough. They don’t fail loudly.

Real goodness is noisy. It argues with itself. It hesitates. It sometimes looks indistinguishable from cruelty until the consequences settle.

Think of goodness not as a trait but as a decision repeatedly made under worsening conditions. That’s where interest lives.

If your character’s goodness is never threatened, it isn’t goodness. It’s a habit.

Why Readers Prefer Broken People Trying

Readers are not happier because characters are flawed. They are happier because flawed characters are in motion.

A broken character wants something badly and is using the wrong tools to get it. This creates momentum. Every choice deepens the problem. Every attempt to fix things reveals another fracture.

This is narratively addictive.

A flawless character has no such momentum. They glide. They float above consequence. The story must invent external obstacles to keep them occupied, which readers can smell from a distance.

Internal conflict is cheaper, sharper, and far more intimate.

The Secret Contract Between Writer and Reader

When a reader opens a book, they enter a quiet agreement:

“I will give you my time. You will not lie to me about how people work.”

Perfect goodness is a lie. Or at least a fantasy that belongs in parables, not novels.

Readers know that people:

• Do the right thing for the wrong reasons
• Do the wrong thing while convinced they’re being moral
• Change slowly, then suddenly, then not at all

Characters who reflect this complexity feel alive. Characters who don’t feel managed.

Flaws Create Stakes Without Spectacle

One of the most efficient ways to raise the stakes is not to endanger the world but to endanger the character’s self-image.

A dramatic situation that forces a character to confront their own hypocrisy is often more compelling than any external disaster. The reader leans in because something intimate is at risk.

Good people with flaws are terrifying in the best way. They can justify almost anything. They can tell themselves they are still good, even as the damage spreads.

That tension is narrative gold.

When “Good People” Do Become Interesting

There are exceptions. There are always exceptions.

A genuinely good character can be fascinating if:

• Their goodness isolates them
• Their goodness costs them power, love, or safety
• Their goodness is misunderstood or weaponised
• Their goodness puts them at odds with the story’s moral logic

In these cases, goodness becomes a form of resistance. It stops being bland and starts being dangerous.

But notice the pattern. Interest arrives the moment goodness creates friction.

The Reader Is Not Seeking Comfort. They’re Seeking Recognition.

Readers don’t come to fiction to be told that everything is fine. They come to see their private contradictions articulated without shame.

They want characters who:

• Love badly
• Believe incorrectly
• Protect the wrong things for understandable reasons

They want to watch someone fail in a way that feels familiar, then maybe, maybe learn something too late.

That’s not cruelty. That’s companionship.

So, Is It True?

Yes. Mostly.

Writing about good people becomes boring when goodness is treated as a static state instead of a volatile force.

Add flaws, not as decoration, but as survival strategies.
Add dramatic situations, not as spectacle, but as moral stress tests.
Let characters be wrong in ways that make sense to them.

Readers don’t want saints. They want witnesses. They want someone who has stood in the same emotional mud and made a mess of it.

Give them that, and they’ll follow almost anyone.