In great storytelling, we want our protagonists to have flaws, and we want to watch them struggle against those flaws over the course of the story. That struggle is where character growth lives. In fact, the story is in the struggle.

The trouble is, a character who is too flawed becomes hard to root for. Pile on too many failings, or make them too ugly, and the audience pulls away. The protagonist stops being someone we want to follow and cheer on.

One elegant solution is to give your protagonist a flaw that is attractive in itself. The technique is simple: pick a virtue, and push it too far. Every strength, taken to an extreme, curdles into a weakness. If the weakness stems from something appealing, the audience stays on the character’s side even as the character stumbles.

Confidence is attractive; pushed too far, it becomes arrogance. A sense of humor is attractive; pushed too far, it becomes an inability to take anything seriously. Loyalty is attractive; pushed too far, it becomes blind allegiance that leads the character to trust the wrong person for too long.

The real advantage of an attractive flaw is what it does for the character’s arc. With this kind of flaw, the protagonist doesn’t need to abandon the trait entirely. They simply need to dial it back down until it returns to being a virtue. The journey isn’t about eradicating a part of themselves; it’s about finding balance. That makes the resolution feel earned and human rather than like a personality transplant.

Here’s a handy chart of some virtues that can easily tip over into attractive flaws.