Character Traits: Poor Judgment

Last time I discussed characters who possessed the notorious trait of being “Stubborn” and what that might look like. Stubbornness is an interesting trait because it’s very accessible and common among people, and many quickly apply it to their new characters, at least in name. But there are lots of character traits that are both accessible and common, and yet you tend to see characters who are ‘Stubborn’ far more often than you see a character whose author will willingly ascribe them to have ‘Poor Judgment’. I think there is a convincing reason why that is, though.

As I mentioned previously, stubbornness is very easily a flaw that is not a flaw. It gives the character, at face value, an appearance of humanity, but it is often not written convincingly at all. Most stubborn characters are chronically correct, and their stubbornness usually helps the plot or character more than it hinders it. I don’t bring this up simply for the sake of being repetitive, however; rather, I want to contrast it with a different trait, one that is much harder to escape from humiliation with. Characters who possess notably poor judgment are hard to come by, and yet people with notably poor judgment seem a dime a dozen. Feel like we’re missing something here?

Let’s be clear on something up front: everyone has poor judgment from time to time. We go through life doing the best we can, hoping we get it right more often than not. The fact that people make poor choices is often not even a negative reflection on their own person, but rather it’s thought more of as an issue of victimization. People simply cannot know everything at stake, cannot understand the entire impact of their choices, and besides simple ignorance they often must combat emotions and other challenges. Because of this, a person—and by extension, a character—who makes a bad call once in a while is not only quite normal but even a little endearing, depending on the mistake.

Realizing a character never makes noteworthy mistakes—you know, ones that impact them and other people for more than day—is one of the fastest ways to sniff out a Mary-Sue. It can be small things like forgetting your keys, having a callous moment, or not leaving the bar until after midnight on a weekday, but it should also be larger things from time to time. Maybe it’s accepting a job your character hates, just for the money, or eloping with a person they’ll eventually grow to despise. People make bad calls all the time, and it’s part of what makes them human. Just like characters are always at least a little stubborn, they should also fail to make the right decision from time to time. This ought to be evident in both the character’s history (especially if they’re an adult), and it should come up in roleplay too.

Why is this so rare to see, then? Well, as the clichéd phrase goes: “Hindsight is 20-20.” In our own personal lives, we look back on the things we screwed up, cringe a bit, and say things like “I should have known” or “If only I had known.” Whether because of simply not-knowing or maybe emotions getting in the way, there’s almost always a sense of regret and a desire to do better. It’s frustrating to have to live with mistakes, especially ones you clearly know you could have avoided, and it haunts some people more than others. For the escapist seeking roleplayer, it is hardly surprising they would avoid reliving that feeling in their characters. I don’t think they shy away from this on purpose; it’s one of those unconscious things we unrealistically imbue upon our characters without thinking about it. Think about a strengths and weaknesses section of the character sheet: it would be unusual to see someone list “Poor Judgment” as a weakness, but it would also be strange to see “Excellent Judgment” as a strength. People just assume it’s a given, dictated more by life than by the person.

And yet, there are some people out there who do have remarkably poor judgment. It might be in life as a whole, or it could be in specific scenarios, such as romance, career, family, and so on. In the real world, it’s hard to point to someone and go “Oh yeah, them” because there’s so much we don’t know in the real world. You’d come across as pretty judgmental and short-sighted yourself. But the game changes a little bit when we’re talking about crafting our own fiction. With my own character, I ought to be able to look at their whole life and say whether or not they’re prone to one thing or another. The weight you put here, though, is up to the author, but I will discuss that in a moment. First, I need to answer an important question.

Why should we care? Simply because it’s a trait common among people doesn’t necessarily mean it’s worth writing about. A lot of people don’t like their green vegetables, but that doesn’t mean it should be an issue tackled in every single character. The general idea of ‘Poor Judgment’ though and by that I effectively mean ‘Making mistakes’ really should be considered across all characters. Whether or not it’s a trait in and of itself, or simply the culmination of several traits, is beside the point, but let’s be clear here real quick. Not every flaw needs to manifest itself as poor judgment. A character could be prone to anger or harsh words, but they might get away with it a lot. People might dislike them more for it, but that doesn’t mean it will ruin a situation necessarily; in some cases, it might even solve a problem, albeit at the expense of another. I’d still call that a flaw, because it reflects poorly on the character, but it might not cost them ground in the grand scheme of things.

One way or another, though, it’s bound to show up. A character making a bad decision is actually a really awesome tool for a writer to create character-driven plots. It messes with the narrative and makes it more personal, and I hope we will all agree that that is almost always a good thing. Sure, it costs us as writers a little bit in the short-term, but it’s definitely worth it. For the time being, we put aside our desire for everything to go according to plan, for it to all work out, and instead force our characters to don the cloak of self-inflicted damage. Some of the best stories are about characters who spend most of the story cleaning up a mess they created when they were younger and stupider.

I said I would return to the idea of how much you weight this character trait, though. This is an important distinction I want to make. From the perspective of a character sheet, the idea that your guy or gal slips up once and a while and doesn’t always make perfect choices should be a given. If you write on your personality section that they make mistakes once and a while, you might also want to put in your appearance section that they have two arms, two legs, some teeth, and so on. Those things are simply inherent to being human, and they should only be brought up when there’s an exception to the norm. For this reason, it’s neither surprising nor worrying that this character trait I’ve listed doesn’t often show up in personality sections. However, what is surprising and worrying is that it rarely shows up in the history or the roleplay itself. Especially if your character is at a decision-making age, you should be able to point to a few things and go “Yeah, they really messed that up.”

Okay, but what about a character who goes beyond the normal level of expected human error? I mentioned before that some people have remarkably poor judgment, and I think that applies here. It could very well be in one specific area, like money, or it could be a general, life-long tendency. Poor judgment may arise from genetics, bad luck, emotions, impatience, and, yes, unintelligence. The idea, though, that people only make bad choices just because they aren’t “smart enough” is, in and of itself, not a very smart accusation. People shy away from this trait because they fear it’s something only “dumb people” have, and that it might not properly reflect how super-duper smart they are, as the writer. Yeah, okay.

Like with any trait, though, the writer has the responsibility to be specific and intentional with the traits their character has. If it ends up working for your character, that plot-door I mentioned earlier about character-driven stories just got a lot wider, and that’s actually of huge benefit to the writer. This is a very easily convincing trait to write, and it will make your character feel much more human as a result. It should, of course, line up with the rest of the personality, backstory, and all of the rest, but that shouldn’t be too hard. Some of the most intelligent, logical, and rational characters have extremely poor judgment due to other factors like pride, addiction, or past damage.

In closing, this trait, while general, can be incredibly enhancing to your character and their story. It makes you as the writer think about situations more closely, considering other paths and actions. Once you get into the swing of it, how anything might turn out becomes truly questionable. This is especially awesome for roleplay because of the dynamic the writers share together; it makes your character harder to predict, and the writing becomes much, much more spontaneous as a result.