Why we need flawed characters in fiction like DI Duncan Waddell star of the Detective in a Coma books

DI Waddell is no Mark wahlberg 

I'm currently working on a new crime novel. It's a police procedural and the main character is an amazing human being both physically and mentally. They have no bias. 

Handsome and charming, they run ultra marathons and raise wads of money for charities in any free time they have. 

Their partner is very supportive of their job and they have an amazing family. 

Thankfully, I am lying and I am not writing a book with the person I described as a the lead character because I hate them already.

Let's face it, who wants to read about perfect, unflawed characters like the one I just described? 

I know I wouldn't. 

How boring would that be? 

The reason is simple - someone who's the perfect human being would be so boring to read about. For one thing, how do you have conflict in a story with a character like that? Well, they're perfect so how would they possibly get into any conflict with anyone? 

And, they would solve the crime within the first two pages.

perfect is boring 

When I am reading, I like my main characters with loads of imperfections and conflicts. That's how I came up with DI Duncan Waddell. He's a decent man, relatively good at his job but he has problems. Not the least of which is that his friend and colleague Stevie Campbell, who was attacked by a suspect he was trying to apprehend and ended up left in a coma is talking to him. 

And only to him, leaving Waddell to wonder if he's losing his mind. 

He has other problems too. He eats too much junk food so has a paunch on him. If someone were to play him in a movie it definitely would not be someone like Mr chiselled abs Mark Wahlberg.

He consumes way too much sugar, so is a borderline diabetic and that's why his wife Isobel is trying to force him to eat healthier. 

He loves Glasgow, the city where he lives and works, but is fast coming to despise because of of the sick and twisted crimes comes across. Hence the name of the first installment featuring him is Vile City. 

Sometimes he even hates his job so much that he disappears into the nearest quiet place to have a swig of whiskey and wishes he had become a history professor as he is a Scottish history buff.

Waddell is flawed and human. 

I hope that is why readers will like him. 

~ Vile City, the revamped first book in the Detective in a coma series is out soon from Diamond Books

Why not what come and meet him? You may like him. ~

Stop victim shaming and blaming women. It's time some men changed.

 

The last time I went running I passed a group of men and one shouted that I had a fat backside whilst another commented in very graphic terms on my chest. 

This isn't unusual. Women get sexually harassed all the time, whenever they go out, whether just walking to work or running in the park. 

But my be able to hear those men shouting things at me is my own fault. How dare I think I can go out and exercise as a woman alone without a man keeping me company? And, what was I thinking of not wearing a pair of headphones or earphones so I could listen to music on my MP3 player?

It's your fault if you don't wear earphones and your fault if you do

What the hell was I thinking of? If I had been listening to music I wouldn't have heard the comments. 

Clearly this is my fault. I asked for those comments. I invited them by virtue of the fact I wasn't listening to music. I'm stupid and stupid women deserve to have those types of comments aimed at them. 

But hey, wait a moment. Isn't it advised by the police not to wear earphones so you can be fully aware of your surroundings? At least that's the spiel women and girls hear all the time. 

It's just another form of victim blaming or shaming the female of the sexes has to constantly put up with.

Maybe instead of blaming women and girls for lewd comments, sexual harassment and unwanted touching and worse in the case of Sarah Everard, it's time that some men (not every man behaves like this) looked at how they behave. 

Bite back those comments you have no right to make and tell your sons to do the same.

Women and girls should have the right to leave their homes for exercise, enjoyment or work, or any damn reason without having to to wrestle with the dilemma of whether to to wear earphones and then being blamed no matter what they decide to do.