Drama is driven by conflict, and conflict is driven by needs. Needs spring from the cavernous emptiness that echoes inside us all.
Flaws force people into bad decisions, down the wrong path, into dead ends. Stories exist to show that that damage is undoable. Success is possible, happiness attainable.
You take a pastry chef whose flaw is his need to be needed, and you end up with a guy who keeps picking up strays and wondering why they take him for all he’s worth and leave him an empty husk again.
Put that in a story about how he wants to start over, get into culinary school in Paris, except his past is littered with bad loans, left-behind stepkids and a couple of arrests for taking the rap.
Add one irresistible girl. Does he fulfill his Parisian dreams? Is the love of the right woman more important? Is she the right woman or more of the same?
He clearly needs to fix his flaw to get him safely through this crossroads, but there are all kinds of things that will naturally obstruct him. Temptations, late night phone calls, his identity stolen at just the wrong moment.
He’s not a victim. He made these choices, to fill that emptiness. Now it’s hurting him. He has to not get sucked into it again. But it’s really hard, because filling that emptiness is the nectar of the gods.
Flawlessness doesn’t provide any of that drama. A pretty good guy muddles through and gets what he wants in the end because he’s the protag. Not a story.
Make the flaw a huge obstacle to the goal. The escalations will write themselves.