Whether I’m reading a story for pleasure or critiquing it for a client or friend, the one thing that will drop me out of a story every time it happens is a missing why. That “why” needs to power the character to satisfy this reader.
Today it’s common to call that why the character’s wound.
I’m not dissing plot-driven stories. They can be quite entertaining. But they are lighter stories. They offer entertainment but will not engage me. Consequently, a gripping plot is necessary. It can be fast moving, or a mostly predictable plot with quirky characters, or a plot that has unpredicted twists and turns. A plot-driven story can seem easier to write. But, in my mind, it is extremely difficult to create a well-written, plot-driven story. For me, a well-written story must have characters I care about. And characters I care about always have an emotional wound.
What is a Character’s Wound?
The phrase, character’s wound, caused a lot of confusion for me when it was first introduced. But over time, I’ve learned it represents an unhealed psychological injury that occurred in the character’s past. Past trauma, whether recent or old, influences the character.
In real life, emotional wounds are associated with abuse, abandonment, loss, mistreatment, or inconsistency in close relationships. The existence of an emotional wound often leads to low self-esteem, PTSD, depression, anxiety, or other mood disorders. This is what the outside world hears. It’s how we label people who have these terrible wounds.
Some symptoms that can result from these wounds include hypervigilance, or sleep disorders, or irrational (to us) outbursts, or withdrawal. Sometimes there are stomach upsets, panic attacks, or headaches. This is what we see.
And this is where many authors fail. They stop at what we hear and what we see. To be successful, they need to go behind the curtain.
Behind the Curtain
We all have hidden fears. Sometimes they seem silly. Sometimes they are overwhelming. When they are overwhelming and deeply rooted in an emotional wound, we ignore, explain away, and/or hide our fears.
Taking a peek at the fear behind the character’s wound is scary. To face our character’s fears, we must risk stirring up and facing our own fears. Sometimes simply naming the fear is too frightening.
So, what are some fears caused by emotional trauma?
- fear of abandonment,
- fear of intimacy,
- fear of rejection,
- fear of vulnerability,
- fear of being alone,
- fear of trust,
- fear of failure, and
- a fear of not being good enough
Again, these are labels. If this is where you stop in your character development, you will not convince a reader like me that your characters are genuine.
Wounds and Fears are Formative
A deeply traumatic emotional wound affects a person’s worldview. If the fear is intimacy, every decision the person makes will be to avoid intimacy. The person may see other people’s actions as ways to hurt or manipulate her or as not genuine because, obviously, the other person is also avoiding intimacy.
The wound and fear don’t exist in a vacuum. Every response, behavior, and interaction comes through the filter of that wound and fear. Usually, the character is unaware of her responses being triggered by the fear and wound.
There is Safety in Hiding Fear
In the United States, we’re socialized to “control our fear.” But that is simply not possible. We cannot control our thoughts. We can try, but our brains are sneaky and they lie to us. They are that way to help us survive. They feed us the fear so our bodies will pump out chemicals to make our bodies behave in what our brain has decided is a life-saving manner.
Once those chemicals are coursing through our body, fear takes on physical attributes that only make the fear bigger.
Certain populations consider fear a weakness. We want to avoid being labeled weak and taken advantage of or abused further so we hide our fear.
Finally, we are afraid to heal. Yup. Every single living person. Naming the fear, examine fear, and moving past fear is uncomfortable. It makes us vulnerable. Being emotionally vulnerable in a current traumatic situation can be life-threatening. Literally.
So it makes sense that we hide our fears. We hide them and pretend they don’t exist, or cover them over with another behavior, or place the blame somewhere/anywhere else. The problem is, avoiding our fear only increases the power our fear has over us.
This is a key piece of creating a believable character wound. Your character will mask that fear and refuse to confront it with every ounce of her being. Your job as writer is to know what fear she’s resisting and why.
Healing is Hard Work
Many writers have learned that confronting fears lessens the power those fears have over you. So they make their characters face their fears and in the end, the fear is gone, and the character lives happily ever after.
BLATTT! (The wrong answer buzzer)
Yes, we want our characters to be heroic and overcome their fears, but if you make it too easy on them, readers like me will put the book down…forever.
I find a character’s wound and poke a stick at it.” Josh Weil, author
The saying goes, “put your character in a tree and throw rocks at him.” That’s kind of what I’m telling you. Only the rocks you need to throw at your character are specific to her wound, and each rock will teach her one specific piece of what she needs to know to grow by the end of the book.
Want to know more specifics? Michelle Hoover wrote an excellent article for Fiction Writers Review about character wounds and gives examples of how different author create an incident that pokes at their character’s wound.
Don’t Let Fear Stop You
How should writers craft relatable, profound characters? Understand what your fears are and how they make you feel and act. Not all of us can afford a professional counselor or even want to go to counseling, but we are all writers and can write in secret journals about our inner fears and thoughts. That’s where the gold is.
You don’t have to write about your personal fears, but when you understand how many decisions you make to avoid your fear…When you understand how your fear makes you move in convoluted ways or do things that seem contrary to what you say you want… THEN you can write a complex character’s journey from unhealed wound to healing. You may find your own fears triggered while writing about unrelated fears. Don’t let that stop you. That fear will resonate with your readers and it might just help you move further on your personal journey to healing.