• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About
    • About WHW
    • Press Kit
    • Resident Writing Coaches
    • Contact Us
    • Podcasts & Interviews
    • Master Storytelling Newsletter
    • Guest Post Guidelines
    • Privacy Policy
    • Charities & Support
  • Bookstore
    • Bookstore
    • Foreign Editions
    • Book Reviews
    • Free Thesaurus Sampler
  • Blog
  • Software
  • Workshops
  • Resources
    • List of Resources
    • Recommended Writing Books
    • WHW Descriptive Thesaurus Collection
    • Free Tools & Worksheets
    • Free Show-Dont-Tell Pro Pack
  • WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®
WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

Helping writers become bestselling authors

Character Trait Entry: Guarded

Published: October 29, 2011 by ANGELA ACKERMAN

Definition: Cautious or circumspect; to withhold from a place of doubt, mistrust or fear

Characters in Literature: Lucius Malfoy (Harry Potter); Brimstone (Daughter of Smoke and Bone); Roland Deschain of Gilead (The Gunslinger/Dark Tower Series)

Common Portrayals: Politicians, policemen, military personnel, criminals, prisoners of wars, battered women, abused or neglected children, leaders bearing sole responsibility for people that are at a disadvantage or at risk in some way

Clichés to Avoid: The lone, tortured hero with no past; mentally ill patients mistrusting their doctors; paranoid governments unable to work together to settle on a critical life-or-death issue yet must for the plot to succeed; the character who becomes guarded because of a crippling romantic betrayal or loss

Twists on the Traditional Guarded Character:  

  •  With heroes, a guarded personality type is often accompanied with strong intuition, heightened observation skills and sometimes fast reflexes, all of which allow them to act quickly even though a guarded nature should say otherwise. Make it harder on your survivalist hero or villain by not giving them ultra-developed intuition or physical attributes that overpower the negatives of a guarded trait.
  • Place the naturally secretive or guarded character in a situation that demands trust and openness to succeed.
  • Guarded characters usually embrace this side of their nature, believing it to be a trait of survival. Why not create a character who does not like feeling that he must question before choosing and dislikes holding back before trusting. Let his quest to let go of his guarded nature become part of his character arc (but not via romantic elements).

GOOD NEWS!

This sample, along with the rest of the character trait entries, has been expanded into book form! Together, THE NEGATIVE TRAIT THESAURUS: A WRITER’S GUIDE TO CHARACTER FLAWS and THE POSITIVE TRAIT THESAURUS: A WRITER’S GUIDE TO CHARACTER ATTRIBUTES contain over 200 traits for you to choose from when creating unique, memorable characters. Each entry contains possible causes for the trait, as well as positive and negative aspects, traits in supporting characters that may cause conflict, and associated behaviors, attitudes, thoughts, and emotions. For more information on this bestselling book and where it can be found, please visit our bookstore.

Love working online and having your favorite description resources in one place? We’ve got you covered. The entries from the Negative Trait Thesaurus book have been integrated into our online library at One Stop For Writers. Now you can search and cross-reference between all our thesaurus collections quickly and easily. Interested in viewing a free sample? Register at One Stop and see all that this intuitive library for writers has to offer.

Thesaurus Pair

ANGELA ACKERMAN
ANGELA ACKERMAN

Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.

Share this:

  • Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • More
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print

Related

Filed Under: Writing Help

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Realmwright says

    July 24, 2012 at 2:17 pm

    I have a character that fits this very well. He’s the sole survivor of an attack that razed his village when he was a child. He was tortured by the enemy and forever carries the physical and mental scars. He undergoes intensive martial arts training to try to quiet his mind and focus his discipline, but he cannot find the mental balance needed. His physical stamina and skill vastly improve, but he’s driven out of the monastery because they fear the danger in his volatile temperament. As you mentioned that this guardedness can be a hindrance – he never shakes the nightmares and bad memories and often wakes confused and scared and won’t sleep again for days. His intuition suffers because he’s paranoid that the world is full of dangers.

  2. mystichawker says

    November 2, 2011 at 12:47 am

    Thanks for the great post. I’m glad I found this blog, and you have just helped me flesh out one of the villains I’m working on.
    Awesome!
    AM Burns

  3. Mary Witzl says

    October 31, 2011 at 5:52 pm

    In the EFL class I’m teaching, we’re covering personality traits right now — your blog post today is good reinforcement!

  4. Kayelle Allen says

    October 31, 2011 at 3:46 pm

    OMGosh… I am now an esteemed stalker of this site. Awesome. How could I have been writing this long and not known about this blog? The horrors! I can only chalk it up to today being Halloween… *shudders*

    Thank you for an awesome post and the many wonderful resources here. Woot!

  5. Marsha Sigman says

    October 31, 2011 at 2:42 pm

    Ahhh, Roland. He may be the most tortured and most loved of all the characters I’ve ever read about.

    Definitely hard to write! Great post!

  6. mshatch says

    October 31, 2011 at 2:03 pm

    I have to tell you this comes at a perfect time. THANK YOU!

  7. C.R. Evers says

    October 31, 2011 at 1:14 pm

    another great list! Way to go! :0)

  8. Jan Markley says

    October 31, 2011 at 1:00 pm

    Great post Angela! I cross posted it on my blog today!

  9. Becca Puglisi says

    October 30, 2011 at 9:58 pm

    Thanks, Elizabeth! So glad you found us.

  10. Elizabeth Varadan aka Mrs. Seraphina says

    October 30, 2011 at 6:22 pm

    I enjoy this site so much. I just tweeted it, I think it’s so helpful.

  11. Angela Ackerman says

    October 30, 2011 at 3:50 pm

    Thanks Southpaw, Trish & Carrie!

    Ha, you know me Becca–LOVE the Dark Tower & Roland. Can’t wait for the movie!

    Traci, I think all great characters need to be somewhat guarded. Definitely we need to keep the reader in mind and not create such aloofness that the reader feels alienated. Thanks!

    Angela

  12. Traci Kenworth says

    October 30, 2011 at 7:35 am

    What a surprise and delight to
    find the cover of The Dark Tower
    series for your blog. Definitely
    guarded characters can liven up a
    plot, but you’re right we have to be
    careful of keeping the reader
    alienated from knowing them. My wip has a guarded character as my protagonist, I guess I love to do things the hard way. I do hope the
    reader gets to know him and come along on the story with him.

  13. Carrie Butler says

    October 29, 2011 at 11:41 pm

    Very nice! 🙂

  14. Becca Puglisi says

    October 29, 2011 at 2:29 pm

    I wondered when you’d sneak Roland into this thesaurus ;). Great job.

  15. Tricia J. O'Brien says

    October 29, 2011 at 1:32 pm

    Oooo, good one, Angela. Lots to think about.

  16. Southpaw says

    October 29, 2011 at 10:23 am

    I really love this series!

Primary Sidebar


Welcome!

Writing is hard. Angela & Becca make it easier. Get ready to level up your fiction with game-changing tools, resources, and advice.

Subscribe to the Blog

Check your inbox to confirm! If gremlins tried to eat it, you might have to check your spam folder.

Find it Fast

Read by Category

Grab Our Button

Writers Helping Writers

Software that Will Change the Writing Game

One Stop for Writers

Join our Writers Helping Writers Newsletter

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of this content to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The legal copyright holder, Writers Helping Writers®, reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models. WRITERS HELPING WRITERS® · Copyright © 2025 · WEBSITE DESIGN BY LAUGH EAT LEARN

 

Loading Comments...