Emotional Wounds: Accidentally Killing Someone

When you’re writing a character, it’s important to know why she is the way she is. Knowing her backstory is important to achieving this end, and one of the most impactful pieces of a character’s backstory is her emotional wound. This negative experience from the past is so intense that a character will go to great lengths to avoid experiencing that kind of pain and negative emotion again. As a result, certain behaviors, beliefs, and character traits will emerge.

Characters, like real people, are unique, and will respond to wounding events differently. The vast array of possible emotional wounds combined with each character’s personality gives you many options in terms of how your character will turn out. With the right amount of exploration, you should be able to come up with a character whose past appropriately affects her present, resulting in a realistic character that will ring true with readers. Understanding what wounds a protagonist bears will also help you plot out her arc, creating a compelling journey of change that will satisfy readers.

We hope the sample list of ideas below will help you see how emotional trauma will influence your character’s behavior and mindset. For the full entry of this and over 100 other emotional wounds, check into our bestselling resource, The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression.

Accidentally Killing Someone

NOTE: We realize that sometimes a wound we profile may have personal meaning, stirring up the past for some of our readers. It is not our intent to create emotional turmoil. Please know that we research each wounding topic carefully to treat it with the utmost respect. 

Examples:

• a car accident (either a passenger in the car or a pedestrian or cyclist one hits)
• triggering an allergy (unknowingly serving food to someone highly allergic to it)
• a poisoning (a child consuming a fatal dose of medication while in one’s care)
• a drowning (a child drowning in one’s pool or bathtub, for example)…

Basic Needs Often Compromised By This Wound: safety and security, love and belonging, esteem and recognition, self-actualization

False Beliefs That May Be Embraced As a Result of This Wound:

• It should have been me
• I am a terrible and worthless person
• I do not deserve to be happy or safe…

Positive Attributes That May Result: alert, appreciative, cautious, cooperative, disciplined, empathetic, focused, generous, gentle, honest, honorable, humble…

Negative Traits That May Result: addictive, apathetic, cowardly, defensive, disorganized, fanatical, humorless, impulsive, indecisive, inhibited, insecure…

Resulting Fears:

• fear of making another mistake that costs someone their life
• fear of responsibility or being in charge (making decisions that impact others)
• fear of losing control (if irresponsible behavior led to the death)…

Possible Habits That May Emerge:

• paranoia or obsession regarding the circumstances that led to the death: installing safety railings everywhere (a fall), not letting children be alone even for a moment (a drowning on one’s property), refusing to drive if the weather looks even a bit poor (car accidents)
• over-preparing: going to great lengths to research a situation so one does not make a mistake, keeping emergency kits on hand everywhere, etc.
• avoiding positions of power and responsibility so one does not have a chance to screw things up or fail people again
• withdrawing, avoiding friends, family or the public eye
• not chasing one’s dreams because one believes one does not deserve to have them…

TIP: If you need help understanding the impact of these factors, please read our introductory post on the Emotional Wound Thesaurus.

For other Descriptive Thesaurus Collections, go here.

Which emotional wounds are haunting your characters?

Emotional wounds are incredibly formative, changing how a character views the world, causing trust issues, damaging their self-worth, dictating how they will interact with other people, and making it harder for them to achieve their goals. As such, understanding your character’s wound is vitally important to your overall story.

To learn more, we recommend The Emotional Wound Thesaurus. This writing guide explores emotional trauma and what it will look like for your character and their journey in the story. It highlights 120+ possible wounding events and helps you brainstorm how each might play out in your story so you can write your character’s behaviors, attitudes, fears, and insecurities with authenticity.