Emotional Wounds Thesaurus Entry: Failing To Do the Right Thing

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.

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. 

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.

Examples: It’s impossible to do the right thing all the time. Sometimes, the result of a character’s failing to do the right thing is small: momentary guilt, a temporary rift with a friend, etc. But sometimes the natural consequences of their failures can be monumental, resulting in permanent loss, shame, self-doubt, and self-loathing. These events can be wounding ones that can greatly impact our characters over time.

• Not standing up for someone who is being bullied, belittled, or victimized
• Looking the other way as a crime is committed
• Not helping someone (a vagrant, a child, etc.) when help could have been given
• Giving in to peer pressure…

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

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

• I’m a bad person.
• I can’t trust my own instincts.
• I can’t be relied upon to do what’s right…

Positive Attributes That May Result: alert, cautious, discreet, honest, just, merciful, observant, protective

Negative Traits That May Result: addictive, apathetic, callous, controlling, cowardly, cruel, defensive, devious, evasive, gullible, hypocritical, ignorant, insecure, irresponsible…

Resulting Fears:

• Fear of losing friends if one speaks against them
• Fear of being responsible for someone being hurt again
• Fear of being manipulated or easily led by others…

Possible Habits That May Emerge: 

• Always relying on others to make important decisions because one doesn’t trust one’s instincts
• Refusing to see injustice anywhere out of a desire to avoid responsibility
• Turning inward
• Doubting oneself
• Becoming more cautious; thinking decisions through more carefully in order to come to the right conclusions…

TIP: If you need help understanding the impact of these factors, please read our introductory post on the Emotional Wound Thesaurus. For our current list of Emotional Wound Entries, go here. And for a boatload of practical information on how to incorporate wounds into your story, see our collection of posts on this topic.

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.

Save

Save

Save