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.
Growing Up In The Public Eye
Examples:
- Parents who have extreme wealth (own an airline, a hotel or fast food chain, etc.)
- Parents who are important and well-connected (head of government organizations, high ranking military officials, etc.)
- A parent or parents who are famous (movie stars, music singer, etc.)…
Basic Needs Often Compromised By This Wound: physiological needs, safety and security, love and belonging, esteem and recognition, self-actualization
False Beliefs That May Be Embraced As a Result of This Wound:
- I don’t know who I am, just what I am supposed to be
- I can’t afford to make any mistakes
- People are cruel and want me to fail because I am famous…
Positive Attributes That May Result: adaptable, cautious, cooperative, courteous, discreet, disciplined, extroverted, generous, hospitable, independent, introverted, kind…
Negative Traits That May Result: addictive, callous, cocky, compulsive, confrontational, cynical, defensive, evasive, extravagant, foolish, frivolous, fussy, haughty…
Resulting Fears:
- fear of trusting the wrong person
- fear of public embarrassment
- fear of making a decision that will haunt one forever…
Possible Habits That May Emerge:
- being obsessive about presentation (clothing, hair, behavior, fitting in)
- holding back rather than taking risks (for fear of screwing up publicly)
- acting more mature than others of one’s age (having to grow up fast in the limelight)
- hoarding one’s privacy (because one gets little of it)
- Keeping secrets or avoiding voicing one’s opinion…
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.
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.
Thanks for this. My character is the daughter of a Wall Street CEO, and this describes her perfectly.
Thanks so much for writing this piece it was insightful. Your opening painted a clear picture of how we as writers can use negative emotions or emotional trauma to help develope charchers. The examples you proved were extremely helpful. This writing piece provides a lot of value and I appreciate the time you put into doing so. Thanks so much for sharing your work. If I could offer one helpful tip I would perhaps modify the title to welcome more readers who are specifically interested in charcher development. For example, a tittle such as, “Why Emotional Truman is the most effective way to develope your character!” This let readers know right away what you are going to discussion. Well I hope that was helpful. Thanks so much for your effort you put into this work!
Thanks for the kudos, Lanette. I’m glad you enjoyed the post. As I think you know, this is part of a series we’re doing on Emotional Wounds, which is why we have included that in the title. Between that and the actual wound title itself, our titles are a little on the long side as is, so adding to it probably wouldn’t work. But we appreciate the feedback :).
An interesting and welcome article! Thanks.
Fascinating and helpful post on this niche topic of character-building. The thesaurus is a really useful resource. Thanks for this post, Becca and Angela.
Whoa, great nitty-gritty stuff! You really know how to go into depth into the character motivation! I’ve never thought about this in reference to growing up in a public eye.
I have been following this series, and I really hope you are going to put it all together in a book. This one is particularly useful for a character I have at the moment. But they are all so insightful and I am desperate to have them collated in a book like your others. <3
Hi, Sacha. I’m glad to know this series is working for you :). We are currently in the process of putting together our Setting Thesaurus for publication (slated for release in late spring), so we haven’t talked extensively about what would be next. But we’ve received a lot of interest in the Wounds Thesaurus, so it wouldn’t surprise me if that made it into book form, too. It would be a while before that happens, though, since we’re currently working on the other thesaurus and are still in the process of putting up entries for this one. Thanks for the feedback.
Mrs. Ackerman, Are you going to do an entry about surviving an environmental disaster like a hurricane, tornado, earthquake/tsunami. One of my characters survived the 2011 Japanese Earthquake/Tsunami.
This blog is intriguing. This is what characters in books feels. But if I may, an emotional wound can be resolved by being yourself.
This would be sad.
Another very helpful article, Ms Ackerman. I’ll use it to portray one of my protagonists in my next project, a historical YA where she’s the sole heiress to a multi millionaire family. Thanks again, 🙂