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.
Finding Out One’s Child Was Abused
Discovering one’s child had their innocence ripped away and one did not know, didn’t see the signs, or misunderstood the signs as being about something else…it’s a parent’s worst nightmare. Whatever the scenario, the result is the same–deep seated guilt and shame that one failed at the most important job they will ever have: being a parent.
Examples:
Learning after the fact that…
- one’s partner or a close relative has been abusing one’s child
- the abuse occurred at a trusted family friend’s house
- one’s child was abused by a teacher or person of authority…
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 am a terrible parent–I couldn’t even protect my child
- I should have seen the signs, I should have known
- I recklessly placed my child in danger instead of protecting them…
*these lies (and the guilt and self-blame) are even more deeply entrenched if one’s child acted out in some way only to have it passed off as “bad behavior,” if they tried to say something but were not believed, or they said nothing because they felt they couldn’t go to their parent about it.
Positive Attributes That May Result: alert, analytical, cautious, empathetic, loyal, nurturing, observant, perceptive, persistent, private, proactive, responsible, wise
Negative Traits That May Result: addictive, confrontational, controlling. fanatical, humorless, inflexible, irrational, morbid, obsessive, paranoid, pessimistic, stubborn…
Resulting Fears:
- That if one’s child is out of one’s sight, abuse will reoccur
- That one will somehow miss obvious signs something is wrong and let one’s child down again
- That people around one’s child will somehow know he/she has been victimized and target them…
Possible Habits That May Emerge:
- Needing to know where one’s child is at all times
- Checking on them frequently with or without their knowledge
- Being suspicious of anyone who interacts with one’s child, or shows an interest in him/her, even trusted family or friends
- Looking for dangers and possible areas of exposure to the point that it disrupts the child’s routine or causes fear to bloom
- One’s mind always going to the worst case scenario…
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.
I’m going to post this one on facebook, so I don’t lose it. I need it for my MC in the YA I’m working on. Thank you ladies…You are A MAZ ING!!!!
Wow! This post came out just when my MMC’s dad didn’t believe him when he told him that his teacher aka his dad’s friend tried to abuse him. I was wondering about how his dad’s reactions will be when he finds out that his son was true all along and he should’ve believed him. He also feels guilty learning that my MMC had suppressed this for a very long time till he couldn’t but his dad didn’t believe him. Not only that, my MMC’s dad also feels guilty when he learns that because of this sexual abuse, my MMC once tried to commit suicide. Thanks so much, Ms. Ackerman, for such an helpful post.
So glad this was helpful Maria, and you were able to use it in your writing to work with the situation unfolding between your characters. Good luck with it! 🙂
Thank you. Very helpful. It would be interesting to note if behaviours change based in how long ago the abuse happened when then parent finally finds out or accepts in happened. For example an adult child revealing this to a parent.
It would depend on the individual I think. So much would factor in to determine the depth of the wound for a parent: how long it had been since the abuse, how the child was handling it now (did they move past it, are they still struggling, did it completely ruin their life, etc.) and how deeply the adult feels responsibility for the event. Adults (except for the select few who aren’t supportive/don’t care/just want everyone to pretend it didn’t happen) will always feel guilt and responsibility to some measure, but the situation where the abuse took place will determined HOW MUCH responsibility they feel. If the abuse happened by a teacher at school, a parent would feel they let their child down, that they should have known something was off with the teacher, etc. But if the abuse happened at home, with a relative or a friend of the parant and the parent unknowingly gave them access to their child…the guilt will feel so much more severe, even after the fact and many years later. It will be a harder wound to move past.
This is a very sensitive entry. I applaud your getting it right.
Thanks Traci. I can only try my best with this one. I suffered abuse as a child but thankfully my children did not, so this angle of the wound I can only see into so deeply.