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.
BEING PUBLICLY HUMILIATED
Examples:
- A teacher making an example of a student in front of others (shaming them for poor performance, dress code, attitude, etc.)
- Having one’s reputation damaged (sex videos surfacing, one’s unfiltered thoughts being taped without one’s knowledge and then aired, etc.)
- A shameful secret, closely guarded, being shared to one’s peers or the public (if one is well-known)…
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 doesn’t matter what I do, people will never forget what happened
- I will never be able to achieve my dreams because everyone will remember what I did
- It doesn’t matter that I’m innocent; people will always wonder about me anyway…
Positive Attributes That May Result: cautious, courageous, discreet, honest, honorable, inspirational, merciful, objective, persuasive, private, proactive, protective…
Negative Traits That May Result: addictive, confrontational, cowardly, defensive, dishonest, foolish, gullible, impulsive, inhibited, insecure, macho, martyr, melodramatic…
Resulting Fears:
- Fear of being recorded (photos, video, vines, snap chat, audio, etc.)
- Fear of being on stage, on display, or otherwise having attention drawn to oneself
- Fear of being exploited…
Possible Habits That May Emerge:
- Choosing to stay home rather than go out
- Tightening one’s friendship group to only a few trusted people
- Avoiding social media, and closing one’s accounts
- Feeling anxiety when the phone or doorbell rings, or when email alerts come in
- Looking around when out and about, feeling watched…
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.
This post hits home to me. The 1st example happened to me when I was 14 and haunts me till today at 53, it crippled my social life and blocks me from doing the things I always hoped to do. Teachers should be more conscious how they treat their students, it’s sad that these things happen. It made me a more conscious writer though, so I was able to make use of it at the end.
Ugh. I’m sorry that it hits close to home, that there’s a real situation like this that affects people of any age. Thanks for sharing your story. I’m happy for you and proud of you for making the most of a bad deal.
Howdy
Thanks for the post. This is great stuff! I’m currently brainstorming on how to make my antagonist a deeper, flawed person with history and backstory. Been struggling on how to do that so far. This post is definitely helpful.
Thanks Angela!
This series really is amazing. I’ve been working as a therapist for a decade, and I encounter many of the situations you describe in your Emotional Wound series. And even with 10 years experience I find myself learning many new things. Thank you! Sharing 🙂
Thanks Adrian 🙂 Good fiction should always mirror real life, so it is always good to hear from therapists and psychologists that we’re on the right track! 🙂
i had a real incident with a art teacher when i was in second grade—we were making paper snowflakes and i was so excited, i knew how to make them. when i told the teacher she said, “Do you want to teach this class?” that, in combination with other factors in my life, led me to believe nobody wanted what i had to share, or to hear what i had to say…
thank God, He has taught me different since and i now have confidence (albeit shaky at times) to speak out when i need to
I think some of the big wounds we suffer that have to do with humiliation come from people (like teachers) who do not understand the effects of their behavior, like this instance. It creates a lasting impression, and is very sad as it dims a person’s joy when a person is punished for enthusiasm. So sad.
As always, great post. One of my secondary characters is experiencing this–but I’m writing historical fiction. Interesting to take what you wrote here and bring it back 60-70 years.