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: Being raised by parents or caregivers who…
- rarely let one experience freedom apart from them
- worried constantly about one’s safety
- enforced confining rules out of a desire to keep one safe or within their sights (early curfews, approving or denying the child’s choice of friends, not allowing dating, etc.)…
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 incapable of making my own decisions.
- They don’t trust me to do the right thing.
- The world is a terrible place where bad things are likely to happen to me…
Positive Attributes That May Result: adaptable, cautious, easygoing, innocent, introverted, loyal, obedient, pensive, protective, traditional
Negative Traits That May Result: childish, controlling, cynical, devious, dishonest, evasive, gullible, ignorant, indecisive, inhibited, insecure, irresponsible, lazy, needy…
Resulting Fears:
- Fear of failure or making mistakes
- Fear of risks
- Fear of making decisions…
Possible Habits That May Emerge:
- Experiencing difficulty making decisions
- Relying on others to make important decisions
- Blindly trusting those in authority
- Rebelling against those who would enforce rules or offer advice
- Becoming sneaky or devious as a way of getting around the rules…
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.
Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.
I love these entries- thank you so much! This is one that I possibly disagree with, though. Or maybe just have an alternate theory. I think that for some personalities, being raised by overprotective parents could cause impulsivity and recklessness. Being given a general sheltered existence may give rise to naivety and the desire to prove oneself that could become dangerous. And possibly come with an inability to understand personal responsibility, having never been allowed to experience serious consequences.
I’m not sure, though. Thoughts?
Kay, I think you’re right on here. With these wounds, there are so many ways a person could go, depending on his personality. This is why it’s so important to know our characters inside and out, so we will know how they’ll respond to a given wound. Thanks for reiterating this point :).
Another post to save! Thanks.