Fear is an undeniable part of the human experience, for both real and fictional people. At its most basic, it warns our characters of potential danger and encourages them to take actions and make specific choices that will keep them safe. While unpleasant, it’s an important warning system meant to protect them from harm. But the system breaks down when a fear grows to the point of becoming overwhelming and crippling.
Debilitating fears play an important role in story and character arc, so we’ve decided to delve into this topic for our next thesaurus at Writers Helping Writers. Not just any fears, though—the virulent ones that stymie characters and derail them from their goals and dreams. To help you write your character’s greatest fear realistically, we’ll be exploring the following aspects for each entry:
What It Looks Like. Fears look different for each character based on a number of personal factors, so we’ll be providing a variety of manifestations for you to consider. Know your character’s personality, their sensitivities, and their personal boundaries—things they’re not willing to do because it will be triggering. Being intimately familiar with your character will give you a good idea of how their fear will manifest in various areas of life.
Common Internal Struggles. Fear will cause the character to doubt, obsess, and worry—many times, to an unhealthy degree. If they recognize that their preoccupation borders on the irrational or that it’s making certain desirable things impossible, that knowledge will war with their need for safety, generating internal conflict. The way they deal with it (or don’t deal with it) will have consequences that will impact their forward progress, so this is an important aspect of fear to think about.
Flaws That May Emerge. As your character tries to avoid what they fear, they may undergo a personality shift. A fear of commitment may cause the character to become superficial in their relationships and conversations. The character who is afraid of rejection may become abrasive, uncooperative, or dishonest—flaws that will keep people from getting close enough for a possible rejection to sting. Someone who is scared of losing control can become incredibly controlling and fussy. These traits are effective at protecting the character, but they will cause a myriad of other problems that then will have to be addressed.
Hindrances and Disruptions to the Character’s Life. If your character has a debilitating fear, you’ll need to show it clearly to readers through the context of their current story—no expository paragraphs or info dumps. An effective way to do this is by showing how the fear impacts the various areas of the character’s life. In this field, we’ll offer ideas on the minor inconveniences and major disruptions a fear can create.
Scenarios That Might Awaken This Fear. This is another way you can clearly show your character’s fear—by introducing situations that will trigger them. But they’re also helpful for providing opportunities for growth. As your character moves through their story toward their goal, their fear will block them. For them to achieve their objective, at some point, they’ll have to confront their fear and put it in its rightful place. Knowing which scenarios will trigger their fears will allow you to build those important growth opportunities into the story.
Fear is such a vital part of your character’s arc and their story. Our hope for this thesaurus is that it will provide insight and guidance for this important element. Find our list of entries here!
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.
Hi Becca,
As a subscriber to One Stop, I was wondering if both the Fear Thesaurus and Conflict Thesaurus will be added to the Onestop master list of thesaurussesssss, or whatever they are called when listed in a group:):)
Second question….in my story my hero begins her fear of abandonment at about age 22 and it continues over the next 10 years until the story reaches its climax. Divorce.
Is there a way I can map out that progression gradually using value shifts in OneStop, or if not, would you have a suggestion as to how I should approach it?
Thanks,
Hey, Bill. The Conflict Thesaurus is already up at One Stop for Writers. As we finish the content for the second volume of this book (coming this fall!), we’re adding all the new entries at One Stop and hope to publish those in June. The Fear Thesaurus will also be added, but not for quite a while, since we’re still in the process of creating it.
Regarding your other question, while we don’t have a tool specifically for value shifts, there are others you may be able to do what you’re hoping to do. The Story Maps tool helps you figure out the character’s journey across the whole story. So as you write out the story’s main turning points, you’re able to record the turning points for the character’s inner journey, too, which gives you a map of their evolution over time.
But I think a Timeline might be better for what you’re looking for. Just create a new point for each moment in the story where a shift occurs (or needs to occur). This way, you can focus specifically on the inner journey and map out the character’s steps to get them from Point A to Point B.
I hope this helps!
I absolutely love your books, I don’t know where I would be without them! I hope this doesn’t seem rude but do you have any idea of a release date? I’m sorry I’m just so excited.
Hi, Elizabeth! I’m so glad you’re enjoying our books! And your request isn’t rude at all—the opposite, in fact :). We are currently exploring this thesaurus at the blog and don’t know yet if it will be turned into a book. Our process is to introduce it here, gauge interest, and see if the content lends itself to a full-length book. We’ve just gotten started with this one, so it will be a long while before we make a decision on that.
If you’re suffering from a little FOMO and want to make sure you don’t miss any publications, you can also sign up to this newsletter, which only goes out when we’re announcing the next book publication.
Have a great day!
Hi can you show some sentences that show the chracter fear. Such as my throat as parched , my bod was stiff with fear . I cant really find more original ways and i need a bit more to describe the full feeling
Hi, Stella. Good news—we’ve written a resource that does exactly this. It’s called The Emotion Thesaurus, and it helps writers show their characters’ emotions instead of telling them. It covers 130 different emotions, including Fear. You can see the entire entry at our sister site, One Stop for Writers. You’ll only be able to see a few entries there, but if you’d like to see more, you can register for a two-week free trial, or you can buy the Emotion Thesaurus book.
Can’t wait for this addition!
I like the sound of that. And you’re right, fear causes different reactions in everyone.
There’s a lot of story fodder here, so I think this one can definitely be useful for writers.
Sounds amazing!
Thanks, Sue. I’m excited to dive into this one. 🙂
A wonderful new addition to the Thesaurus collection!
We hope so :).