As human beings, we’re all products of our past; good and bad, our experiences have formed us into who we are. The same should be true of our characters. One way to make them really believable and memorable is to dig into their backgrounds and unearth those defining moments so we’ll better understand how they became the people they will be in our stories. Positive experiences have impact, but today I want to talk about the importance of identifying your character’s primary negative experience—also known as the emotional wound.
A wounding experience is an event or series of events from the past that was so negative it caused the character deep psychological pain. Being neglected as a child, living with chronic pain, being falsely accused of a crime, experiencing the death of a son or daughter—these can be deeply hurtful and formative events that will have lasting impact on a character. To this end, let’s explore why you need to know your character’s wound.
1) It Will Spawn Her Greatest Fear
When a wounding experience happens, the memories and negative emotions associated with it are long lasting. The event is so awful that the character becomes afraid that it or something like it will happen again. This fear can take many different forms associated with the wounding event. A girl (we’ll call her Natalie) whose brother committed suicide might become terrified that someone else in her close circle might do the same thing. If she blames herself for not noticing the warning signs, her biggest fear might be that she will miss important clues in other peoples’ lives that could lead to devastating consequences. Or the sense of abandonment could be the part that hurts most, making her fear being deserted by others in the future. Wounding events always give birth to debilitating fears that cripple our characters and keep them from thriving. To know the fear and its effects, we must first identify the wounding event that generated it.
2) It Will Alter Her Personality
Fear is a huge motivator; we’ll do just about anything to avoid the things that scare us. As such, your character’s greatest fear will cause the formation of new positive and negative traits that are meant to protect him or her from repeating that painful experience. Let’s say Natalie’s fear is being abandoned again. She may become needy, clinging to those she loves out of a fear of losing them. On the flip side, she might become abrasive so she can drive people away before they get too close. Of course, positive changes can come out of a fear too. Natalie might become a very observant person because she doesn’t want to miss those clues again. She could become empathetic, nurturing, passionate, or independent. Many of a character’s dominant traits will stem directly from that negative past experience, so it’s important to figure out what that is.
3) It Will Change Her Behavior
Personality traits obviously determine the way we act. A grown-up, needy Natalie might develop new habits such as requiring constant reassurances of love from her spouse, prying into her friends’ private lives in order to stay connected, or using guilt to manipulate her children into spending time with her. Identifying the main wounding event from a character’s past will also show you her main personality traits, which will tell you how she’ll act and respond to various stimuli and circumstances, enabling you to write her consistently.
4) It Will Taint Her Beliefs About Herself and/or the World
When something awful happens, it’s human nature to examine it to try and make sense of it, to figure out why it happened and who is to blame. This often results in a skewed view of the world or ourselves. If Natalie blames herself for missing her brother’s cries for help, she may come to believe that she is someone who can’t be counted on. On the other hand, if she blames someone or something external, she can easily become jaded toward that thing; for instance, if her brother was seeing a therapist about his depression, she may decide that therapy is a sham that doesn’t do anyone any good. None of these ideas are true, but once Natalie begins to believe them, her behavior, her choices, even her morals will align with those beliefs. They’re all connected, and they all result from that formative experience in the character’s past.
5) It Will Impact Her Life on Every Level
Needy Natalie’s biggest fear is losing another loved one, but, ironically, she’s driving them away with her suffocating behavior. She often calls in sick at work so she can stay home in case her family needs her, and she’s close to losing her job. Her quality of life is stunted due to her constant anxiety and worrying. Every area of her life is being impacted by the aftershocks of the wounding experience.
This is how readers find Natalie at the beginning of the story. They know virtually none of the details that have brought her to this point; it’s too early for that yet. But as each page is turned, the details will become clear, and as they’re revealed, it all clicks into place. That’s why she’s so clingy! No wonder she’s such a worrywart! Everything will make sense for the reader because the foundation has been laid.
This is why it’s so important for every author to know their character’s wounding event. While it’s more work on the front end, it pays off in the form of higher reader satisfaction and a stronger empathy bond that can help build interest to carry them through to the very last page.
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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 have two questions:
1/ Why must every character have a wound? It’s like victimizing them before the story even gets started.
2/ Why is the wounded character referred to in the feminine? To some readers, this could be considered sexist.
Thank you in advance for your answers
Well, at the heart of most compelling stories is a character who is broken in some way; they’re stuck in life or are headed the wrong direction, and the only way for them to achieve healing and fulfillment is for them to recognize the personal faults that are holding them back and keeping them from wholeness. Faults and weaknesses don’t develop in a vacuum; they’re born from adversity, negative experiences, and sometimes traumatic events. Something bad happens, and the character doesn’t want to experience it or the negative feelings associated with it again, so they adopt new habits, develop new attitudes, and take action (often on a subconscious level) to protect themselves. But instead of protecting them, these dysfunctional behaviors and ideas inhibit the character because they come from a place of fear and keep them from personal growth. To overcome their faults, they have to come to grips with their past and change their responses. Only then can they achieve success.
This is a summary of a Change Arc. Because this process of internal growth and improvement is based in psychology, it resonates with readers, and that’s why so many stories include this arc. So if you’re writing a change arc, your character needs a past negative experience or trauma to inform who they are at the start of the story and provide something they’re going to have to deal with at some point if they want to move forward into the future.
If you’re not writing this kind of story, one could argue that a wounding event isn’t necessary because the character isn’t working toward personal growth. And we’ve seen successful characters like this (early Indiana Jones and James Bond, for instance). But even those characters have since been given backstories to better explain who they are and where they struggle——because this is part of the human experience. Wounding events are a part of real life, so including them for a character is a good way to humanize them and make them more relatable and empathetic to readers.
So, to answer your first question, not every character has to have a wounding event. But any character traversing a change arc in the story will need one.
As to your second question, I used the “she” pronoun because the character I referenced as an example throughout the post (Natalie) was female. If you look back through other posts and the content for our books, we use a variety of pronouns. In this case, “she” was a match for the character I had created.
I hope this answers your questions. Thanks for reading!
Thank you! This is going to be very helpful. The idea of a “wounding event” is new to me, and I am looking forward to learning more about it.
Debby
Debby, For me writing historical fiction, the story’s main character goal is linked to the “wounding event.” Her story character arc shows how she slips back into those feelings and tries to get out of them with the help of a love interest secondary character that she married. However your main character’s story goal is set will help you with the main character’s “wounding event.” Readers must relate emotionally and intelligently to the main character. 📚 Christine
Thank you, Christine! With your explanation, I can see how to use a “wounding event” for a main character in a story developing. Now is is starting to make sense.
Becca, I have The Emotional Thesaurus and use it often. Also your info posts are so helpful. I read all of them from you and Angela. In the debut book, glad I nailed the main character’s emotional wound (father left the family when she was a teenager). Her insecurities came out until she figured it out, getting feedback from a best friend, and married a man 8 years older than she. He was a Rock of Gibraltar and hung in there until she made up her mind to trust him. He’d never leave her. The sequel in progress has the main character, married 7 years, still dealing with insecurities, fear her husband is tired of her and wants more in his life. I agree, there has to be an emotional wound that can be triggered at any time in the main character’s life. Without all the ramifications of that, the story would be flat & boring. Thanks for your great books and posts. 📚🎶 Christine
It sounds like you’ve put a lot of time and thought into your character’s backstory, which is going to really help make her authentic and relatable for readers. Keep up the good work!
Thank you, Becca. I also thank you for your comments to the first commenter’s questions. I won’t elaborate on my thoughts. They would be the same as yours. 📚🎶 Christine