Emotional wounds are tricky to write about. Abuse, betrayal, victimization, and the death of a loved one may exist in a character’s pasts and so should be explored, but these are also real life events that cause damage to real people. So as I talk today about personalizing wounds for our characters, please know that I’m aware of the pain they cause in our world, and I applaud the courageous individuals who fight to come to grips with them every day.
Why Wounding Events Matter in Fiction
Wounding events can greatly affect a character’s development, so they’re important to identify. These painful experiences are deeply impactful, giving birth to life-altering fears, new habits and behaviors, even flaws meant to protect them from facing that pain again. Wounding events are aptly named because they change who the character is. Until they’re faced and addressed, he or she will never be whole.
But pinpointing what that event might be for a character is just the first step. Traumas affect people differently; something that would destroy one character may have little impact on another. That minimal impact can work for most secondary and minor characters in the story. But for the protagonist, their traumatic experience should stop them in their tracks, making it impossible for them to achieve the story goal that will result in personal fulfillment.
As the author, it’s your job to be sure the wounding event is adequately debilitating for the main character, and you can do that by making it more personal. To maximize the results of a past negative experience, take the following factors into consideration and incorporate them into your story as needed.
Personality. Some people are simply better equipped to deal with difficulty than others. An anxious or embittered person may find it harder to deal with a traumatic event than someone with an optimistic outlook or an adaptable nature.
Support. A strong support system is hugely helpful in facilitating healing for a victim. Loyal loved ones, a steady faith, or a supportive community can make it easier for someone to spring back, whereas a victim suffering alone will have a harder time.
Physical Proximity. The closer the danger, the more traumatic it can be. A violent bank robbery may impact the employees, the customers, a security guard, etc. But the teller with the gun stuck in her face may take longer to recover than anyone else.
Emotional Proximity. It’s harrowing to be conned by a stranger, but if the offender is someone the protagonist knows personally, it can cause even more damage, breeding self-doubt and making it difficult for them to trust others in the future.
Responsibility. It’s commonplace to replay a horrific event, picking it apart to figure out how it could have been avoided. This often results in the victim blaming herself, even when she was in no way at fault. So if you need to intensify an already difficult circumstance, add an element of self-blame.
Justice. Seeing the perpetrator pay for what he’s done often provides closure that can set the victim on the path to healing. On the other hand, knowing the criminal is still out there and free to strike again can cause a wound to fester.
Compounding Events. A trauma is horrible enough, but it often sets other events in motion that the wounded character is ill equipped to deal with. For instance, someone who has lost a child may also face divorce, be unjustly blamed, or lose a job due to depression.
Just as you can use these factors to make a rough circumstance more difficult for your protagonist, you can also tweak it to soften its impact on others. As you’re building your cast of characters, think about each person’s backstory and how deeply it should impact them in your current story. Then personalize those wounding events as needed.
To see a sample entry of The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Psychological Trauma, visit this page, or to browse our online version hosted at One Stop for Writers, where this thesaurus is part of the largest fiction-focused descriptive database available online.
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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.