What secret is your character keeping? Why are they safeguarding it? What’s at stake if it’s discovered? Does it need to come out at some point, or should it remain hidden?
This is some of the important information you need to know about your character’s secrets—and they will have secrets, because everyone does. They’re thorny little time bombs composed of fear, deceit, stress, and conflict that, when detonated, threaten to destroy everything the character holds dear.
So, of course, you should assemble them. And we can’t wait to help.
This thesaurus provides brainstorming fodder for a host of secrets that could plague your character. Use it to explore possible secrets, their underlying causes, how they might play into the overall story, and how to realistically write a character who is hiding them—all while establishing reader empathy and interest.
Because everyone has secrets. What’s your character hiding?
No Longer Loving a Partner
ABOUT THIS SECRET: Breaking up is hard to do—especially when the lack of feeling in a long-term relationship is one-sided. Many would rather suffer in silence in a romantic relationship than hurt the other person, break up, or buck cultural pressures. And when peripheral people, like children, would also be affected…there are many reasons a character might choose to keep their ho-hum feelings under wraps.
SPECIFIC FEARS THAT MAY DRIVE THE NEED FOR SECRECY: Becoming What One Hates, Being Judged, Being Separated from Loved Ones, Change, Conflict, Humiliation, Isolation, Letting Others Down, Losing Financial Security, Losing One’s Social Standing, Losing the Respect of Others
HOW THIS SECRET COULD HOLD THE CHARACTER BACK
Being dissatisfied in one of the most important relationships they could have
Being unable to pursue true love with someone else
Not enjoying sex or other forms of intimacy in the relationship
The character becoming insecure because they think something is wrong with them
Dishonesty with the partner making dishonesty with others more natural, generating conflict in other relationships
BEHAVIORS OR HABITS THAT HELP HIDE THIS SECRET
Continuing to profess emotions they don’t feel
Being overly attentive to the partner
Refusing to even look at or talk to other people the character might be attracted to
Speaking about the partner in glowing, exemplary terms
ACTIVITIES OR TENDENCIES THAT MAY RAISE SUSPICIONS
Losing track of the lies they’ve told and getting caught in deception
Making excuses to avoid physical intimacy
Working long hours
Staying busy with activities the partner isn’t involved in
Signs of emotional involvement with someone else
SITUATIONS THAT MAKE KEEPING THIS SECRET A CHALLENGE
Having to attend couples therapy
Having to plan for and celebrate an important marriage anniversary
Meeting someone the character wants to pursue a relationship with
Growing resentment and dissatisfaction
The partner becoming needy or clingy, needing extra affirmation and attention from the character
Other Character Secret Thesaurus entries can be found here.
Need More Descriptive Help?
While this thesaurus is still being developed, the rest of our descriptive collection (18 unique thesauri and growing) is accessible through the One Stop for Writers THESAURUS database.
Intrigued? Swing by and check out the video walkthrough for this site, then give our Free Trial a spin.
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.
Ooooo can’t wait to get my hands on that one!!!!
I LOVE that you’re taking this on! Secrets have been a huge deal in the fiction I’ve written so far, as well as the struggles of my own life. I’m eager to use this upcoming resource in my writing.
We’re both excited about this one. Every character should be hiding something, whether it’s integral to the plot (story level) or it’s circumstantial (scene level). Now Ange and I just have to figure out which secrets to cover. SO. MANY. CHOICES…
Will you eventually add the complete secret thesaurus to the website? Have you added your set of story tropes?
Hi, Michelle! We’ll be adding one secret per week to the blog, and we should end up with about 50 total. That’s a little less than half of what we would include in a book or at One Stop for Writers. We’d love to make more available here, but with AI tools being free to scrape online content (we know it’s happening with ours), we have to limit how much thesaurus content we put up.
You can access the Character Tropes Thesaurus on our main Thesaurus page, with our other collections. (https://writershelpingwriters.net/thesaurus-collections/). Have fun!