Life can be painful, especially for our characters. In fact, the fallout of an emotionally wounding event such as a car accident, failing to save someone’s life, infertility, or being sent away as a child can derail their life for years (or even decades!) if left unresolved. Not only that, it can change the character’s personality, damage their relationships, and seed their life with dysfunction and unfulfillment.
This is why at the start of a story the protagonist is usually dissatisfied, lost, unhappy, or yearning for something more. They are experiencing something called an unmet need.
Unmet needs are created because emotional wounds generate a FEAR of being hurt again (which can manifest in many ways).
The result? The character holds back in life. They settle. They avoid things that can lead to their happiness because being hurt again is too big of a risk.
A fear of trusting the wrong person after a betrayal keeps Mary from seeking love.
A fear of death after a near-fatal climbing accident keeps Rodney from living life to the fullest.
A fear of losing her only child after the death of her spouse keeps Tonya imprisoned by an inflexible mindset and need to control.
Fear is powerful, but unmet needs can direct behavior above all else, meaning, if the urgency is strong enough, needs will push characters to act even if their deepest, most debilitating fears are telling them not to.
Mary’s need to share her life with someone pushes her to open herself to love again.
Rodney’s need to achieve a lifelong goal of summitting Everest convinces him to take up his passion once more, even knowing the risks.
Tonya’s need to have a healthy relationship with her daughter forces her to let go and support her daughter’s independence.
Your Character’s Arc
Now, this shift won’t happen overnight. We really must ensure that our characters go through a gauntlet of unhappiness and struggle until finally they say Enough! and act. When we do this, readers believe that our characters are pushing forward toward their goal regardless of whatever stands in their way because their inner motivation (an unmet need) is driving them to do so.
A terrific tool to understand the connection between Motivation and Unmet Needs is the Hierarchy of Human Needs, a theory created by psychologist Abraham Maslow. It looks specifically at human behavior and the drivers that compel people to act. Separated into five categories, it begins with needs that are the most pressing to satisfy (physiological) and ends with needs centered on personal fulfillment (self-actualization).
This pyramid representation of Maslow’s original hierarchy makes a great visualization tool for writers as they seek to understand what motivates their characters:
The categories are arranged by importance. So, food, water, and other primal physiological needs are the most critical to fill since they are based on survival. Next is the need to be safe, then to be loved, to be respected, and, finally, to reach one’s potential.
These needs, when met, create balance and lead to satisfaction within. But if one or more needs are absent, a hole is created, a feeling that something is missing. As this “lack” builds in intensity, the psychological pressure will grow until finally it pushes the character to seek a way to fill the void.
When a human need is diminished or missing to the point of disrupting the character’s life, it becomes a motivator. For example, a person can skip lunch and only experience minor discomfort until the next meal. But if it’s been a week since he last ate, his discomfort becomes a gnawing hole that demands to be filled, an obsession he must pursue. He might cross moral lines to steal food, resort to personally humiliating actions such as begging or digging in a dumpster, or even take foolish risks, such as eating spoiled food all because his singular focus is on meeting his need. Everything else—pride, fear, self-esteem, even safety—becomes secondary.
Sacrificing one need to satisfy others happens often, which is why there’s a hierarchy. If a character must choose between a job where he’s universally admired (esteem) or financially stable (safety), he’ll choose the latter. Or his goal to become a doctor (self-actualization) may be set aside if his wife is diagnosed with a terminal disease and he must leave school to care for her (love). Just like that skipped meal, placing one need before others usually isn’t a problem in the short term, but the longer a need goes unmet, the more disruptive it becomes until it eventually hits a breaking point. Unhappy marriages end in divorce when the pain reaches an unbearable level. An employee quits a job when workplace esteem levels bottom out or mistreatment escalates. Everyone has a “final straw” moment, after which they can take no more. How quickly it’s reached will depend on the individual and the reasons he has for being in the situation in the first place.
Change isn’t easy. In fact, it is often painful, and it takes great courage to step into the unknown. The temptation is always there for a character to stay in the safe yet dysfunctional comfort zone: to settle for less while trying to ignore the hole created by an unmet need.
If you need help understanding what unmet needs an emotional wound might create, just check out the entries in The Emotional Wound Thesaurus. In fact, here’s an example of a wounding event right from the book: Accidentally Killing Someone.
If you want to access a tool that helps you plan an unbelievably strong character arc based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Unmet Needs, try One Stop for Writers’ Character Motivation Thesaurus.
Do you know your character’s unmet need? How does it drive them toward their goal? Let me know in the comments!
Angela is a writing coach, international speaker, and bestselling author who loves to travel, teach, empower writers, and pay-it-forward. She also is a founder of One Stop For Writers, a portal to powerful, innovative tools to help writers elevate their storytelling.
A great post, Angela! I suspect many writers will benefit from all you’ve shared. This is hands-down, the thing my clients struggle with the most. I don’t think I’ve ever sent an edit letter to a client where THE EMOTIONAL WOUND THESAURUS wasn’t a recommended read to address strengthening a character’s inner needs. I’d also add that the more specific a writer can make the moment the fear was born (in the backstory), the better. Oftentimes, writers might lean on a generalized notion that a character has a certain fear broadly speaking (they don’t feel worthy of love or they are scared of failure, etc.), and it can play out in a blurry fashion in the front story. But if the emotional wound stems from a vivid flashback where the fear first began, everything changes. It’s more vivid and visceral in the way they speak and move. THE EMOTIONAL WOUND THESAURUS does a fantastic job of giving writers specifics for how that fear can then play out in the front story. It’s truly a must for all writers. Thanks so much for all the wisdom you guys spread!
You are so kind to say this, Marissa, and thank you for really getting what we were going for in this book. Emotional pain is transformative. It breaks my heart that this is true, yet it is–we’ve all experienced it. Whatever is true in life must be true in fiction, and so getting down to what took the character’s life in a different direction is so important, and understanding the fear that embedded in that moment.
I think one of the best exercises for writers to help them truly understand what this fear looks like and why is to write the scene. Not a scene to show in the book, but a scene for the author alone, to deeply and truly understand this wounding event so they can write what comes from it. It’s a terrific way to get in touch with the character at a raw, vulnerable moment, and what you learn is something that will help you write forward–their behavior and arc–because you understand the character’s origin story.
And, while awful moments of pain are transformative and can take us off the rails for many years personally, the chance to deal with that pain in a healthy way isn’t just cathartic for the character…it is for the reader too. Being front row to the character’s journey of healing can be a safe doorway to being able to think a bit about what they may need to work through if they feel held back, and how to become more aware of what may be missing from their own lives.
This is why I love psychology, and using it in fiction!