How Does Fear Play Into Character Arc? Part One

It’s hard to overstate the importance a character’s greatest fear plays in their life. As a key motivator, it informs decision-making, spawns new habits and tendencies, and pushes them to pursue certain goals. It’s the thing that will hinder them most in the story, and they’ll have to face and subdue it if they want to achieve their goal. As such, their response to this fear will determine the kind of arc they’ll navigate and the kind of story you end up writing.

Whether they win or lose, the character’s arc is a reflection of their inner journey: how they grow and change, retreat and give up, or remain internally steady over the course of the story. Many unique elements factor into this arc; some of them belong to the past while others are part of the current story you’re telling. Regardless of where in the character’s journey they fall, fear connects all of them.

Today, let’s look at the backstory elements that contribute to character arc and how fear ties them together.

Emotional Wounds

Somewhere in your character’s rearview mirror lies at least one formative event that played a part in determining who they are today. Emotional wounds are negative experiences that cause pain on a deep psychological level, generating uncomfortable feelings and distressing memories that the character never wants to endure again. And just like that, a deep fear is born.

Greatest Fear

In the aftermath of an emotional wound, the character fears a repeat performance. They become deeply afraid that something similar will recur if they don’t take measures to prevent it.

False Beliefs

Their fear that the wounding event could happen again generates an internal self-assessment to identify why it occurred and how to keep it from happening again. This internal audit is neither compassionate nor gentle, showing the character how they screwed up (even when they didn’t). This is why, at their lowest point, they come to believe a falsehood about themselves or the world that explains how they were hurt:

* I couldn’t stop what happened because I’m weak.
* He left because I couldn’t keep his interest.
* If you let someone get close enough to hurt you, they will.

Emotional Shielding

This fear-based analysis twists how the character views themselves. For protection, they swap perceived vulnerabilities (open-mindedness, generosity, unselfishness, etc.) for traits, attitudes, behaviors, and biases that will protect them. And while emotional shielding does keep those potential threats at bay, it spawns dysfunction and friction, eventually creating a void that must be filled at all costs.

Unmet Needs

The character’s new flawed behavior and biased ideas negatively impact a basic human need. Love and belonging, esteem and recognition, safety and security—when a need is voided, deep dissatisfaction and unrest arise. Self-shielding can stave off another wounding experience, but it also opens an emotional sinkhole that must be dealt with.

A Character Arc Case Study

Can you see how each character arc element flows into the other?

The character’s arc starts with a wounding event, which spawns a specific fear that becomes the character’s primary motivator. When it takes over, it sets in motion a chain of events that drastically changes their ability to thrive. To see how this works, let’s look at a sample character, Jetta.

Jetta had it all: top marks, a starting volleyball spot, and friends everyone would kill for. Not that they were the best fit—all they talked about was clothes and videos, and when Jetta mentioned the graphic novel she was working on, you’d have thought she’d said she was playing with dolls. So her sketchbook went in the closet, and she started thinking more about her outfits.

And then there was Cara. Jetta’s friends picked on her nonstop about her unicorn backpack and teddy bear t-shirts and how childish she was. She usually ate lunch by herself, earbuds in, pretending not to hear. Jetta tried to stay out of it, but her friends made it clear that loyalty meant joining in, not standing by. When they pressured her to “put her drawing skills to good use,” Jetta drew a picture of Cara with pigtails, a bib, and a pacifier, and posted it to her social feed. Her friends piled on, and the post went viral.

Cara didn’t show up to school for a few days. When she came back, something had changed. Her shoulders were hunched. She had a plain blue backpack. She wouldn’t meet anyone’s eye. Jetta shared one class with her, but even after Cara returned, her seat stayed empty. In the locker room, Jetta overheard whispers that she’d transferred classes and asked the counselor if she could eat lunch in the office.

When they crossed paths in the hallway, Jetta couldn’t look at her. She could barely look at herself. Cara had liked kid things. Bright, joyful things. And Jetta had taken that from her. Cara never had much to begin with, and now this too was gone.

How had she become this person? She used to be kind. Brave. Someone who thought for herself and made her own choices. When had she turned into such a doormat?

Well, not anymore. Jetta quit volleyball, the clubs, and her friends. She distanced herself by trading her trendy clothes and lip gloss for black hoodies and eyeliner. Her easygoing reputation at school got a makeover too. Teachers wanted to program everyone to think the same way, so why bother sharing what you really thought? Sometimes she argued on principle, just to prove she was nobody’s puppet.

In this example, we see how fear takes over Jetta’s life. When she caves to peer pressure and does something shameful, her greatest fear becomes being influenced by others. So she slaps emotional shielding in place. Once social, she now keeps to herself and seeks to stand out rather than conform, changing her look, giving up clubs, rejecting inclusion. She replaces compliance and agreeability with belligerence and obstinance, and her biased view of the world—that people just want to mold you into a version of themselves—creates trust issues.

These protective measures make Jetta virtually invulnerable to peer pressure, but they also change her identity. Her withdrawal, oppositional behavior, and attempts to become unknowable make her unrecognizable even to herself. This creates a crisis: Who is she now? Her zeal to not identify as a weak-minded popular girl clone has created an esteem and self-actualization hole. Her unmet need will continue to make her miserable if she doesn’t address it.

Note that this is a picture of Jetta at the start of the story. Who she was before, and what made her this way, are part of her backstory. With these character arc pieces in place, we have a clear picture of who she is on page one.

Once the character’s current story begins, more pieces will emerge that stem directly from these formative elements. My next post will discuss these current-story character arc elements and show how a character’s greatest fear will determine whether they win or lose in the story.

Need more information about fear in storytelling, identifying your character’s greatest fear, and incorporating it into arc and story structure? Check out The Fear Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to What Holds Characters Back.