Writers Helping Writers^®

Fear Thesaurus

What is your character afraid of? We’re not talking about spiders, creepy dolls, and invisible Legos in the night. Wounded characters will have crippling fears that paralyze them and limit them in life. Use this thesaurus to brainstorm your characters deepest fear: what it looks like, what internal struggles it will produce, and which scenarios might send them into full-on fight or flight mode.

Exploring this important mental challenge for your character will help you see where they’re going to stumble in the story and what they’ll need to do to emerge victorious. Please note this isn’t a tool to diagnose personal fears in the real world and should be used for fiction purposes only.

Fear Entries (Samples)

If you’re trying to figure out your character’s greatest fear or need help writing it realistically into their arc, check out the following samples.

Ready to change the writing game?

Because fear plays such a pivotal role in storytelling and character arc, we’ve expanded this collection and published it as a book that you can easily use as you’re writing. The Fear Thesaurus helps authors understand the psychology behind 80 common fears and use them to create believable struggles, meaningful conflict, and powerful arcs.

For more information on this book and where it can be found, please visit our bookstore. You can also view the book at Goodreads to see what other authors are saying about it.