Hi guys! I hope you found our session on Emotional Wounds helpful. It’s such an important piece of information and with it, you’ll be able to write character behavior authentically and writing stunning character arcs!
Additional resources you might find helpful:
Further Reading
What Is an Emotional Wound?
Using Dysfunctional Behavior to Reveal Characters’ Emotional Wounds
Understanding Wounds: A List of Common Themes
How Your Hero’s Past Pain Determines His Character Flaws
How to Show a Character Is Beginning To Heal From An Emotional Wound
How To Write About Emotional Trauma Without Triggering Readers
If you’d like to check out The Emotional Wound Thesaurus, you can find it, and sample entries, here.
Helpful Worksheets
Backstory Wound Profile (PDF)
Backstory Wound Profile (PDF & Word Template)
One Stop for Writers Resources
Emotional Wound Checklists & Tip Sheets (<– Gold mine alert!) If you like bite-sized learning, check out the tip sheets on wounds, character behavior, show-not-tell, and more.
Emotional Wound Idea Generator. If you need help sparking ideas for emotional wounds, try giving the Emotional Wound drawer in our generator a pull or two. There’s a free trial.
Emotional Wound Thesaurus & Tutorials. Because emotional wounds are so important to behavior and the centerpiece of character arc, we have tutorials that cover it as a backstory element as well as its influence on character arc (Emotional Shielding, Fears, Flaws, Unmet Needs, the Lie, etc.). These tutorials are also tied into the Character Builder mentioned below.
One Stop for Writers Character Builder Tool. This tool uses the Emotional Wound Thesaurus to lead you through the process of uncovering a character’s wound, determining their fears, lie, dysfunctional behaviors, fatal flaw, and unmet need step-by-step. Then this hyper-intelligent tool will build you an accurate Character Arc Blueprint based on your choices. You can use it to brainstorm and plot the story.
If you would like to try the Character Builder, sign up for One Stop for Writers’ free trial. This two-week trial gives you access to everything on the site (like the descriptive thesaurus database), and you can create ‘one of’ something for each tool, including a character profile.
This tool not only helps you with backstory & wounds, it plans a character tip-to-toe. The Character Arc Blueprint it produces makes plotting a million times easier, too. If you want to see it in action, here’s a walkthrough video.)
If you need more time than the 2-week free trial allows, or you want to create a character profile PDF like this one, use the code EMOTIONALWOUNDS to get 50% off your first month. Sign up, choose the 1-month plan, cancel anytime.
Thanks for spending part of your day with me and happy writing! If you need anything, shoot me an email!