When it comes to generating conflict, your character’s personality can help ensure that sparks fly, especially when their traits clash with someone else’s.

When people grate on one another their interactions become filled with misunderstandings, power struggles, one-upmanship, and impatience. Whether allies, enemies, or something in between, contrasting viewpoints and attitudes sharpen dialogue, and if tempers flare too far, friction can become all-out conflict.

And guess what–we want these escalations to happen! They keep relationships from getting stale, add plot complications, and keep the pace moving. So bring on those clashes, problems, and fallout, I say. Let characters get under each other’s skin. When people get along, it sucks the tension out of your story faster than a three hundred year old vampire enjoying a human buffet.

There are many ways to create friction– characters could have opposing goals, be competing for the same thing, or have opposite ideas about the path forward. These setups can all work, but only if they don’t come off like a plot device. For readers to see friction as natural, not manufactured, it needs to come from within the characters. An easy way to do this is to let their opposing personalities do the work.

Leaning into Opposites

The low-hanging fruit of clashing personalities is to play with opposites. Methodical and impulsive. Proper and flamboyant. Perfectionistic and lazy. These combinations can be fun to write while juicing interactions with friction. To find trait combos that will cause natural friction, check out these lists from the Positive Trait Thesaurus and the Negative Trait Thesaurus.

Is your character an obsessive rule follower afraid to step outside his comfort zone? Have him be swept up in friendship with someone spontaneous and a bit rebellious. Or is a coworker stealing the credit for your protagonist’s hard work, but she won’t speak up for herself? Pair her with a new cubicle-mate who has confidence in spades and a vengeful streak that ensures all wrongs will be put right.

Opposite traits can be negative, positive, or one of each. It’s all up to you. And, with a bit of extra thought, opposing traits can serve an even deeper purpose: to spotlight a character flaw that’s holding your protagonist back.

Introduce a Character Foil

A character foil is someone whose traits contrast with the protagonist’s, either in big, obvious ways or through a few key differences. This contrast helps readers see how the protagonist is navigating life differently, and maybe it’s not going so well for them.

When a foil character exhibits traits the protagonist lacks (but needs), it creates a mirror moment. The protagonist starts to see their flaws more clearly, and that realization can become a turning point in their character arc. If they want to move forward, something has to change.

Double Down on the Same Trait

Another method is to give two characters the same trait: controlling and controlling, manipulative and manipulative, idealistic x 2. Positive or toxic, characters with identical traits tend to cause the relationship pot to boil, and soon, the battle royale for dominance is on.

Clashing Traits Don’t Always Mean Fireworks

Sometimes writers get a bit too excited over creating relationship tension, as it can lead to some spectacular clashes. Realistically, though, friction is more about getting under each other’s skin just enough to behave like a passive-aggressive jerk.

When irritated, characters may get snarky in their responses, offer backhanded compliments, or deliver a narrow, you’re so stupid stare. Decisions in the moment can be emotion-driven, too. Maybe they withhold advice, information, help or even share a half-truth, knowing it will mess up the other’s plans. My point is, have fun with your friction, especially if it leads to well-deserved consequences!

Also, Friction Isn’t Always Negative

Not all friction is hostile. It can come from navigating healthy boundaries that characters aren’t used to. It can be a part of the learning curve of new cultures and customs. Even people who want the same thing must figure out how to work together, encountering friction through trial and error.

In romance, attraction creates tension. And much of what makes chemistry sizzle on the page is emotional friction—conflicting desires, fears, and how each handles vulnerability.

Friction happens in friendships, family dynamics, the workplace, and other relationships. Whenever two people are wired differently, there’s an opportunity for tension. Unravelling the ‘why’ behind it is what readers show up for.

Choose a Character’s Personality Traits Carefully

While it might seem like a fun way to add drama, clashing traits shouldn’t be assigned without thought. Each character’s personality is a unique window into who they are, where they came from, and the people and experiences they were exposed to before your story began. Credible characters have traits that make sense for their unique history–that’s a big part of what makes them authentic to readers.

If you’d like to understand more about personality traits and how to choose the right ones for a character, give this a read. Happy writing!

What clashing personality traits have you woven into your relationships? Let me know in the comments!

ANGELA ACKERMAN

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.

The post Using a Character’s Personality Traits to Generate Conflict appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

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.

Maybe your character…

Monitoring Someone Without Their Knowledge

ABOUT THIS SECRET: While there are legitimate uses of monitoring (say, placing a legal wiretap on a suspect’s phone, collecting intel as a private detective or undercover cop, etc.) privacy laws and heavy regulation usually require it be disclosed or in plain view (but never in a private space such as a bathroom). However, what’s legal and what isn’t doesn’t concern characters on the unsavory end of the spectrum—criminals, Peeping Toms, captors, hackers, stalkers, cyberbullies, blackmailers, or other characters who operate outside the law. This entry focuses on these character types.

SPECIFIC FEARS THAT MAY DRIVE THE NEED FOR SECRECY: A Secret Being Revealed, Being Attacked, Being Unsafe, Discrimination, Government, Persecution

HOW THIS SECRET COULD HOLD THE CHARACTER BACK
Having to keep people at arm’s length so their activities are not discovered
Being torn over monitoring another if feelings become involved
Developing an obsession that takes over their life
Being unable to have genuine relationships (due to a fear of discovery)
Not seeking help for mental and emotional conditions that may be lurking beneath the surface

BEHAVIORS OR HABITS THAT HELP HIDE THIS SECRET
Avoiding friendships and personal connections
Having a secure area to plan and store items needed to monitor (computers, hard drives, etc.)
Taking precautions to stay undetected and not raise suspicions
Being disciplined (resisting temptation to take things too far or get close enough for discovery)
Following certain protocols to stay undetected
Being someone forgettable (being polite but not memorable, seeing boring and harmless)

ACTIVITIES OR TENDENCIES THAT MAY RAISE SUSPICIONS
Being a recluse, causing others around them to wonder what the character is up to
Carelessness (sloppy hacking, obvious daytime survellience, etc.) that is noticed
A cold, detached demeanor (that makes the character memorable to others)
Being discovered in a place they are not supposed to be
Not hiding monitoring equipment well enough, leading to its discovery

SITUATIONS THAT MAKE KEEPING THIS SECRET A CHALLENGE 
Circumstances that suddenly change (like a loss of privacy)
An unforeseen challenge that the character is unprepared for
Needing to take in a roommate to keep up with costs
Having a nosy neighbor or family member
Becoming attached to a target

Other 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.

If you like, swing by and check out the video walkthrough for this site, then give our Free Trial a spin.

ANGELA ACKERMAN

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.

The post Character Secret Thesaurus Entry: Monitoring Someone Without Their Knowledge appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

As you may have heard, we recently released The Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Stress and Volatility, a companion to The Emotion Thesaurus.

If you aren’t familiar with this term, let me explain. An emotion amplifier is a special state or condition that can make a character emotionally reactive. Whether it’s pain, scrutiny, pregnancy, competition, or other state, when a disruptor messes with a character’s psychological and emotional equilibrium, it’s bad for them, but good for the story. And this is but one way to use them.

Emotion Amplifiers are unbelievably versatile. In addition to making a character volatile, check out how else they can help you level up your story!

1. Amplifiers make it harder for characters to hide what they feel.

Characters are like people–they often mask what they feel to avoid judgment, vulnerability, and the perception that they are weak. But if your character is hungover, enduring high levels of scrutiny, or it’s been ten hours since they last had a cigarette (withdrawal), it becomes harder to keep their emotions in check. A slip–forgetting their filter, telling someone off–and suddenly their emotions are on full display.

2. Amplifiers are great for uncovering a character’s faults, flaws, and sensitivities.

Characters are motivated to control events around them as much as possible, which can make them seem more capable and strong than they actually are. Derailing their plans with an amplifier is a great way to show readers they don’t have it all together and can lose their emotional grip just like anyone else.

3. Amplifiers infuse scenes with tension.

When a character’s stress levels are heightened because of an amplifier like hunger, illness, or pain, the reader becomes glued to the page, wondering if the character will be able to handle the extra strain.

When a reader is unsure of what will happen next, the tension they feel causes them to read on…exactly what we want!

4. Amplifiers generate conflict.

Sometimes your character can manage the strain of an amplifier, and sometimes they can’t. If distraction, sleep deprivation, or even attraction causes your character’s attention to drift, they could fail to spot a threat or worse, taking their situation from bad to worse.

5. Amplifiers can help make a character relatable.

Most amplifiers are common enough that readers have experienced them themselves, or at least know the challenge they represent. So when a character is struggling with something like stress, pressure, or bereavement, readers relate to the character because this situation feels like common ground.

6. Amplifiers pressure characters to deal with their inner conflict.

It can be tempting to ignore personal problems when there’s a difficult decision to be made, but if characters continue to avoid the hard stuff, readers will disengage.

Deploying an amplifier at the right time can make the character’s situation untenable, forcing them to search within and find a way to change their situation for the better, even if this means a cost or sacrifice.

7. Amplifiers provide the opportunity to grow.

In a story, characters should make plenty of mistakes so they can learn from them. Letting emotions take over because of an amplifier like addiction, burnout, or confinement might mean taking a foolish risk, doing or saying something that damages their reputation, or creating big problems for themselves. Dealing with the fallout of bad decisions and emotional volatility will teach them to find a better way next time.

8. Amplifiers support your story’s structure.

Stories contain a framework of turning points and characters must move from one stage to the next for the story to progress. The problem? Fear can make them resistant to take on certain challenges, and they become resistant to leaving their comfort zone. An amplifier like danger, dehydration, arousal, or physical disorientation can force them to march into the unknown so they can secure what they need most.

9. Amplifiers give the story’s premise or conflict scenario a fresh edge.

Stories naturally contain elements and scenarios that will be similar, especially within a genre. The addition of an amplifier, perhaps one like brainwashing, an injury, mental health condition, or intoxication, will help readers see your events as unique, and give you a way to show a character’s individuality in the way that they handle the challenge.

10. Amplifiers encourage readers to connect with your characters on a deeper level.

Amplifiers are familiar to readers as these states and conditions are part of the human experience. When an amplifier brings a character’s emotions close to the surface, readers can’t help but be reminded of their own feelings and humanity. This fosters empathy and connection, and the reader becomes invested in what happens next.

Becca and I explore over 50 amplifiers in this second edition of The Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus. As a companion guide, each entry is styled very close to The Emotion Thesaurus. If you’d like a look at the list of amplifiers and a few sample entries from the book, just go here.

ANGELA ACKERMAN

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.

The post 10 Reasons Why Emotion Amplifiers Are Good for Your Story appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

There’s so much emphasis on making sure that we give our character a goal that’s clear starting from their very first scene. Win the game. Find someone to marry. Land the job. Solve the crime.

We tend to think about goal in terms of the character obtaining the thing they don’t have when the story begins. It’s out there. They can grab it, touch it, and get it if they just do the right things and keep going.

But what if you’re like me and so many of my clients, completely unsure of what your character wants, much less why? What if they’re not an athlete, or in a personal crisis, or craving revenge right out of the gate? What if there isn’t a big mystery to solve starting in your first scene?

Cue creative crisis!

If our character isn’t trying to land a record deal or catch a killer or get some other obvious, tangible thing they don’t currently have, does this mean our story is a total bust?

No.

We’ve just been looking at this elusive concept of goal and motivation all wrong. In fact, I’m here to argue the opposite. That starting from a point of fear—losing something the character already has—can be every bit as motivational and arguably more compelling than starting out with a precise goal of obtaining something they don’t have.

How Can You Mine Your Character’s Preexisting Fear in Order To Give Rise to a Goal In 3 Simple Steps?

Consider What Your Character Currently Has in The Novel’s Opening That They Value.

What does your character cling to, possibly (and likely!) to their own detriment? Is it the approval of someone else, the need to control some uncontrollable aspect of their life? An unhealthy role they play largely to the benefit of another character? What do they care for and how can we see it through what they say and do? What do they believe they must continue doing behavior-wise, or what can’t they imagine living without? Again, focus on what they already have in their lives, well before page one.

For example, in Suzanne Collins’ THE HUNGER GAMES, we meet Katniss as being attached to her younger sister Prim. Katniss is committed to this role of providing for and protecting Prim, and it’s clear that while she loves her, it’s almost to Katniss’ own detriment. Her life seems to revolve around caring for Prim and trying to keep her safe in all forms. Is Katniss even remotely thinking of having something for herself, much less winning the Hunger Games as a goal? No. Her goal is to keep the status quo. This might be the same for your character, whatever their status quo is.

Plan An Event—An Inciting Incident—That Threatens That Valuable Person or Thing.

What might happen to this person or thing your character clings to? Does the person they seek approval from reject them somehow? Does someone new come along and shift the existing dynamic? Is that person or thing your character clings to threatened in some way by an outside force? Does your character lose control of something they thought they had control over? Is their ability to continue to fulfill their unhealthy role compromised?

Returning to Suzanne Collins’ THE HUNGER GAMES, this would be where Prim’s name gets drawn to be a tribute in the Hunger Games—a government-run, fight-to-the-death event where it’s very unlikely Prim will survive. The author directly threatens that unhealthy role Katniss has that’s fueled by the fear of losing her sister, or perhaps being a failure in protecting her. This event directly hits what matters to Katniss. It’s something she already has, and Collins mines Katniss’ fear to force the birth of a new external goal.

Focus On the Logical Outward Act/Choice Your Character Would Then Take, Fueled By Their Original Fear In Point 1 Above.

Even though the event you plan should give birth to a clearer external goal—yay!—it’s important to note that their original fear is in play in whatever choice they make as a result. In other words, whatever the goal may now be, it’s wrongly motivated.

So while it seems bold and pivotal that Katniss volunteers herself in her sister’s place in THE HUNGER GAMES, in all actuality, she is still acting out of her original fear. The same fear as the one we observed on page one. She only forms the goal of winning the games in order to protect her sister (the original fear). To try and control Prim’s safety. But even though her motivation is still driven by a detrimental, unrealistic role (a misbelief), it’s enough to get Katniss out the door with an external goal—one we didn’t have in the very beginning. She is now set up for the external objective of winning the Hunger Games so she can come back home and (so she thinks) keep protecting Prim.

If you’re in the first quarter of your draft, all the guidance I’ve offered might help you to generate a clearer goal for your character by dealing a blow to something they already value. But it’s important to remember that the character’s motivation needs to reflect their initial fear, or misbelief, until the 25% mark (Point of No Return). At that point, the motivation will then shift away from their old fear, letting it go, and replacing it with a different fear—not attaining what they actually need—even if the external goal stays the same.

In other words, at that first-quarter mark, your character’s external goal may or may not change after the Point of No Return. Katniss continues to want to win the Hunger Games for the length of the story. But the fear fueling the why changes.

The motivation of what your character is scared to lose evolves so that around 25%, they must choose to let go of what they initially feared losing, and instead, go after something representative of a bigger loss should they not attain it. A fear that outweighs the fear they had in the beginning. And oftentimes, that fear can be facing, wrestling, and coming to terms with a hard truth related to that initial fear.

In Katniss’ case, she starts to see there isn’t any safety for her sister within their wider dystopian world, regardless of what Katniss tries to do. She has to let go of that protective role and risk dying in order to face a bigger fear—a world like the one they live in. Her motivation pivots toward impacting the larger world conflict in hopes that she can make it better for many more people.

What does your character fear losing when we meet them? If they don’t yet have a clear external goal, what could happen that might threaten their ability to avoid that fear? Does the decision they make then give rise to a concrete goal, still driven by their attempt to avoid their fear? At the Point of No Return, are you able to stick with the same external goal but fuel it by another healthier fear? Or, does your character’s goal change to reflect the fear of losing what they truly needed all along?

Happy writing!

MARISSA GRAFF - Resident Writing Coach

Marissa has been a freelance editor and reader for literary agent Sarah Davies at Greenhouse Literary Agency for over seven years. In conjunction with Angelella Editorial, she offers developmental editing, author coaching, and more. Marissa feels if she’s done her job well, a client should probably never need her help again because she’s given them a crash-course MFA via deep editorial support and/or coaching. Find out more about our RWC team here and connect with Marissa below.

The post Three Easy Steps to Generate a Goal Using Fear as Motivation appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

For the better part of two months, Becca and I have been exploring pain, and how to write about it in fiction. It’s been enlightening for us, and we hope for you as well. So many ways to torture characters, who knew?

(Well, we did. And you did. Pain is sort of our bread and butter, isn’t it?)

But maybe you missed a post or two. It happens. You were on a writing retreat, or vacationing at the lake. Maybe you were hiding out in a sleeping bag in the woods, denying the arrival of fall and Pumpkin Spice Lattes.

Whatever the case may be, we’ve got you. Here are all the posts in this series.

The Three Stages of Awareness

Pain has 3 stages: Before, During, and After. For realistic and logical description, you’ll want to know what all three will look like for your character and the type of injury.

Different Types of Pain to Explore

Discomfort comes in all shapes and sizes, including physical, psychological, and spiritual pain. Mine this post for ideas on how to bring something fresh to your story by targeting a variety of soft spots.

Describing Minor Injuries

Cuts, stings, and scrapes create discomfort and can easily lead to bigger problems. You’ll find loads of descriptive detail for showing smaller injuries here, and how they can make your story more realistic.

Describing Major or Mortal Injuries

Sometimes a wound is serious, casting doubt on whether your character will survive this crisis. Fill your mental toolbox with ideas on what happens when your character is stricken with an injury with no easy fix.

Describing Invisible Injuries and Conditions

Not every injury leaves a physical mark, and when you can’t see it, you don’t know how bad it is. Invisible injuries and conditions are a great vehicle to encourage readers to worry about characters they care about.

Factors that Help or Hinder One’s Ability to Cope

We all hope we’ll cope well when injured, but certain factors make it easier–or harder–to handle pain. This list will help you steer how a character responds!

Taking an Injury from Bad to Worse

No one likes to get hurt, but when circumstances are afoot that cause that injury to worsen? Tension and conflict, baby. So, when you’re feeling evil, read this one to see how you can raise the stakes.

Everyday Ways a Character Can Get Hurt

We want to immerse readers in the character’s everyday world, so it helps to think about where dangers and threats might be lurking so we can create a credible collision with pain that comes from a believable source.

Best Practices for Writing Pain in Fiction

Finally, we round up this series with unmissable tips on how to take pain scenes from good, to great. Authenticity is key, and of course, showing and not telling. Don’t miss these final tips to help you write tense, engaging fiction!

We hope this mother lode of pain posts helps you level up your stories.

Pain is an Emotion Amplifier, and a powerful one at that, so putting in extra effort to showcase it well is worth the time.

Pain presents a challenge for your character while making them more emotionally volatile, and prone to mistakes. This means tension and conflict, drawing readers in!

Pain also helps empathy form because people know pain, and so when a character they care about is battered and bruised, or beset by trauma, readers can’t help but be reminded of their own experiences, and worry over what will happen next.

Other Compilation Posts

If you found this collection of resources helpful, you might be interested in some of our other posts that contain a mother lode of topic-related information.

How to Write about Character Occupations
How to Show (Not Tell) Character Emotions
How to Create Phenomenal First Pages
How to Write Conflict that Has Maximum Impact
How to Choose & Employ Your Character’s Talents and Skills
How to Write about a Character’s Emotional Wounds
How to Use Amplifiers to Stress Characters & Elevate Emotion

ANGELA ACKERMAN

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.

The post Want to Show Your Character’s Pain? Here’s Everything You Need to Know appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

When we put characters in dangerous or unfamiliar situations, they can get hurt, and when they do, things become harder to do. Injuries can mean reduced mobility, pain makes it difficult to think clearly, or something they must do (win a fight, escape a threat, or be independent, for example) may become all but impossible.

Injuries and pain can cause an array of problems, generating tension and conflict. Readers also tend to become more invested when something happens to a character, either because they care and want them to be okay, or readers feel a rush of schadenfreude because a nasty character is finally getting what they deserve.

A writer’s mindset is all about How can I make things more difficult for this character? so it can be tempting to pile on the injuries and pain, but this isn’t always a good strategy. Too many ouchies and a protagonist won’t be able to continue their quest, meaning they can’t logically achieve an important goal (unless the author manufactures a ‘Hail Mary rescue’ that will feel contrived). Or, if injuries are piling up like a serial killer’s body count, readers might get angry and feel the author is going too far. So we really want to find the sweet spot of making things hard, not impossible for the character.

When you need to make life challenging, rather than adding new injuries, a better option may be to add a complication.

In the right circumstances, even a small injury can cause big problems. Cuts get infected. Bites may be poisonous. A blister can make it hard to run fast enough to escape. Complications are not only realistic, they raise the stakes and make readers worry, generating tension.

How to take an injury from bad to worse

Being unable to treat the injury. Some problems require medical intervention, but that doesn’t mean your character can access help. They might be on a remote hiking trail, in the middle of a farmer’s field, or simply unable to go to the hospital because if they do, it will alert the authorities. When a character can’t get the help they need, this not only ramps up the pain, it ramps up the consequences.

An underlying condition. Does your character have a clotting disorder that means a cut on their thigh won’t close? Are they being treated for an illness that leaves them fatigued? Will that concussion re-awaken difficult side effects caused by a previous traumatic brain injury? When you want to make an injury more complicated and particularly dangerous for a character, think about what underlying conditions or illnesses they may have that will make it harder to function.

Infection. Your story doesn’t need to be in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse to cause characters to worry about viruses. Wounds exposed to the wrong conditions can cause fever or delirium, compromising your character’s ability to function and make rational decisions. Untreated, infection can lead to blood poisoning, gangrene, or even flesh-eating disease. Yikes.

Reduced mobility. If your character breaks a bone or injures their back, they may be unable to move on their own. This can put a strain on others who must step in to help, causing delays or forcing them to expend energy they need for other things. If your character is on their own, say with a broken leg at the bottom of an embankment, an inability to move much will become a crisis if they cannot source food, water, or find help. Sitting or laying prone too long can also increase blood flow related issues, making injuries worse and healing slower.

Muscle tears or nerve damage. A bike accident, overdoing it at the gym, or a pell-mell flight from a pack of wild dogs can mean more than bruises. A muscle tear or nerve damage can affect mobility and dexterity, and generate high levels of pain. These injuries take time to heal, and sometimes require special treatments or even surgery. So think carefully about how this type of complication might play out in the story. Your character might be damaged in a way that their recovery may not fit the timeline for conflict resolution.

Scar tissue. Everyone has a few scars, but what if your character’s reduces function in some way, or even disfigures them? What will this mean as far as their dexterity and range of movement, or how other people view them? Will it close doors because they’ve lost their edge as far as a skill goes, or reveal a lack of depth in their relationships because people can’t accept this change?

Extreme swelling. Injuries cause tissue to swell, and if this happens to a body part that is confined somehow (a swollen foot stuck in a boot, or a wedding ring cutting off circulation due to a broken finger), it can cause intense pain and the need for intervention to avoid losing the limb.

Improper healing. Sometimes a character can’t get help when they need it, and the injury starts to heal in a way that is less than ideal. Bones may not be fully aligned as they knit together, causing a limp or malformation. A deep cut that can’t be stitched in time can lead to an ugly scar, loss of sensation, and reduced function.

Fears or phobias being triggered. Characters who have suffered past trauma may have their deepest fears awakened when an injury occurs, especially if they are reminded of that painful experience. Or a phobia of doctors, hospitals, dying, or another fear can make them resistant to being treated.

Addictions. A character in recovery will not want to risk medication that could trigger a relapse. Instead, they may have to bear extreme levels of pain to stay drug free, or have no choice but to have drugs in their system so a surgery can be performed, or an infection is stopped before it can spread.

Making the injury worse. When there’s danger present or a character is faced with a ticking clock, they can’t take it easy. A strain the character must ignore to escape a threat can become worse if it isn’t treated. Over time, increased fatigue or reduced strength will make a character unstable and more prone to additional injuries, too.

Ideally, injuries should push characters to think of creative solutions to their problems.

When they do, it makes for great reading. Too, characters who don’t give up (even though they may want to) are the ones readers admire most!

Other Posts in This Pain Series:

The Three Stages of Awareness
Different Types to Explore
Describing Minor Injuries
Describing Major and Mortal Injuries
Invisible Injuries and Conditions
Factors that Help or Hinder the Ability to Cope
Everyday Ways a Character Could Be Hurt
Best Practices for Great Fiction

ANGELA ACKERMAN

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.

The post Writing About Pain: Taking an Injury from Bad to Worse appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

We’re always looking for ways to make sure our characters struggle as they navigate new situations, uncertain environments, dangers and threats. Let’s dive into what minor injuries you might want to inflict that will also bring a dose of authenticity to your fiction.

Common Minor Injuries
& How to Describe Them

Superficial cuts and scrapes. These are surface wounds affecting the skin, causing redness, scratches, or shallow wounds. There is a flash of pain, and then blood blooms. You can focus on the redness of the scratches, any dirt or grit caught in the injury, and the searing pain a character will feel when something touches the injured site: a sleeve, branches that slap and scrape as your character navigates a narrow wooded trail, bumping against someone, or even the pain-then-relief sensation when a breeze hits the area.

Bruises. Collisions with hard surfaces or pressure injuries can lead to bruises. Maybe your character was rushing, missed a danger, was careless, or the injury happened through violence. Bruises may throb or ache, especially when the damaged muscle moves. Skin will discolor, turning reddish on a character with lighter skin, or appearing purple, brown, or even black on any with darker skin. Over time, the bruises may turn brown, yellow or even green as they heal before fading completely. With bruising, show a character’s discomfort. They may find it hard to sit or lie comfortably, and wince when the injured muscles move.

Burns and blisters. Exposure to heat or friction can result in burns and blisters, leaving the area tender to the touch. This can make everyday tasks uncomfortable, like having to walk with a blister rubbing the back of a shoe, or having to handle items with a fresh burn on one’s fingers. Blisters appear raised, containing fluid, and burns may also present as blisters or raw skin where several outer layers are removed. Small burns and blisters are easy to forget about until they are bumped or grazed, and then the pain starts anew. If a character has sunburn, their skin will be hot to the touch, red, and will feel stretched tight. The pain can be described as an uncomfortable tingling or radiating heat sensation.

Sprains and strains. Rapid or repetitive movements, twisting, overextending, and otherwise pushing ligaments or muscles too far can lead to stretching or tears that cause pain and limit a character’s range of movement. To describe this, think about the tenderness and painful twinges you feel at these types of injuries, and how your character will have to compensate by limping, hunching over, and moving gingerly. Each bump or unintentional twist can bring about deep pain, so use the character’s face as a map: wincing, drawing their eyebrows low, a pinched mouth. They may suck in a sharp breath through their teeth, or swear under their breath. To find relief, a character may observe the RICE method (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation), and use crutches to get around.

Minor fractures or breaks. Most bone breaks are not minor, but a broken toe or finger is usually something you wrap and wait for it to heal. A bone fracture is painful, but isn’t a full break, so healing comes much quicker. In both cases, the character will experience a sharp pain and may ‘feel’ the snap or crack. Anxiety and dread often follows these types of injuries because the character knows whatever they’ve done will need time to heal. These injuries are great when you want to slow your character down, add complication to their life, and limit them in what they can do. When you’re showing this type of injury, think about how your character will overcompensate (limping, shifting their weight, using their ‘good’ hand, etc.) to spare the injured bone. Show their discomfort through pinched facial expressions, a strained voice, a short tempter, or other ‘tells’ that line up with their personality.

Dislocations. When two bones pull away from their natural meeting point, the pain can be excruciating. An unnatural bulge forms where the bone is, causing swelling, intense pain, numbness and tingling. Your character may also feel a rush of fear when their limb suddenly stops working.

In movies, characters often ram the dislocated bone against something to reset it, but unless they’re skilled and experienced, this is dangerous, and causes extreme pain and further injury. So before you decide to have your character do this, ask yourself if they know how or not, or if others are able to assist.

Foreign objects. Splinters, thorns, fishhooks, and other items that pierce the skin can add a dash of authenticity and make your character more irritable, because these everyday annoyances do happen.

Nosebleeds. Maybe someone popped your character in the nose, or they have allergies, the air is dry, or it happens due to another condition or injury. Whatever caused it, nosebleeds are uncomfortable, messy, and can make the character feel embarrassed as they suddenly become the center of attention. To stop the flow, they may pinch the bridge of their nose and tip their head back, but as blood runs down their throat, they may gag in discomfort.

Contact with poison, toxins, or irritants. Some characters have allergies or sensitivities to substances, and coming in contact with these causes an adverse reaction. They may swell up, develop a rash, break out in hives, become feverish, and have trouble swallowing or breathing. This minor situation can escalate into something more dire if they don’t get help.

To describe this injury, focus on the reaction to the toxin as it contacts with the character’s skin. Does it swell up, redden in patches, or feel hot to the touch? If the irritant is something they breathe in, it can cause them to cough, spit, bend over, and wheeze. They may grow anxious if it becomes harder to see or breathe.

Bites and stings. We’ve all gotten too close to a wasp’s nest or been a victim of mosquito bites. The character will feel a small nip of pain at the point of contact, and then the area can swell, itch, and redden. If the character has a sensitivity to the venom or a bite becomes infected, the pain will grow, and the rash will spread.

Minor head or eye injuries. When a character’s head area is injured, they need to take care in case the wound is worse than it seems. Maybe your character bumped their head on a low ceiling beam, had a spark or projectile fly into their eye, became the victim of bear spray, or slipped on ice and hit their head. These injuries can leave them with a throbbing headache, swollen eyelids, blurry vision, and a good dose of panic or worry.

Think Outside the Box When It Comes to Injuries

As you can see, the ways you can injure characters is only limited by your imagination, so get creative! What might be a fresh way to injure them that makes sense for the action? How can the setting and its inherent dangers be used?

Also, consider your character’s emotional state. Are they rushing to meet a deadline, or feeling panicked because they are out of their depth? When they become injured, do they blame themselves, or feel overwhelmed by their circumstances?

Know Your Why

Hurting characters ‘just because’ will lead to flat writing, so have a reason for causing them strife. How will an injury further the story or reveal who they are to readers? Will this new challenge hobble them and force them to think strategically? Are you trying to show their humanity through a response to pain or teach them a lesson for being rash? Know your why so injuries never feel random or contrived.

Also, don’t forget to show the before-during-after awareness chain so your character’s responses are realistic and believable.

Other Posts in This Pain Series:

The Three Stages of Awareness
Different Types to Explore
Describing Major and Mortal Injuries
Invisible Injuries and Conditions
Factors that Help or Hinder the Ability to Cope
Taking an Injury from Bad to Worse
Everyday Ways a Character Could Be Hurt
Best Practices for Great Fiction

ANGELA ACKERMAN

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.

The post Writing About Pain: Describing Minor Injuries appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

If there’s one thing writers like to do, it’s to make characters suffer. We are all about bringing forth pain and crises, whether it be emotional, physical, spiritual, or existential. Is it because we’re a little messed up and we enjoy torturing characters? Or do we create difficult scenarios in our stories to illustrate the fact that life is painful sometimes?

Probably both.

No matter what our reasons for holding our character’s figurative (and possibly literal) feet to the fire, we need to do a bang up job of describing it. So join us for a deep dive on all things painful, starting with…

Pain & Your Characters: The Three Stages of Awareness

Before: Anticipating Pain

Sometimes a character won’t see a threat coming, but if they do, we gain a terrific opportunity to draw readers into the moment and heighten their emotions alongside the character’s. The anticipation of pain is something we all know, and so it’s an effective way to generate empathy for characters experiencing it.

When something bad is about to happen, a character may only have a heartbeat or two to steel themselves, tensing their muscles clamping their teeth tight, flinching and squeezing their eyes shut. To try and protect themselves further, they might also try to make themselves small, a full body cringe. Or it could be a natural reaction to duck, jerk back, pull away, or attempt to flee. These are all their instinctual fight-or-flight responses kicking in, doing whatever is necessary to protect them (or those they love) in the few seconds they have.

If the threat is farther out, the character’s brain has more time to churn through what might happen. Their knowledge and experiences will conjure up mental flashes of what will happen and the likely wounds and injuries which could occur. Memories may also assault them, reminding them of painful things that have happened to them, and the inescapable weight of dread hits them.

To spur them into action, their adrenaline surges, prompting them to respond in some way – fight, or flee. But if there’s nothing they can do, they may experience a skin crawling sensation in expectation of the painful sensations to come.

Pain isn’t always physical, of course. If they see something coming that they know will hurt them emotionally, your character could become depressed, and at a loss over what to do. Or even though they know what’s coming can’t be avoided, they may stay in bed, refuse to go out, avoid people, lie, or do something else that lines up with a flight response. They could also become anxious, obsess about what’s going to happen, and force a confrontation before they’re fully prepared to deal with it (a fight response).

The source of pain could be anything – a secret about to be uncovered, a marriage nearing the point of ending, or their own child who is dying in the hospital. While we often think about how to cause characters physical pain, mental and emotional pain are just as debilitating.

TIP: Whatever type of pain your character is experiencing, think about their personality, coping methods, and personal fears. This will help you determine how they will respond to threats that bring pain.

During: Physiological and Psychological Processes

When your character feels discomfort, certain things happen. If there’s a physical component, pain receptors pick up on the type of sensory input: heat, friction, tension, cold, pressure, etc. and sends signals to the brain about the area affected, the type of pain, and intensity level. Your character’s instinctual response will be to flee pain, so unless there’s a compelling reason why they must not, you can show your character trying to pull away and escape whatever is hurting them. This is especially the case when they see indicators of damage (a gash, a broken bone, blood, etc.), because the gravity of what’s happening to them hits home.

Your character’s emotional state will also influence how much pain they feel. If the source of it is tied to a fear, emotionally wounding experience, or their anxiety is triggered, the discomfort they feel will be intensified. Pain levels can become so excruciating that a character passes out or enters a state of shock. This is where the body systems slow and they become distanced from their agony.

Another way to use emotion in these situations is to consider feelings that might help them cope with the pain better: anger, rage, determination, etc. They can also use coping mechanisms to handle discomfort, turning to meditation, breathing exercises, self-distraction, talk therapy, etc. to work through it. Some characters might try to numb it with medications, drugs, or alcohol, but if they are attempting to manage pain through mind over matter, it will only work to a certain point. If the pain is extreme, they will no longer be able to handle it, and their responses will become extreme — screaming, writhing, or even passing out.

Characters will also experience a stress reaction to pain, meaning their heart rate and blood pressure can rise, their body becomes increasingly tense, their breathing may change and tears may form.

TIP: Using POV visceral sensations to show what they’re experiencing is a great way to communicate the strain they’re under.

After: Recovery and Aftereffects

After an injury or event that causes pain, your character may have a hard time with mobility, balance, and cognitive processing, so keep this in mind when you show readers what happens next. Your character likely will try and protect the injury, meaning they may hunch over as they walk, cradle a broken arm, limp, or do everything with one hand to save more injury to the other. They might have a loss of energy or motor control, have a delayed reaction time, and seek to distance themselves from others so they can process what happened and heal in private. So think about what your character will be doing in the aftermath of a bodily injury.

Everyone copes with pain differently, especially pain that scores an emotional hit. Time will be needed to fully process what happened, and if the emotional hurt is far too painful to examine, characters try to bury it rather than work through it in a healthy way, leading to personality and behavioral shifts that change how they interact with the world and those in it. Unresolved emotional wounds are sources of ongoing pain, so a bit of research here on what this looks like for the type of wound is key.

If your character suffered a physical injury or illness, the healing process can include different types of pain – tenderness, strain, headaches, itchiness, and the like. They may need to rest or sleep more, and if this is impossible because the danger in ongoing, their energy may drain further. It could slow their healing, and open them to infections and more injuries.

After an injury heals, your character may have scars, less range of movement, or suffer debilitating migraines or other internal reactions. Depending on what they experienced, they may also carry new fears, anxieties, a decreased ability to take risks, and even PTSD or other conditions that they will carry with them. Each new encounter with pain will make your character more wary and watchful for any circumstances where it might reoccur, so remember that as they move forward in the story.

Realistic Fiction Sometimes Means Ignoring Hollywood

Because movies only have so much time to show everything they need to, the stages of pain awareness are sometimes skimmed over. Often there’s a split-second awareness of danger and then the camera focuses on the character being injured, whether it’s a gun shot wound to the thigh or a six-pack of punches to the gut. They falter briefly, then rally to win. But when we see them again after the climax, they are usually not as in bad shape as they should be, or are miraculously fine (I’m looking at you, Jack Ryan, and your ability to be perky and ready to go after several rounds of boiling water-and-salt torture!).

Movies and TV can sometimes get away with this, but books, not so much. Readers want to share the character’s experience, so this means showing things that are true-to-life. You don’t have to go overboard and show every detail, but make sure to convey enough of the before-during-after chain that readers feel the character is responding realistically to pain and injury.

Need more ideas on how to show pain? You’ll find this entry in our Emotion Amplifier Thesaurus.

Other Posts in This Pain Series:

Different Types to Explore
Describing Minor Injuries
Describing Major and Mortal Injuries
Invisible Injuries and Conditions
Factors that Help or Hinder the Ability to Cope
Taking an Injury from Bad to Worse
Everyday Ways a Character Could Be Hurt
Best Practices for Great Fiction

ANGELA ACKERMAN

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.

The post Writing About Pain: Three Stages of Awareness appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

As human beings, we’re all products of our past; good and bad, our experiences have formed us into who we are. The same should be true of our characters. One way to make them really believable and memorable is to dig into their backgrounds and unearth those defining moments so we’ll better understand how they became the people they will be in our stories. Positive experiences have impact, but today I want to talk about the importance of identifying your character’s primary negative experience—also known as the emotional wound.

A wounding experience is an event or series of events from the past that was so negative it caused the character deep psychological pain. Being neglected as a child, living with chronic pain, being falsely accused of a crime, experiencing the death of a son or daughter—these can be deeply hurtful and formative events that will have lasting impact on a character. To this end, let’s explore why you need to know your character’s wound.

1) It Will Spawn Her Greatest Fear

When a wounding experience happens, the memories and negative emotions associated with it are long lasting. The event is so awful that the character becomes afraid that it or something like it will happen again. This fear can take many different forms associated with the wounding event. A girl (we’ll call her Natalie) whose brother committed suicide might become terrified that someone else in her close circle might do the same thing. If she blames herself for not noticing the warning signs, her biggest fear might be that she will miss important clues in other peoples’ lives that could lead to devastating consequences. Or the sense of abandonment could be the part that hurts most, making her fear being deserted by others in the future. Wounding events always give birth to debilitating fears that cripple our characters and keep them from thriving. To know the fear and its effects, we must first identify the wounding event that generated it.

2) It Will Alter Her Personality

Fear is a huge motivator; we’ll do just about anything to avoid the things that scare us. As such, your character’s greatest fear will cause the formation of new positive and negative traits that are meant to protect him or her from repeating that painful experience. Let’s say Natalie’s fear is being abandoned again. She may become needy, clinging to those she loves out of a fear of losing them. On the flip side, she might become abrasive so she can drive people away before they get too close. Of course, positive changes can come out of a fear too. Natalie might become a very observant person because she doesn’t want to miss those clues again. She could become empathetic, nurturing, passionate, or independent. Many of a character’s dominant traits will stem directly from that negative past experience, so it’s important to figure out what that is.

3) It Will Change Her Behavior

Personality traits obviously determine the way we act. A grown-up, needy Natalie might develop new habits such as requiring constant reassurances of love from her spouse, prying into her friends’ private lives in order to stay connected, or using guilt to manipulate her children into spending time with her. Identifying the main wounding event from a character’s past will also show you her main personality traits, which will tell you how she’ll act and respond to various stimuli and circumstances, enabling you to write her consistently.

4) It Will Taint Her Beliefs About Herself and/or the World

When something awful happens, it’s human nature to examine it to try and make sense of it, to figure out why it happened and who is to blame. This often results in a skewed view of the world or ourselves. If Natalie blames herself for missing her brother’s cries for help, she may come to believe that she is someone who can’t be counted on. On the other hand, if she blames someone or something external, she can easily become jaded toward that thing; for instance, if her brother was seeing a therapist about his depression, she may decide that therapy is a sham that doesn’t do anyone any good. None of these ideas are true, but once Natalie begins to believe them, her behavior, her choices, even her morals will align with those beliefs. They’re all connected, and they all result from that formative experience in the character’s past.

5) It Will Impact Her Life on Every Level

Needy Natalie’s biggest fear is losing another loved one, but, ironically, she’s driving them away with her suffocating behavior. She often calls in sick at work so she can stay home in case her family needs her, and she’s close to losing her job. Her quality of life is stunted due to her constant anxiety and worrying. Every area of her life is being impacted by the aftershocks of the wounding experience.

This is how readers find Natalie at the beginning of the story. They know virtually none of the details that have brought her to this point; it’s too early for that yet. But as each page is turned, the details will become clear, and as they’re revealed, it all clicks into place. That’s why she’s so clingy! No wonder she’s such a worrywart!  Everything will make sense for the reader because the foundation has been laid.

This is why it’s so important for every author to know their character’s wounding event. While it’s more work on the front end, it pays off in the form of higher reader satisfaction and a stronger empathy bond that can help build interest to carry them through to the very last page.

One Stop for Writers
can help!

Dive deep into The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Psychological Trauma, The Fear Thesaurus, and many other powerful resources to help you create authentic, dynamic characters.

BECCA PUGLISI

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.

The post Five Reasons to Identify Your Character’s Wounding Event appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

The most relatable characters are ones who mirror real people, meaning they are complex individuals with a blend of strengths, failings, attributes, and flaws. Of these four, flaws are often the most difficult to figure out, because knowing which negative traits will emerge in someone means exploring their past to understand who negatively influenced them and what painful experiences they went through. It also means digging up unresolved emotional wounds which have left dysfunction and fear in their wake.

Flaws, or negative traits as they’re also called, are unusual in that the person who has them probably doesn’t view them as dysfunctional and instead believes these traits are helpful and necessary. Why? Because these traits are very good at creating space around your character. And when your character goes through life afraid of being hurt again, keeping people and experiences distant when they seem like they could lead somewhere painful is exactly what your character will want to do.

So, what does this look like?

Let’s take a character who dropped the ball in the past. He was babysitting his nephew, feeding him in the high chair, and the phone rings. He goes to retrieve the phone from his jacket pocket in the other room, and a scream sounds from behind him. His nephew wriggled free from the chair and fell, breaking his arm.

Mom and dad are alerted, and they are not happy.

Moving forward, our character, once the brother who always helped out, stepped up, and volunteered, becomes the guy who shows up late, loses or breaks things, and is always “busy” when asked. What happened? What caused this change?

Easy, that situation with his nephew, and the fallout that came after for not being there when he should have been.

By becoming irresponsible, unreliable, and self-absorbed, what are the chances someone will ask him to take on a big responsibility again? Pretty low. And as long as he’s never the one who has to come through, he’ll never have a chance to fail and disappoint like he did when he was caring for his nephew.

Logically, he was only out of the kitchen for a moment, and whether it were him or the child’s parent, probably the same thing would have happened. But when a person fails, they often take it to heart, blame themselves, and don’t ever want to be put in that same situation (because they’re sure they’ll only screw up). Adopting a character flaw or two will ensure he’s never going to have to worry about dropping the ball again.

Well, heck, that’s great right? No, not at all. Because while his flaws will keep people from requesting he be responsible in some way, he’s also denying himself the chance to be responsible and have a better outcome, which leads to growth and being able to let go of the past. It may also cause friction in his relationship, and even for him to not be there for others when he really wants to be, all because he’s too scared of making a mistake again.

Flaws are normal and natural. We all have them, and so will a character. And in order for them to solve their big story problems and succeed, they will need to examine what’s holding them back…their flaws, and the fears that caused them. So don’t be afraid of giving your character some flaws. Remember, the most relatable characters are those who think, act, and behave just like real people…and that means they’ll be far from perfect.

Now, some writers tend to rush character development in their eagerness to get words on the page, and randomly assign certain flaws without thinking about why they might be there. Unless these aspects of a character’s personality are fleshed out down the road, a character can feel like they lack depth. So make sure you know the “why” behind a flaw…it will help you understand what’s holding them back in the story, how they need to grow, and will point you toward conflict that will trigger them in negatives ways so they become more self-aware. After all, your character won’t realize his negative traits are a problem until failure because of them is staring him in the face.

How do we decide which flaws are right for a character?

1) Make Friends with the Character’s Backstory
Backstory gets a bad rap, but the truth is, we need to know it. Understanding a character’s past and what events shaped them is critical to understanding who they are. So brainstorm your character’s backstory, thinking about who and what influenced them, and what difficult experiences they went through that soured their view in some way, damaged their self-esteem, and cause them to avoid certain people and situations. This isn’t so that you can dump a bunch of flashbacks and info-heavy passages into your story to “explain” the source of a flaw. Rather, this information is for you as the author so you better understand what motivates your character, what he fears, and how his goal will be impossible to achieve until he sheds his flawed thinking and behaviors.

2) Poke Your Character’s Wounds
Past hurts leave a mark. Characters who have experienced emotional pain are not eager to do so again, which is why flaws form to “protect” from future hurt. A man who loses his wife to an unfortunate infection picked up during a hospital stay is likely have biases toward the medical system. He may grow stubborn and mistrustful, refusing to see a doctor when he grows sick, or seek medical treatment when he knows something is deeply wrong.

This wounding event (his wife’s death) changed him, affected his judgement, and now is making him risk his own health. Had his wife survived, these changes would not have taken place. Knowing your character’s wounds will help you understand how flaws form in the hopes that the character can protect himself from being hurt again.

3) Undermine Your Character’s Efforts
In every story, there is a goal: the character wants to achieve something, and hopefully whatever it is will be an uphill battle. To ensure it is, think about what positive traits will help them achieve this goal, how you can position the character for success. Then brainstorm flaws that will work against them, making it harder. This will help them start to see how their own flaws are getting in the way and sabotaging their progress.

4) Look for Friction Opportunities
No character is an island, and so there will be others who interact with them or try to help in the story. Maybe your character has certain flaws that will irritate other people and cause friction. Relationships can become giant stumbling blocks, especially for a character who wants connection or really needs help but has a hard time admitting it. Make them see how the path to smooth out friendships and interactions is to let go of traits that harm, not help.

5) Mine from Real Life
We all have flaws based on our own experiences, as do all the people around us. Some are small, minor things, others are more major and create big stumbling blocks as we go through life. Flaws are often blind spots, because the person who has them doesn’t see them as a bad thing, just that they have reasons for acting or thinking a certain way, meaning it’s okay. But whenever things don’t go well and we’re frustrated, there’s a good chance one of our flaws is getting in the way.

So, if you’re feeling brave, look within and find the bits of yourself that may not cast you in the best light. Do you get impatient easily? Do you feel like you always have to be in control? Are you sometimes a bit rude, quick to judge, or you make excuses to get out of responsibilities? Thinking about situations where our own behaviors crop up and cause trouble can help us write our character’s flaws more authentically.

If you need brainstorming help…

Don’t forget, one of our guides covers all of this and more. The Negative Trait Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Flaws explores a vast collection of personality flaws and breaks down each, showing you how they might cause your character to think, feel, and behave in a certain way.

It also helps you better understand how flaws can be used, their role in character arc, and the growth that will be necessary for a character to minimize or defeat a flaw if it is holding them back from achieving their story goal.

If you’d like to get a feel for what’s in this book, zip over here to see a list of the flaws we cover, and a few sample entries. Happy writing!

ANGELA ACKERMAN

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.

The post What Are Your Protagonist’s Flaws? appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Fear is a disruptive force, even though its job is to keep us safe. When there’s a perceived physical or psychological threat, our brain blasts us with a shot of adrenaline so we respond, fight, flight, or freeze, whichever helps us navigate the danger we’re in.

But fear is also insidious. It can sink into our thoughts and memories and become an ongoing dark force that cloaks us, changing our behavior and how we see the world. We become ever-watchful for new threats, and avoid things that have the potential to lead to another painful experience.

In fiction, characters also feel this dark weight, and it can be as detrimental to them as it is to us.

Fear may cause a character to…

Hold back in relationships
Underachieve (by choosing ‘safe’ goals below their potential)
Avoid certain places, events, and people
Misread situations and overestimate threats
Feel stuck in life
Struggle with self-worth
Retreat into themselves
Stay within their comfort zone
Settle for less
Find it harder to make decisions
Hold onto the past in an unhealthy way
Have a more negative view of the world
Doom cast (decide something will fail without trying)
Become triggered by certain events and circumstances
Project fears onto others (damaging relationships)
Develop phobias
Not take advantage of opportunities
Have unmet needs (that grow deeper as time goes on)
Develop health conditions
And more.

Whatever your character wants in the story, fear stands in their way.

Strong characters have agency, meaning they make choices and act, steering their own path toward their goal. But this goal will be hard to achieve, and if fear is in the driver’s seat, it affects their choices and actions.

If they stay within their comfort zone rather than take a risk, avoid something they must do because they don’t want to be judged, or convince themselves an effort will only end in failure, their decisions and actions are impaired, and whatever they choose to do instead won’t be enough to win.

There are many debilitating fears which can hold someone back. Knowing what your character’s exact fear is, be it rejection, intimacy, competition, or something else, will help you write their actions, behaviors, and decisions in the story. It will also help you plot events to purposely challenge that fear, in the hopes that they will grow and come to control it, rather than it controlling them.

How to find a character’s deepest fear

Fears can be learned (like a child who fears dogs from being exposed to their mother’s phobia of them), but for the most part, fears are born of negative experiences, especially trauma.

For example, being surrendered to the state by a parent who no longer wants to be tied down would be a devastating experience for a character. This trauma likely would create a fear of rejection, abandonment, or both. They will move through life worrying that if they let someone in, that person will eventually get tired of them and the character will be discarded once again.

To find your character’s fear, think about their experiences, especially emotional wounds. What happened to them, and how did this shatter how they see themselves and the world? What insecurities do they now have? What triggers them, what do they avoid more than anything, and what do they refuse to do because the mental barrier of fear is too strong?

Help for brainstorming your character’s fears

We’re thrilled to announce that our Fear Thesaurus is now part of our THESAURUS descriptive database at One Stop for Writers.

This thesaurus dives into deep-level fears so you can show how one changes who your character is & how it steers their thoughts and actions in the story.

Each entry looks at what the fear looks like, the behavioral fallout it leads to, what might have caused it to form, the inner struggles your character may be facing as a result, and the triggers, possible disruptions to their life, and more.

Use this thesaurus to build deeper characters, understand the role of fear in character arc, and plot events that will be specifically challenging for your character so they struggle but also have an opportunity to grow!

Wondering what One Stop for Writers is about?

One Stop for Writers® is a site Becca and I created to help you beyond our thesaurus books. It’s packed with tools designed to make planning, writing, and revising easier, and teach you to become a stronger storyteller as you go.

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ANGELA ACKERMAN

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.

The post How to Uncover Your Character’s Deepest Fear appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.

Conflict is a powerful element within the story and can be loosely categorized as either Outer (external) Conflict or Inner (internal) Conflict. The difference is that outer conflict is something external keeping the character from his goal, while inner conflict is a mental struggle over wanting things that are at odds or compete.

Internal conflicts might be:

• Opposing or competing wants, needs, or desires
• Confusion about how to feel
• Questioning beliefs or values
• Suffering from indecision, insecurity, self-doubt, or another emotion that puts the character at odds with themselves
• Conflicting duties and responsibilities
• Grappling with an aspect of mental health

Internal Conflict Is Relatable

Internal conflict draws readers in because it’s a type of struggle common to us all. Confusion over what to do, feel, and believe, can make us feel exposed. To find a path forward, we must weigh and measure personal beliefs, ideas, and needs. Characters, like us, must do the same, and as they look within themselves for answers, they reveal their vulnerability and humanity to readers.

Scene-to-scene, you’ll usually see inner conflict. At times it’s a heavy weight, other times, indecision over what to do, or deciding what’s better, option A or option B.

Where inner conflict really takes center stage is at the story level. Character vs. Themselves conflict will create a war zone inside your character throughout the story, and they must resolve it successfully to achieve their goal.

5 Ways to Find—and Use—Inner Conflict

This primary inner conflict might be something you need a bit of help to brainstorm, so poke around the psychological side of them to see what shakes loose.

#1: Their Greatest Fear

Fears are highly motivating. The inconvenient, everyday ones? Sure, because no one makes split-second decisions better than an arachnophobe who’s just stumbled into a spiderweb. (This is the voice of experience talking.)

But in storytelling, it’s the larger fears that drive both character and story. Fear of failure, being alone, losing a loved one … these can push the character to embrace unhealthy habits or paralyze her into maintaining the status quo and resisting needed change.

Imagine, for instance, a character who is afraid of letting others down. This fear will insert itself into every situation where she’s accountable to others, steering her toward doing what others want rather than what she wants, or causing her to step back instead of stepping up. She may worry that if she takes on something big, she’ll screw it up, so she discards goals that could result in personal fulfillment, such as having children or leading a beloved charity group or event. This fear of disappointing others can influence her choice of career or who she marries. It can lead to her sacrificing her own joy for the happiness of others. Then, before you know it, an important human need has been compromised, leading to more problems.

#2: Their Core Moral Beliefs

Nothing causes psychological turmoil quite like a challenge to one’s core beliefs, and no beliefs are more central than the moral ones, because they define who we are.

This is the situation Paul Edgecombe encounters in The Green Mile. As a death-row prison guard, experience has taught him that the men in his charge are guilty and deserve their punishment. But then he encounters an inmate who doesn’t fit the mold. Could John Coffey, a man found guilty in a court of law, actually be innocent? If so, how can Paul execute him?

Think about what your character believes on the deepest level—his thoughts about right and wrong, good and evil. Then introduce an event that challenges those ideas. If his inner turmoil surrounding this issue or theme is what the story is really about, if it’s something he could struggle with for the story’s entirety, it may be a good choice for his story-level internal conflict.

#3: Their Existential Ideas

Another trait particular to human beings is our curiosity, particularly about big ideas: Who am I? What’s my purpose? Is there life beyond Earth? After death? These questions often aren’t answerable, but your characters grapple with them anyway because the answers will impact and define who they are.

If your character already knows what they believe about bigger life questions, that information will become part of their core belief system. Challenging them will throw the character into an emotional and existential tailspin. If they don’t have answers, the struggle to find them can lead to all kinds of internal strife.

#4: Their Wants and Needs

Wants are exactly what they imply: something the character desires but doesn’t necessarily need. By themselves they don’t generate much conflict, but when you set them in opposition to the character’s missing need or a core belief, internal strife explodes onto the scene.

Dan Burns, the protagonist in Dan in Real Life, lost his wife many years prior and is now raising three girls on his own. He hasn’t been truly happy in all that time—but then he meets Marie. Finally! His need for love and belonging is going to be filled—except … his brother is already dating her.

Now his need (happiness and love) and his want (to be with Marie) are at odds, because for him to be with Marie, he would have to betray his brother. And how could he be happy doing that?

#5: Their Secrets

Characters jump through all kinds of emotional and logistical hoops to keep important secrets from coming to light. They may withdraw from people, organizations, and cherished hobbies to avoid questions that hit too close to home. You can imagine the inner turmoil that develops when a character must give up an area of giftedness or a close friend in order to keep certain information from getting out.

Many characters will drastically change their behavior to keep their secrets safe. Melinda Sordino in Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak is so determined to keep a certain event from being revealed that she stops talking altogether. After all, if you can’t talk, you can’t tell. If your character’s secret is one that must be protected at all costs, it can provide compelling fodder for internal conflict.

TIP: Uncover their Backstory Wound

Above are some of the factors that can contribute to a character’s inner struggles, but a lot of times the root of inner conflict can stem from a wounding event in the character’s past, so it’s a good idea to know exactly what that is and the various ways it will impact your character.

One Stop For Writers can help you dig deeper

Uncover your character’s conflicts, emotional wounds, secrets, personality traits, motivations and more using this powerful thesaurus database and character builder tool.

ANGELA ACKERMAN

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.

The post How to Uncover Your Character’s Inner Conflict appeared first on WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®.