Just like you and I, the characters we write in our novels, have scars from painful experiences in their past.
These are wounds that each character totes with her wherever she goes. Much like in real life, our main character’s stubbornness to avoid a repeat of a painful wound from her past, also brings with it the costly price of lowering her sense of fulfillment in life.
The scars our protagonist feels from past pain, affects them so deeply that they will do anything to avoid that feeling ever again. This means as we write our stories, we need to have a good understanding of the emotional trauma of our character’s past and how it is now shaping their present.
Here’s some details to think about as you write about your character’s scars…
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Making Sense of Character Wounds
When a character(or a person) has emotional scars, those are much more than just painful memories. Tucked inside each wound is a lie the character tells themselves is a seed of doubt. The character asks themselves am I to blame for what happened? Do I not deserve love? When the doubt grows bigger, the character’s self-worth is also destroyed.
I’ve been digging deeper into my character’s wound in the new middle grade fiction novel I’m writing. The first book in this series is kind of emotional for me to write, as this series is inspired my the true story of my large family(13 people) as we pioneered land in the Canadian North. You can read about the flaws and wounds that the main character(an orphan girl) believes as you read the summary for the first book in this middle grade fiction series here.
We try to make sense of everything bad that happens in our lives – it’s our nature. Most of the time we believe if we had made better choices or done something differently, that our life would have turned out better. And sometimes things just happen, that are out of our control… but we still blame ourselves. When we believe we deserve this pain – and are disenchanted about our lives – we feel like we deserve of this pain.
For instance, if a character is raised to believe that the only way you are shown real love is when you have success and have perfect output or if the character was raised with parents who praised their rivals in order to try to motivate them to work harder, then the character – under all the rage and pain – would ask herself what she did wrong. The lie she might believe could be: I’ll never be good enough; I am a huge disappointment; A person is only good enough and worth loving is they are the best at what they do.
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Many times this lie digs its way deep into our character’s self-worth and self-esteem. As our character goes forward, she might lie to avoid punishment; refuse to take a compliment and give the credit to others; become a workaholic; or start to equate self-worth with accomplishment.
When a character is scarred, she puts on emotional armor to keep her feelings safe…
This is how flaws grow – because your character feels like she needs to protect herself from being hurt again. For instance, a character who was abandoned as a baby or if they were left alone as a young child to fend for themselves, might develop flaws like distrusting authority figures; sabotaging budding relationships; become clingy and needy or possessive of others; isolating themselves and becoming a loner.
Looking from the outside in, these flaws seem to help your character protect themselves from the pain of abandonment and rejection, but they limit her instead. They stop her from building good relationships and puts a filter of distrust on the people she starts to get close to. This in turn, steals your character’s freedom and stops self-growth and their chance at true happiness.
Your character’s backstory…
Your character’s backstory will have a ton of painful experiences, but somewhere in there, as the writer, you will find an experience that you’ll see as their big scar. They’ll most likely have many painful moments in their past that have changed them a little at a time. If you can find an event in their backstory where all this hurt happens, it will help you understand who or what marred your character, and why, because of what happened in their life, they’ve begun to question their self-worth. This will also show you the way -as the writer- to the false belief your character must somehow begin to see as a lie… so that they can become healthy to achieve their goal.
Here’s 6 of the most common scars that are found in characters…
1.Failure or Mistakes of some kind. When things don’t happen in people or character’s lives like they expected, they are hard on themselves. Sometimes character’s heap all kinds of guilt or blame for their failures(some might have been beyond their control) and it can paralyze them. Sometimes they make not-so-good choices because of the guilt they feel.
2.Betrayal from someone they trusted. When someone you truly trusted and were close to, lets down someone, the character can be deeply hurt. Some examples could be a deep betrayal of a loved one(adultery), some hurt that happens between parent/child or some betrayal between friends.
3.Some kind of injustice. If your character sees(or experiences) a violent crime, witnesses a social injustice or when they live in a time period or society that is corrupt, these will all leave their mark on your character. For example, Katniss Everdeen and the injustice she witnesses in The Hunger Games.
4.Isolation. If your character has felt all alone in the past, it has long lasting effects on them in their present. This kind of isolation can look like: living in poverty, social status barriers or even from a relationship where one friend or child was favored over another. These in some way hamper your characters opportunity, achievement and fulfillment.
5.A Physical Wound. If your character has been physically scarred or has a condition that causes difficulty, then they might have low self-esteem or doubt of their worthiness which might cause them to feel like they don’t fit in. Physical hindrances can change your character’s choices, hurting their confidence and limiting them both emotionally and physically.
6.Neglect, Rejection 0r Abandonment. There are some primary relationships – parents with their children; brothers & sisters; husband & wife – where it’s vital that they care for each other. When the person giving the care rejects or isn’t concerned about the person needing to be cared for, deep feelings of rejection or abandonment can form inside them.
There’s probably many more scars that characters – and people in real life – form from the painful emotional experiences they’ve gone through, but that’s a few of them.
It’s quite fun to dig deeper into our characters and learn what makes them really tick and how they react to situations and people the way they do.
What types of character scars have you discovered as you’re writing your book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
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