I already touched on the topic of internal conflict, and this week I want to dive into it a little more. Character wound is a concept that continues to surface in my writing research. A wound refers to an impactful negative event that happened in the character’s past and created a false belief that holds that person back in life. It is the heart and soul of your character’s internal conflict.
Character Wound
When someone goes through something traumatic, it leaves a lasting impression that informs how that person will act in the future. Writers try to capture this concept in books through character wounds. This event happens outside of your story but dictates how your character acts in the story.
Generally, your character thinks she resolved her feelings about the traumatic event, but it’s still affecting her. She’ll make a new persona that does things differently to protect herself from it happening again. If she was a victim of a mugging, she may never go out at night and avoid people who look like the mugger. She may not trust anyone. She thinks she’s fine after making a new life around her new rules, but it limits her.
Your protagonist creates false beliefs that seem logical. As humans, we inherently think things that go wrong are our fault. She shouldn’t have been out at night, parked at the back of the parking lot, or held her wallet in her hand. She should have watched her surroundings closer and walked faster. These are all logical things, but the protagonist will use them to create a false belief that she was at fault in the mugging. She’ll start to see herself as helpless, ignorant, and weak. These feelings will effect how she acts in the story.
Healing the Character Wound
A character wound is what your protagonist has to overcome in order to reach her goal. Once she is able to fix what’s broken inside her, she can face the external conflict and beat the odds.
Overcoming the character wound is a struggle between remaining safe in the familiar or facing her fear to reach the goal. She must decide to either stay inside the apartment or go out into the dark streets to find her dog. Or, she either has to learn to trust the man she loves who is in a wheelchair or stay in a bad relationship with a muscular man who she thinks can protect her.
You can pose several conflicts and ultimatums for your character to overcome once you know her character wound. There should be several steps of healing throughout the story until she finally decides right before the climax to change and grow.
Final Thoughts
A character wound is key to creating a good character. You can use the character wound to dictate how your protagonist will react to every situation and what trials she must face to overcome the wound. I found that Michael Hauge, screenwriter and story consultant, is the expert on character wounds. If you would like to know more, I recommend checking out his website.
Thanks for reading!
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