Time for another Character Under A Microscope post; this time we are focusing on fear responses. Even though most people don’t face life threatening situations every day, there are still plenty of things that happen to cause fear. In your story, your protagonist should be thrown into several situations that make them afraid. Each person responds differently to the emotion, but it seems like most people fall into one of four categories. Let’s look a little closer at the emotion, and then we’ll break down the four types of responses to fear.
Fear
Fear is the body’s involuntary response to a perceived threat. The amygdala, the part of the brain that processes emotions, will detect potential danger and trigger a reaction. When fear hits, the amygdala pulls most of the brain’s energy and focus to itself. The rest of the brain, including the cerebral cortex that is responsible for reasoning and judgment, slows down. The result is a laser focus on the threat and a difficult time thinking and speaking. This makes it very hard to assess the situation and make good decisions. Instead, the body is focused on just reacting to the threat. The brain increases heart rate, breathing, and muscle tension so the body is prepared for what may happen. Since fear triggers involuntary responses, it’s hard to control how you react to fear. Most people tend toward one of four responses: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Before we get into those though, let’s take a minute to look closer at fear and how it can manifest in your story.
A while back, I wrote a post on the three levels of emotion where we looked at getting into deeper emotions rather than just basic ones. Fear is a primary emotion, the most basic level of human feelings. If we dig deeper into the emotion, we find nuances like terror, dread, anxiety, etc. While your characters may not constantly face intense versions of fear like terror and horror, they should experience the more subtle versions in the majority of the book. Think of emotions more like embarrassment, anxiety, nervousness, shame, worry, unease, stress, agitation, panic, etc. All of these are based in fear, and the character should respond to them with their default response to fear. The level of response will be dependent on the level of emotion. A person feeling terror at being threatened will have a stronger response than a person experiencing embarrassment amongst friends. Just make sure the fear response is present all throughout the story, even if it’s in different levels of intensity.
Fight
The first way people can respond to fear is to fight. Whether someone is threatening a life or criticizing a job, people with the fight response will try to push back. They want to confront the fear and overcome it. This can mean they physically attack or just verbally attack. Either way, their response is to attempt to control the situation and subdue the fear. Typically, people who have this default fear response have an assertive, aggressive, and confident personality.
When writing a character who has this fear response, it’s important to not only show the character acting out the response, but feeling it in the body too. This fear response often feels similar to anger. Things like hands clenching, voice shaking, and stomach knotting can occur. There can be an urge to hit or kick or cry. They may grind their teeth or stomp their feet. When conversing, their words may come out more like yelling than talking. Try to think about how your character’s body feels and write that into any scene where fear is present.
Flight
Another popular response to fear is flight. When presented with a threat, people who default to flight seek to avoid the source of fear. They try to escape by running away, withdrawing, or deflecting. They just want to hide from the threat until it’s gone. These people’s whole goal is to get as far away from the danger as possible in the quickest way. In everyday activities, people who choose flight may skip events, withdraw from heated conversations, or procrastinate scary tasks. These people tend to be more timid personalities who dislike conflict.
When writing a character who defaults to a flight response, their bodily reactions will feel jittery. They may shuffle their feet, let their gaze dart around, and fidget. Inside their body, they’ll feel nervous energy buzz and have the overwhelming feeling of being trapped. This may lead to them having hunched postures and pointing their bodies toward the closest exit. Think about how a cornered animal would feel, and try to put those visceral details in your characters when they face fear.
Freeze
In some people, the default response to fear is to freeze. Their bodies are so overwhelmed with fear that they are unable to act. In the initial moments of fear (and sometimes longer), their bodies seem to shut down so they are literally unable to move or speak. In some extreme cases, the person may be temporarily paralyzed or even faint. For people who default to freezing, their bodies choose to keep them quiet and still until the danger passes. People with this response tend to be those who have high anxiety and feel every emotion deeply.
Characters who respond to fear by freezing often feel numb. They feel stuck in their bodies with a sense of cold or heaviness settling over them. The sense of dread will make them go pale and even force them to hold their breaths. If looking at the person, you may see their face go blank or eyes glaze over. There is a sense of dissociation even while feeling trapped in the scary situation. When writing these characters, try to imagine how it’d feel to be just a passenger in your body as someone else controls it.
Fawn
The last reaction to fear is to fawn, and this is probably the least prevalent response. Someone who fawns when afraid tends to take on a submissive role to smooth over the threat. They try to accommodate, appease, comply. Think of this fear response as a dog rolling over in submission to another. The goal is to be nice and nonthreatening so the danger will pass. People who respond to fear by fawning are often passive and people-pleasers who want only good vibes.
Writing characters who default to fawning often share the same visceral reactions as someone stressed and anxious. They will worry over all the small things, pretend to always agree, and over-apologize. They go out of their way to please others and can’t say no, often neglecting themselves to meet another’s wishes. There will be a constant buzz in their bodies, a constant tension that keeps them always on edge. Worries will plague their thoughts, often about if they did something wrong. When writing characters who fawn in the face of fear, their visceral feelings will often be similar to someone burned out from stress.
Final Thoughts
I hope these four categories of fear responses get you thinking about your characters. I hadn’t heard of the fawn response until I did this post, but it rings true for several people I know. Though it doesn’t seem a response most would have in a truly life-or-death situation (a bear attack, for example), it definitively fits for most fear triggers people experience in regular life. That brings me to an important point: While each character may have a default fear response, they can experience other responses in different situations. For example, the fawner facing a rampaging bear may default to flight in that moment. So you can change it up with your characters, but in everyday fearful situations, try to keep them consistent with what fits their personality.
Thanks for reading!
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