From KMW: One of many juiciest pressure factors in a personality’s arc is the query: What’s your character’s biggest worry?

This query isn’t (explicitly) about what characters say they need or what stands of their means externally. Reasonably, the reply we’re looking for is the deeper worry lurking beneath. Fairly often, that worry is what lastly explains why change feels so tough for characters and why the occasions of the story matter within the first place.

Right this moment, I’m happy to share a submit on this necessary matter from writing-advice maestra Becca Puglisi (of The Emotional Thesaurus fame).

She gives a transparent and sensible 6-step information to figuring out characters’ biggest fears by analyzing issues like their backstories, their avoidance patterns, the issues they attempt to management, and even the secrets and techniques they’d fairly not face.

Understanding what our characters worry most will help us see their motivations extra clearly. In flip, this will help us perceive how these fears naturally create natural battle and alternatives for development.

Should you’re struggling to determine what’s actually driving a personality, Becca’s useful framework is one you may apply instantly.

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Your character’s biggest worry touches all the pieces within the story, fueling plot and arc whereas directing conduct, decisions, and motivation. That worry is backstory but in addition a part of the character’s present story factor, so it’s necessary to establish and plan into your novel. Realizing your character’s worry may aid you cherry-pick the battle eventualities that can present tough temptations and one of the best alternatives for development.

Whether or not you’re a plotter or pantser, figuring out your character’s biggest worry can preserve you on observe whereas drafting and prevent the frustration of realizing throughout revision {that a} randomly assigned worry isn’t working. Fortunately, deep fears typically come from the identical locations and are tied to different characterization parts, so that they’re not too onerous to search out.

6 Methods To Uncover Your Character’s Best Worry

Listed here are some simple methods to unearth your character’s biggest worry—one thing price constructing your story round.

1. Discover Backstory to Reveal Your Character’s Best Worry

As a result of essentially the most devastating fears come up from wounding occasions, a straightforward approach to discover your character’s worry is to have a look at their trauma. Like most individuals, your character can have endured many experiences that left a mark. Zero in on the one that would generate a worry that can finally turn into the largest inside impediment within the story.

To establish characters’ emotional wounds, take into consideration their historical past.

• How did they develop up, and what difficulties did they undergo by?
• Who damage, betrayed, or tried to govern or management them?
• Is there anybody they keep away from or want to get away from? If that’s the case, why?

One other space to probe is their childhood, after they lacked the life expertise and bodily and emotional energy to guard themselves from hurt. Childhood wounds fester for years and may embrace any of the next:

• A sibling’s betrayal
• Rising up in foster care
• Being raised in poverty

These long-standing wounds can do plenty of injury, and the fears connected to them are sometimes more durable to solid off.

For an additional connective thread between your character and their trauma, study their present conduct and attitudes. In the event that they’re subservient or overly submissive, what precipitated them to be that means? Have been they caught in an abusive relationship or raised by controlling dad and mom?

There’ll all the time be a why behind your character’s conduct, worldview, and attitudes. Dig deep sufficient, and also you’ll possible discover a horrible expertise and the worry it left behind.

2. Look At What Your Character Avoids Most

Characters naturally shrink back from what frightens them, so analyzing areas of avoidance will help you pinpoint deep-seated fears.

• Which individuals, conditions, or places do they keep away from?
• Are there reminiscences they refuse to acknowledge or talk about?

Exploring the folks, locations, and topics that put them in escape mode will help you discover potential fears.

3. Establish Conditions That Set off Worry Responses

Circumstances that set characters off—particularly in an unreasonable or overreactive means—can level to what they worry most.

Think about characters who:

• Expertise nervousness spikes when annual work evaluations roll round.
• Bounce to defensiveness when a partner doesn’t like what’s for dinner.
• Freak out when somebody gives suggestions on a job they’ve completed.

If criticism sends them into panic or makes them aggressive, criticism might be one thing they worry.

4. Pay Consideration to What Characters Must Management

Let’s face it: some persons are management freaks. They need to be in command of all the pieces. However most individuals aren’t this fashion. So when characters preserve a loss of life grip on sure issues, that may be a clue to what they worry.

For Instance:

• A lady who’s fanatical about staying match could secretly be afraid of rising outdated, shedding social standing, or shedding the respect of others.
• The overprotective father who retains a decent leash on his youngsters may worry shedding them or being considered as weak.
• The character who does have to manage all the pieces could worry not being in management greater than anything.

5. Take into account The Secrets and techniques Your Character Hides

One other path to your characters’ fears runs by their deepest secrets and techniques.

• What do they not need others to know?
• What causes them remorse, disgrace, guilt, or another painful emotion?

Secrets and techniques are sometimes tied to an emotionally wounding occasion that would reveal your character’s largest worry.

6. Comply with Your Personal Creativeness

Writers are insatiably curious. We think about not possible conditions and are hopelessly hooked on what-if eventualities. Worry naturally threads by these, making them a goldmine of potential choices for our characters.

And, in fact, we will all the time discover our personal fears. When a personality’s biggest worry mirrors our personal, it makes a narrative exceptionally private and provides us (and readers) a secure approach to probe what hurts.

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Not each character in your story wants a deep worry holding them again, however the necessary ones do. When you establish your characters’ biggest fears, learn how deep these roots go. Entwine them within the characters’ relationships, present them by the conditions they keep away from, and let their insecurities act like a neon signal. Present the impression of worry all through your characters’ lives, and readers will really feel its weight.

Need Extra?

Should you’d prefer to discover this matter extra deeply, The Worry Thesaurus: A Author’s Information to What Holds Characters Again by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi gives an intensive take a look at how worry shapes character conduct, inside battle, and story motion.

This useful resource explores not simply what characters worry, however how these fears manifest in every day conduct, relationships, and decision-making. It examines the interior struggles worry creates, the issues that may develop out of avoidance, the disruptions worry causes in characters’ lives, and the conditions most definitely to set off their deepest vulnerabilities.

All of this provides writers sensible methods to indicate worry on the web page whereas additionally utilizing it to create significant alternatives for development and transformation.

For writers seeking to higher perceive how a personality’s biggest worry can affect motivation, battle, and character arc, this e book gives a sensible deep dive into one in every of story’s strongest drivers.

Wordplayers, inform us your opinions! What’s your character’s biggest worry, and the way does it form  decisions, battle, or character arc? Inform us within the feedback!