At the risk of dwindling into a Freudian lecture, let's examine this character-creation technique that might just launch your characters into the best seller catagory.
Every child, no matter how perfect his/her parents, is wounded on the way to adulthood. It's a fact. Sometimes the wounds look more like scars.
Ask yourself:
- What frusterated you as a child?
- What did you hate as a child?
- What left you wounded as a child?
Odds are some of you will be able to answer some of these questions. The difficult truth is that many of our own childhood wounds remain well hidden in our subconcious. However, they most likely affect (for better or worse) our current relationships.
For example, lets say your fictional character was beaten as a child. Do you think this might affect him/her years later? Probably so.
Some wounds are more noticable, physical and sexual abuse of any kind being two of them.
But there are more than one way to wound a child. Our emotional, spiritual and pyschological scars are harder to point out. Which makes them great fodder for your stories.
Here is the bottom line: To make your characters more belivable-and possibly memorablel-consider his or her childhood wounds and how they might affect current circumstances and relationships.
Ask these questions:
- How might my character's childhood wounds make it more difficult for him/her to reach his/her goals?
- How might my character's childhood wounds create additional layers of conflict with other people in the story?
- How might the villian or anatognist use the protagonist or hero's wounds against him or her?
One additional note: Bad guys were often wounded as children, too. How might that play out in your story?
Keep writing.
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