Character Therapy: Session Two

Big Hurts are the roots of Character Flaws. Character Flaws drive the Character Arcs that make up the plot of a story.

Whenever I lead a craft workshop on Character Building, the question of “What is the character’s Big Hurt” comes up. Okay, it doesn’t just come up, it is the root of everything. 

Real life-everyone has trauma. It usually starts early: someone abandons us; some kids on the playground form a club and we aren’t invited; a horde of invaders run in and slaughter most of the village; regardless of the event it leaves behind a wound that influences how we behave from then on. 

Big Hurts are the roots of Character Flaws. Character Flaws drive the Character Arcs that make up the plot of a story. 

My Big Hurt revolves around some light parental abandonment combined with the need to “earn” love—not by being perfect (thank God) but by being better than everyone I was competing against. This played in nicely to my evangelical upbringing which just loved girls/women to exhaust themselves for the good of the cross. Twenty years of my schema “If I just do everything well, I will earn the love” being reinforced by praise for over-committing and over-extending myself led to behavior patterns I am still unwinding. 

There are lists upon lists on the internet of Big Hurts, but generally I like to dig around the first three tiers of  Maslow’s hierarchy for inspiration. 

Abraham Maslow—for those of you who skipped that day in Educational Psychology—came up with a pyramid that explains basic things a person needs to survive, then thrive. 

At the bottom are Air, Water, Food, Shelter, Clothing, Sleep, and Sex. If your character, “Jane”, came from a village where food was scarce and young children often starved, she might now hyper fixate on having enough supplies. She might become a hoarder. She might have a personal vendetta against the priests who required food sacrifices to the gods but really were selling them to the neighboring village for timeshares at their costal resort. The effects may be physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, etc. but they will run deep enough to inspire character flaws. 

Most modern, culturally western characters are not going to be worrying about starvation or lack of water as children. Instead, I usually dig into the Safety Tier (Personal security, health and well-being, Secure environment, Financials, etc) for their trauma. Note: Just because the Big Hurt comes from higher up the hierarchy doesn’t mean it is less affecting. The individual’s resiliency, compounding traumas, the duration of an event and the response afterward are far more contributory to the lasting impact of the situation. 

If your Jane character was raised in a stable home with financial difficulties, she may struggle with budgeting, overspend at special occasions to create an experience, or become miserly. If she comes from a volatile household with the same problems, she may participate in risky behavior as a teen to escape the household or  consider financial status as a primary relationship factor. 

Love and Belonging, Maslow’s third tier, is my favorite tier to pull from for trauma, because it feels like they can be overcome. We can learn to be loved and love ourselves! To be fair, much of what makes writing interesting is the interpersonal tension between characters. By building in Big Hurts that are rooted in family, friendship, community, or intimacy, we are giving ourselves the opportunity to write a more complex relationship.

Jane and her best friend falling out over miscommunication, is a trope. Jane falling out over a miscommunication that should be an easy fix, but can’t bring herself to clarify because she experienced gaslighting and group bullying as a child and it is easier just to walk away, is an interesting character flaw. 

There are Big Hurts that can be derived from Esteem and Self-Actualization—Maslow’s last two tiers—but I tend to categorize things like Self respect, confidence, and creativity as outcomes of other experiences, or internal components rather than things withheld (broad generalization, I know.) That doesn’t mean that Jane’s mother couldn’t have stifled her creativity and now she fears performing—but I would argue that it is Jane’s mother that is the issue and therefore this is a Love and Belonging issue. Perhaps Jane wanted to play the piano and has no ear for it, but is that going to shatter her world and cause a trauma strong enough to root poor decisions in for 300 pages? 

Often we see these top two tiers as the grounds for character conflict—Jane wants to play the piano in the talent show but has to come up with a new plan—Jane must build self-confidence to get over a bad relationship—Jane wants to live her best life but it means taking a pay cut —and if this is Jane who grew up in a volatile home with money problems you know that is going to be hard!. 

Big Hurts don’t fix easy. 

So when and why is this important? 

When: 

I rarely worry about “Big Hurts” when writing short stories or flash fiction. That doesn’t mean they don’t appear on the page, just that there is rarely enough content to give them much thought. Long form is where rooting a character arc in a Big Hurt is most helpful. It helps keep the character and their actions consistent if motivations, actions, and emotional behaviors are anchored by a trauma.

People are predictable. Even when they are unpredictable, that is usually predictable. Because trauma has predictable outcomes, giving a character a trauma background makes their behavior knowable to the author. In Longform fiction—novels, serials, series’—we have hundreds of pages to fill with experiences and interactions. That is a lot of space to keep a character consistent. How many times have I written an amazing interaction only to realize that I have no good reason for my character to have behaved that way. 

I am in the middle of book three of my series and my main character, Meg, is nearing resolution to the Big Hurt that has driven her up to this point. Resolving a Big Hurt is going to look different for every character  but the reader needs some sort of emotional close to whatever character arc we have created. 

Resolution may appear in the form of the character changing their behavior patterns, or even just realizing that the behavior pattern needs to be changed. Maybe the character dies because of their inability to grow beyond their trauma. In most long form stories the moral danger resolves before the physical danger, allowing the protagonist to use his new found emotional/moral strength to tip the needle on the final physical boss battle (metaphorically), though the reverse is perfectly plausible as well. 

Why:

Consistency. Consistency. Consistency.

Nothing pulls a reader out of the story faster than inconsistency. If a character is behaving “out of character” the story feels contrived or unrealistic. Worse, it might feel as if the author is writing from plot point to plot point instead of giving us a strong character arc. 

Let’s say  Jane reacts to criticism by shutting down emotionally for the entirety of the novel then at the climactic moment stands up for herself and wins the day.  If we are given a reason for Jane shutting down—say overbearing mother—, and an emotional growth moment—realizing that she isn’t responsible for other people’s happiness—the climactic moment feels rooted and earned. If we are not given a reason for Jane’s passivity then she is a boring victim who snaps when the author needs an ending. 

Not every character I write gets an extensive off screen biography; they don’t all go through a full cycle of “Character Therapy” sessions. But if/when I get stuck in a plot hole, it is usually with a character that needs more development. A quick look into their Big Hurts is usually enough to move the story forward again.