How Fear Can Unlock the Soul of Your Story

Fear. The often unnoticed or else ignored shadow lingering behind characters or even right beside them without them even knowing it.

As I was pondering stories in general a while ago, it struck me how many times characters are afraid within the overarching stories they live in. How many times they’re glancing over their shoulders, fighting back old memories, and purposefully avoiding certain situations even when it endangers their lives.

These fears are always tied to an event in the past: a “Ghost,” as it’s called in the writing world. A Ghost happens. A character becomes afraid. And if that fear isn’t overcome, they end up acting in accordance with that fear for the rest of their lives, often without even knowing it.

But then comes a moment where the character must get over this fear or else. Or else his world is going to be destroyed, his family dies, or he loses the Thing he Wants Most.

If you didn’t already catch on, I’m talking about character arcs here, and how you really, really need to know what your character’s Fear is if you’re going to write a good one.

 

HOW MUCH DOES FEAR ACTUALLY AFFECT US?

To switch to the real world really quick, let’s pause a moment and think about how present fear is in the average person’s daily life. I believe fear is tied very closely to our motivations for nearly everything. To give a silly example, we brush our teeth because we are (unconsciously) afraid of getting cavities. We obey traffic laws because we’re afraid of getting in accidents or getting a ticket. And we would likely put ourselves in harm’s way because we’re afraid of a loved one getting hurt.

Fears like that aren’t a bad thing at all—in a way, they help us stay prudent and sensible, and the focus is not on the thing we’re avoiding but the thing we’re striving for (healthy teeth). But the bigger fears are the problems, the ones that rule over us. When we relentlessly pursue success to the detriment of health and relationships because we’re afraid to fail, when we don’t form friendships because we’re afraid of being hurt, and when lash out at others because we’re afraid of weakness being revealed, that is unhealthy fear.

In other words, fear becomes a problem when it creates unhealthy behaviors.

Back to the fiction world, that is exactly the “Lie” that the character is suffering from at the beginning of the novel. He believes a certain thing, and that belief invades his life in the form of an unhealthy behavior.

Where does that belief come from?

Fear.

And where does that fear come from?

The Ghost.

In other words, characters are afraid of a certain thing because of the Ghost, and to avoid suffering that certain thing, they develop unhealthy habits and behaviors to cope with the pain and/or avoid it and lie to themselves so they don’t feel the hurt.

Grasping this concept of avoiding a certain thing (or preventing it from happening again) can be transformational in figuring out how your character lives out his Experiment in Living at the beginning of his character arc. If you’re ever stuck in wondering “how would a character act if they believed they are unworthy of forgiveness?” back up. What are they afraid of? Being hurt? Then they’ll probably have a lot of self-defense mechanisms up, like being distrustful and putting on shows of strength.

Sounds a bit depressing, right? Fortunately, this isn’t where the story ends.

 

THE HEART OF THE CHARACTER ARC: BANISHING THE GHOST

How do we overcome our greatest fears?

A heavy question, but for the sake of this post, let’s keep it simple:

We overcome our greatest fears by facing them.

So for your protagonist to get the fear out of his life, he’s going to have to face it and rise above it. The character arc (at least positive ones) is about the character overcoming the wounds the Ghost has created… i.e. the unhealthy habits and fears the Ghost has created.

Essentially, the entire point of the plot is to pull the character out of his fear. The plot forces him to:

1) realize he actually has fears affecting his life (Act I)

2) realize his fears are making his life/others’ lives miserable and change must happen or he’s going to lose something he loves (Act II)

3) face the fear, rise above it, and prove he can stay above it (Act III)

In a way, the entire (positive) character arc is about leading your character out of fear and mending the wounds the Ghost and the fear of it have created.

That’s at the core of your story.

What about theme?

There I’ll say two things:

1) the theme is in the movement from the character’s Lie to the Truth. In nearly ever case.

2) this “structure” is just a thought I had the other day that helped me immensely in outlining, so I can’t vouch for it working/being present in every novel 😉 Pride and Prejudice never explicitly states if Elizabeth is afraid of never finding a husband (I don’t think she is). Yet in Persuasion, Anne seems certainly afraid of making up to Captain Wentworth/finding a man who loves her, and in the latter part of the story she rises above that (no spoilers, but that novel is genius). Similarly, in A Time to Die, Parvin is afraid of not being remembered. Is she afraid of that later in the novel, or in the series? Not in the same way; she moves beyond her first fear

This method was a “lightbulb” moment for me because of one reason:

Readers can relate to being afraid and struggling to overcome fears.

On that note, here are a few final tips for utilizing fear in your novel:

1). Make the fear relatable to the audience. We can all relate to fear in general, but having one that’s easy for your target audience to sympathize with is best. A YA novel where the MC is afraid of losing his job? Maybe relatable, but not so much as, say, an MC afraid of never finding the courage to leave home.

2) Fear of suffering is the most important thing to remember. Humans hate pain; we try to avoid it. So do characters.

3) Your MC is always going to be afraid of psychological suffering. Physical suffering is bad, yes, but it’s the wounds in our minds and hearts that hurt the most. That’s what hurts the character most too.

4) Try to never mention that your MC is afraid. Ever. I tried this in a recent manuscript and the results blew me away. The subtly adds so much power. What’s so powerful about a sentence that reads “Tom was most afraid of being alone” when that can be shown in the story?

5) Be careful what you’re doing to your readers’ emotions. Something in us always wants to see the protagonist overcome their fears; it inspires us to do the same. If they don’t, it can be a powerful warning to the audience, but it can also be despairing (as most negative arcs are… *glances at Gifted*)

 

Thank you for bearing with me in this long post! Looking at our stories from different perspectives and with different techniques often opens up more possibilities for creativity and depth, so I hope my ramble on fear proved helpful 😀

(Originally published December 8, 2018, on audreycaylin.com)

K.M. Small