Writers in the Storm

by Angela Ackerman

Fear is a universal emotion, something almost everyone experiences, and yet no two people respond to it in the exact same way. One person might rush toward danger, while another runs from it. A third shuts down, paralyzed, while a fourth attempts to smooth things over. Understanding why is the key to writing authentic fear.

Fear exists to alert us to potential harm. When a threat is perceived, it kicks off a survival response: stress hormones flood the body, heartrate increases, attention and the senses sharpen, and the body prepares to overcome, escape, endure, or deescalate through fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.

While everyone experiences this same biological chain of events, the survival response chosen—and the form it takes—is unique to the individual.

Why? Because fear is filtered through the many layers that make up a person—their personality, priorities, experiences, ways of coping, and more. As a result, no two fear responses will be exactly alike.  

Personalizing your character’s responses to threatening situations not only elevates the scene, it also builds trust with readers. When a character reacts in ways that are true to who they are, readers instinctively invest more deeply in them and the story.

To make a fear response feel authentic, consider these factors:

Perceived Threat

Not everyone finds a situation threatening. Someone secure in their relationship won’t worry about their partner going on a girl’s trip, while a person with trust issues might. Even when danger is real, people don’t experience the same level of concern. So, to write believable fear, focus on how your character feels about the threat rather than the threat itself.

Questions to ask:

• In this situation, what feels dangerous to my character?
• Is this threat physical, emotional, relational, or does it target their identity/reputation?
• What specific fear is involved?

Risk and Urgency

Fear is about survival, so when the risk is great, characters choose the strategy that gives them the best chance of successfully handling a threat.This is why an alpha character used to battling things head on (fight), may freeze, flee, or fawn. When they realize a fight response will end badly, they reject it for one that helps them navigate the situation safely.

Questions to ask:

• Does my character have time to assess the situation, or must they respond immediately?
• What information do they have that they can act on?
• Is my character able to apply logic or are they in a state of panic?
• What happens if they choose the wrong strategy?

Personality and Tendency

A character’s primary traits influence how they think and behave. A decisive, courageous, and bold person will make choices and act differently from one who is cautious, analytical, and pessimistic.

Questions to ask:

• How does my character handle pressure?
• What personality attributes will help them navigate this crisis?
• What flaws will cause them to struggle in this situation?
• Are they more likely to take charge, observe, negotiate, or withdraw?  

Priorities

Some things matter more than others. Whatever a character seeks to protect most is what’s at stake and will steer how they’ll respond when it’s threatened.

Questions to ask:

• What matters most to my character in this situation?
• What are they most afraid of losing?
• What’s important enough to sacrifice for?

Past Experiences

Life can be a painful teacher. Threats that remind a character of something they endured (especially an emotional wound) can cause fear to spike and erode their ability to cope. Desperation to avoid it happening again may affect their judgment and behavior.

Questions to ask:

• Has my character faced a situation like this before?
• What survival strategy worked (or didn’t) back then?
• How will lessons of the past influence their choices and behavior now?
  

Coping Mechanisms

Everyone has go-to methods of dealing with stress, both healthy and unhealthy. One character might seek advice; another might head straight to the bar. Coping mechanisms are a core part of a character’s psychological makeup, so knowing what they are helps you write authentic responses.

Questions to ask:

• How does my character deal with pressure?
• Do they have habits that intensify when stressed?
• What do they do when they feel overwhelmed?

Bringing It All Together

When you consider the perceived threat, what’s at stake, and who your character is, it becomes easier to write a response that feels authentic and believable. But there’s a lot more to how to show, not tell your character’s fear, so bookmark these for future reading:

• How Fear Affects Your Characters in Real Time
• 8+ Ways to Signal Fear to Readers
• 5 Ways to Take Advantage of Your Character’s Fears
• How Fear Shrinks Your Character’s World Over Time
• Fear Survival Response Sheet (Download)

And don’t forget to check out the Fear Thesaurus at One Stop for Writers® – it dives into 80+ deep fears that your character may be struggling with, and how to write about them.

Does your character tend to choose Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn, and if so, why is that? Let me know in the comments!

About Angela:

Angela Ackerman is a story coach, international speaker, and co-author of the bestselling book, The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression, and its many sequels. Available in nine languages, her guides are sourced by US universities, recommended by agents and editors, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, and psychologists around the world. To date, this book collection has sold over a million copies.

Angela is also the co-founder of the popular site Writers Helping Writers®, as well as One Stop for Writers®, a portal to game-changing tools and resources that enable writers to craft powerful fiction. Find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Featured photo purchased from Depositphotos

by Richard Tyler Jordan

The people in your life are not your material. Your observations are. A writer’s job is not to photocopy reality but to transform it into a story that feels true.

Readers think writers spend their days secretly copying the people around them into stories. Countless times, I’ve heard, “Am I in your book?” My stock reply: “You’re not interesting enough.”

I’ve worked in Hollywood, publishing, and entertainment. I’ve attended enough charity galas, opening nights, family gatherings, and dinners to fill dozens of novels. Yet only one person I’ve known has appeared directly in my books. (You know who you are—@$^&*!)

Your 5 “Do’s”

Here are five things every writer should take from real life—and a couple they shouldn’t (but maybe—why not).

1. Steal Behavior, Not Biographies

The most believable fictional characters are rarely based on a single person. They’re composites. A character might have your stepson’s narcissistic arrogance, your former boss’s talent for taking credit, or your neighbor’s remarkable ability to transform a fifteen-second anecdote into something requiring a nap.

Readers recognize behavior. When you’re observing people, don’t ask, “How can I put this person into my book?” Ask, “What does this person do that readers will identify with?”

2. Capture the Language of a World

Every profession, social circle, and industry has its own language. Lawyers speak differently than truck drivers. Teachers speak differently than politicians. Entertainment executives have perfected the art of saying “no” while sounding enthusiastic. (“That’s an interesting concept” generally means “Over my dead body!”)

Pay attention to how people talk when they’re nervous, ambitious, or trying to impress someone. Those details make a fictional world feel authentic.

3. Watch What People Want

Beginning writers often focus on appearance. Experienced writers focus on desire.

When you enter a room, ask yourself: Who here wants attention? Who wants approval? Who wants a shag? Human beings become remarkably transparent once you start looking for what they want.

Desire drives the story. A character’s goals will always be more interesting than their eye color.

4. Make Reality Cleaner Than Reality

We all know that real life is messy. Fiction should be distilled. An argument that rambles for forty-five minutes in real life may become a one-paragraph scene in a novel.

Real people repeat themselves, wander off on tangents, forget what they were talking about, and stop to answer text messages. If we reproduced life exactly as it happens, readers would fling our books across the room in frustration.

The writer’s job is to select the moments that reveal character and move the story forward. Reality provides the raw material. Craft shapes it into something fun.

5. Turn Up the Volume

Most people have one quality that defines them in others’ minds. The chronic complainer. The attention-seeker. The know-it-all. Spotlight those traits.

The difficult neighbor becomes more onerous. The narcissistic stepson becomes more insufferable. Before long, you’ve got a character readers will remember—and possibly a suspect in a murder mystery.

You’re not changing who the person is. You’re simply saving readers the years it took you to figure them out.

Now for those Two Don’ts…

Mistake #1: Don’t Become a Court Reporter

One of the biggest traps fiction writers fall into is feeling obligated to preserve exactly what occurred. “But that’s not how it happened,” they’ll say. Fine. But if changing what happened makes the story stronger, change it.

Merge characters. Move events. Invent conversations. Fiction owes its loyalty to narrative, not history.

Mistake #2: Never Write Revenge Fiction

Bullshit. Don’t waste a perfectly good villain!

Every writer has encountered an odious boss. A pompous colleague. A manipulative relative. They practically beg to be enshrined in fiction.

The trick isn’t running from revenge fiction. The trick is disguising it. If you simply copy someone you detest and spend three hundred pages punishing them, readers will see through it. But if you borrow the traits that pissed you off and build an entirely new character around them, you’ve got something useful.

(Read Suite Charity and guess which character was inspired by a vile ex-boss of mine. I'll deny everything, of course.)

Final Thought

In the end, a writer’s job is to pay attention.

A mentor once said to me, “Observe relentlessly. Transform creatively.” And if an abominable relative (there’s my rubbish stepson again—and my equally deplorable stepdaughter too!) occasionally turns up as a murder victim in Chapter Three, well, that’s one of the fringe benefits of being a novelist.

Just remember to change enough details to maintain plausible deniability.

Do you use real situations or people as inspiration for your books? How do you handle it? And has anyone ever guessed that they inspired one of your characters?

About Richard

Richard Tyler Jordan began his career as a wide-eyed young talent in Hollywood, where Walt Disney Studios was apparently charmed by his “rare blend of gullibility and tireless work ethic.” He went on to contribute to more than 500 feature film publicity campaigns before escaping to England to write full-time.

Richard is the author of more than a dozen novels, including A Corpse in the Castle, Shadows at Midnight, Murder and a Missing Manuscript, and Gay Blades. He lives with his Irish husband in a 500-year-old cottage, complete with a resident ghost who is more “meh” than “boo.”

He is currently writing the next Timothy Trousdale Mystery, drawing on a lifetime spent observing high art, high egos, and the decidedly unglamorous worlds behind publishing, film, and theatre.

To learn more, contact Robin Blakely at 660-973-2723 or Robin@CreativeCenterofAmerica.com.

By Jenn Windrow

As a developmental editor, I spend a lot of time helping authors strengthen their characters. One of the most common issues I encounter isn't that a character is too flawed. It's that they're not flawed enough. They are sunshine and rainbows and sugar and spice.

After all, most writers want readers to like their characters. We want them to root for the hero, fall in love with the love interest, and cheer when they succeed.

But here's the thing: readers don't connect with characters because they're perfect.

They connect with them because they're human. And all humans have flaws. Some more than others, but like the old saying says, “nobody’s perfect.” And your characters shouldn’t be either.

The Problem With Perfect Characters

Think about some of the most popular characters in fiction right now. Many of them are stubborn, reckless, arrogant, secretive, impulsive, or morally gray. Some are assassins. Some are thieves. Some make terrible decisions that leave readers yelling at the page.

And yet readers love them.

Why?

Because flaws create authenticity.

Real people are flawed. We make mistakes. We misjudge situations. We act out of fear, pride, insecurity, and old wounds. When readers see those same imperfections reflected in a character, they recognize something familiar. They see themselves in those flaws and they can relate to them.

Perfection creates distance. Imperfection creates connection.

Flaws Create Conflict

A character who always makes the right decision isn't particularly interesting. In fact, most of them are downright boring. And no one wants to read a story about boring characters doing boring things. They want conflict.

Stories thrive on conflict, and some of the best conflict comes from within.

A character's flaws often become the very thing standing between them and what they want most. The warrior's pride keeps him from asking for help. The heroine's fear of abandonment causes her to push people away. The king's need for control costs him the loyalty of those closest to him.

The flaw isn't just a personality trait. It's a source of tension that drives the story forward.

As writers, we often focus on external obstacles, but sometimes the most powerful obstacle is the one living inside the character's own head. So, as a writer, find that internal flaw, that inner conflict and use it to your advantage.

Morally Gray Doesn't Mean Morally Empty

With the rise of romantasy and dark fantasy, morally gray characters have become incredibly popular. But I think many writers misunderstand what readers love about them. Being morally gray isn't about being cruel, rude, or edgy for the sake of it.

It's about forcing characters to make difficult choices.

Should they choose duty or love? Justice or mercy? Revenge or forgiveness?

The most compelling characters aren't wrestling with easy decisions. They're navigating situations where every option comes with consequences.

Readers don't fall in love with morally gray characters because they're bad. They fall in love with them because they're complicated. And complication means conflict.

The Secret Ingredient: Vulnerability

I've read manuscripts with characters who lie, manipulate, steal, and make one bad decision after another. And sometimes I still love them. Not because of what they're doing, but because I understand why they're doing it.

Vulnerability is what turns a flawed character into a relatable one.

Show me the fear beneath the arrogance. Show me the loneliness beneath the anger. Show me the heartbreak beneath the need for revenge.

When readers understand the emotional wound driving the behavior, they're far more likely to stay invested.

As an editor, one of the questions I ask most often is:

Why is the character behaving this way?

The answer usually leads straight to the heart of who they are.

Flaws Create Growth

Character arcs exist because flaws exist. If your protagonist starts the story with all the answers, what is there left to learn?

Growth comes from struggle. It comes from confronting fears, challenging beliefs, and recognizing the ways we've been standing in our own way. The flaw that creates problems in chapter one often becomes the thing the character must overcome by the final chapter.

That's where transformation happens. And transformation is what readers remember.

Give Your Characters Permission to Be Messy

The next time you're revising a manuscript, take a hard look at your protagonist.

Are they too polished? Too reasonable? Too perfect? Consider giving them a few rough edges. Let them make mistakes. Let them struggle. Let them fail. Most importantly, let them be human.

I put my characters through hell and back, and I am proud of it.

Because readers don't fall in love with perfect characters. They fall in love with flawed characters who keep moving forward anyway.

What's your favorite flawed fictional character, and what flaw made you love them instead of dislike them?

About Jenn Windrow

Jenn Windrow once attempted to write a “normal” book—and promptly bored herself into a coma. So now she sticks to what she does best: writing snarky, kick-butt heroines, broody supernatural men, and more sexual tension than a vampire in a blood bank.

She’s the award-winning author of the Alexis Black novels and the Redeeming Cupid series, where the undead never sparkle and the drama is always delicious. Jenn moonlights as a developmental editor, helping other writers wrangle their wild plots and tangle-free prose.

When not arguing with her characters or muttering about Oxford commas, she can be found binge-watching trash TV, wrangling the slew of animals that live in her house (husband and teenagers included), or telling herself she’ll only have one more cookie.

You can find her at jennwindrow.com or lurking on social media where she pretends to be an extrovert.

Photo by Random Thinking on Unsplash