by Selene Grace Silver

Few things infuriate a reader more than a beloved character acting out of character for no logical reason because the writer needs the protagonist or antagonist to do something unexpected in service to a plot twist or development.

Today, readers crave character-driven stories, even in their high-action adventures featuring static heroes experiencing modest character arcs. Therefore, writers producing new stories need to create characters with well-developed personalities that feel authentic and real.

That requires writers to spend important time and research developing their main characters, especially their protagonists and antagonists.

Short of earning a double degree in psychology and literature, writers need to lean on what the writing and psychology experts tell us about human traits and psychological experiences. A new aspect of personality theory, called personality identity makes this task even easier to do well.

The Importance of Emotional Wounds and Their Misbeliefs

Resources like the Writers Helping Writers’ thesauri series and website, along with Lisa Cron’s book, Story Genius, offer writers effective strategies for developing great characters by addressing the connections between emotional wounds, misbeliefs, character arcs, and plot.

To identify a character’s goal and needs, we have to know what misbelief holds her back from just going out and getting what she wants.

To understand why a character developed a misbelief in the first place, we need to identify the origin wound that caused it to spring to life, and what additional experiences in her past reinforced it.

To determine whether an experience actually wounded a character emotionally, we need to know how her personality would respond to the event.

Finally, to craft an exciting, conflict-rich plot in which a reader stays up all night to find out what happens, we need to set in place the most difficult scenario and obstacles to challenge the character’s misbelief.

The Importance of Character Traits and Personalities

A writer can’t understand why a specific character feels, thinks, acts, or reacts in specific ways until they know the character intimately, including their psychological history and how it shapes them into the person they are at the start of a story.

It’s not enough to pick a random emotional wound out of an encyclopedia and assign a misbelief that might develop from it, then start plotting. That approach completely ignores personality theory.

Personality theory argues that people are born with distinct—often genetically inherited—ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving, and that those traits influence how an individual gets affected by life experiences. For example, researchers have linked the trait of introversion to the genetic evidence and persistence of shyness.

Placing an over-achieving intellectual Commander type (Extroverted-Intuitive-Thinking-Judger) on stage in front of a crowd when she is seven at the school Spelling B might spark excitement and a renewed sense of self-confidence in the child even if she loses. While placing another analytical personality, the serious Architect type (Introverted-Intuitive-Thinking-Judger) up for potential failure in front of his peers might damage his self-confidence for life, especially if he loses. Public embarrassment can easily become a motivating or debilitating experience, depending completely on the individual child’s personality.

One person’s wounding experience is another person’s motivating drive to be better. We can only know how or to what degree most damaging events affect a person if we know their personality type.

Using Assertive vs. Turbulent Identities with Personality Traits

The 16 Personalities website is a fantastic resource for researching and developing a protagonist or other character’s wound and consequential misbelief using its added data on type identities.

Besides the classic personality traits: extroversion vs. introversion, intuitive vs. sensing, thinking vs. feeling, and judging vs. perceiving, the site’s researchers have further explored how these traditional traits get expressed differently in individuals with identities that tend towards optimism (Assertive identity) or pessimism (Turbulent identity). 

Basically, the identities Assertive and Turbulent research delves into the different ways individual personalities view themselves and the world depending on whether they see the glass half full or half empty.

The really interesting aspect of this additional data is that writers can determine how a wounding experience early in life might damage a character’s personality development and subsequent approach to the world.

Using Traits + Identities to Create Backstory Wounds and Misbeliefs

A character’s self-confidence can be impacted negatively or positively by a specific experience.

If we look at the Commander (ENTJ)’s personality profile again, we can see how this bold and strong-willed character type might be damaged by an early experience of losing a Spelling B in front of their peers and parents if they lean toward having a Turbulent identity. Or, losing the Spelling B might push them from being an Assertive over to a Turbulent identity.

Ninety-two percent of Assertive Commanders report having high self-confidence, while only 51% of Turbulent Commanders report the same. Also, 87% of Assertive Commanders experience increased motivation when a task is more difficult than expected, while a much lower 56% of Turbulent Commanders respond the same way.

With this added identity data, it’s easy to see how a specific personality type might lose some of their innate confidence and react differently to subsequent stress and challenges based on a wounding experience of losing the Spelling B.

Scenario: Matthew, His Origin Wound, Misbelief, Character Arc, and a Perfect Plot

To illustrate, let’s create a character named Matthew who has developed a Commander personality by age five, due to genetics and life experiences. He’s a little energetic machine of nonstop ambition who likes to win, be in charge, and boss his younger siblings around.

In first grade, he eagerly signs himself up for the school Spelling B. He studies and prepares, and then competes with complete confidence, winning first place. Or he loses first place to Ernie because he didn’t study much, but decides he’ll just work harder and beat Ernie next year.

The event reinforces his Assertive identity (ENTJ-A). Lesson learned with a positive, optimistic outcome.

But let’s say Matthew eagerly signs up for the Spelling B, but due to his personality’s tendency to be arrogant, doesn’t study much, and he loses after only one round. Shocked by the early loss and humiliation, his self-image and self-confidence take a hit, setting up a turn towards a Turbulent identity (ENTJ-T), in which he decides never to compete in a Spelling B ever again.

Lesson learned with a negative, pessimistic outcome.

Or, his ensuing misbelief, following other losses, could be that the only way to succeed is to over-prepare and work tirelessly in order to be good enough to win against the competition. Lesson learned, also with a potentially negative, pessimistic outcome.

In fact, his confidence has taken such a hit that at the start of your story, as an adult, Matthew only ever takes on jobs or challenges he knows he can win, and despite his competence and love of managing other people, he never applies for a management position at work. He never feels truly successful or wins the esteem of his loved ones because he never takes genuine risks, meaning his satisfaction in life is stifled.

What kind of plot and conflicts will the writer need to build into the story to force Matthew to learn to take risks in his work and life again?

Obviously, the plot must force Matthew into a scenario where he faces a task or challenge he’s never done before, then places a more skilled, experienced antagonist against him, then setup increasingly difficult hurdles and humiliating moments on the journey to the finish line, until poor Matthew finally decides he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks (regaining his Assertive identity), uses his natural intelligence and imagination to strategize a way to achieve his goal, and wins!

Not all character-wounding events need to turn characters into victims. They do need to damage the character’s personality in a way that prevents them from leading a satisfying, happy life.

One of the best approaches to creating the wound, misbelief, character arc, and a corresponding plot is to incorporate established expert knowledge from psychology into your character and plot development.

The added 16 Personality Traits Identity component is a wonderful resource for writing your character’s journey and story.

Selene Grace Silver resides near the beach in Southern California with her romantic Scottish husband. Trained to read and write literary fiction, she never quite abandoned her early love of the romance genre.

After 20 + years teaching English, writing, and literature at the high school and college levels, she’s retired to write fiction full-time. She’s had to adjust her writing style and craft to suit genre fiction, which includes learning to plot and write complex characters. For Selene, an INFJ, writing is a journey of constant self-improvement.

To read a short prequel to the small-town beach romance series she’s developing, sign up for her newsletter. She’s also on Facebook, Instagram and Threads.