By Janice Hardy

Fear doesn’t just terrify—it transforms.

We tend to think of fear as the monster under the bed or the Big Scary waiting in the shadows to grab us. But fear can also look a lot quieter—and sneakier—than that. It’s the voice that says “don’t try, don’t trust, don’t hope,” because those things might get you hurt. Characters use fear to protect themselves, and that false safety can ruin their lives long before any villain gets the chance.

Somewhere in your protagonist’s past, fear went to work on their personality and probably did some serious damage. It whispered lies about what it takes for them to stay safe, and they believed every word. Maybe it convinced them to stop taking risks, to avoid love, or to control everything around them. Fear became their coping mechanism, and they’ve clung to it even as it holds them back.

Fear is what keeps a protagonist stuck at the start of the story, and what pushes them to grow by the end.

Let’s look at how fear shapes believable character arcs and how you can use it to drive your story’s emotional journey.

Fear Lies to Your Character

Every character has a belief that feels true because something happened that made it feel true. Maybe they asked for help and were rejected, so they learned to rely only on themselves. Maybe they loved someone and lost them, so they decided never to love again. Or maybe a parent or trusted adult told them, over and over, that they were worthless or unwanted—until they believed it.

That fear-based belief is the lie that keeps them safe from ever facing that pain again. But it also keeps them from being happy and leading a fulfilling life.

As the story unfolds, your protagonist’s old coping strategies will stop working, and they’ll see the lie’s hold start to slip. They can’t avoid the truth anymore, and every plot event becomes another crack in their fear’s illusion of control, and provides opportunities for character growth.

How Fear Drives the Character Arc

Most emotional arcs follow a similar progression, no matter the genre:

1. Fear controls the character.

At the start, fear runs the show. The protagonist believes the lie and avoids whatever might trigger that old pain. Readers see the gap between who they are and who they could be, and what needs to change for them to be happy.

2. Fear gets tested.

The plot pushes them into uncomfortable territory, and each new challenge forces them to face situations that test their belief and make avoiding or denying it harder. Think of the story problems as chances for the character to learn the lesson they need to learn to overcome their fear and realize the lie is a lie.

3. Fear backfires.

What once protected them now causes harm. Broken trust, lost opportunities, emotional fallout. The “safe” way starts to hurt more than the risk they’ve been avoiding. Maybe it costs them a relationship, an opportunity, or a piece of self-respect, but there are cracks in the fear’s so-called protective bubble around them.

4. Fear is confronted.

At their lowest point, the protagonist faces the truth. Their beliefs, allies, and even their sense of self have all been stripped away. To move forward, they must finally do the very thing they’ve resisted.

5. Fear is transformed.

They don’t become fearless—they become braver. The same situation that once froze them now gives them a chance to act differently. The victory isn’t that they no longer feel afraid, but that they choose to act anyway. Often, you’ll see them embrace the lessons of the story and use those lessons to defeat the antagonist, save the day, or finally cast off the fear and the lie they once believed.

Basically, this is all the emotional version of cause and effect. Every scene becomes a small test of courage until one day, the protagonist can finally pass the biggest one at the climax.

Using Fear to Help You Plot

Once you know what your protagonist fears most, you can use it as a guide to shape the plot.

If your character fears failure, early scenes might show them over-preparing, overworking, or micromanaging to stay “safe.” But over the course of the story, that perfectionism creates problems—alienating others, missing opportunities, or self-sabotaging. By the end, they can’t succeed unless they risk failing.

If they fear abandonment, they might push others away to avoid being left again. At first, maybe they refuse to connect to anyone at all, then the plot puts them into situations where they can’t succeed on their own, and they have to trust someone, even if there’s a chance that person will abandon them, too, forcing them to risk connection and trust.

The trick is to design choices that pit the character’s goal against their fear.

Ask yourself:

• What situations would force my character to face their fear head-on?
• What choices would scare them most, but also teach them something new about themselves?

Pay attention to your story’s major turning points. Those are the moments where fear and growth typically collide and escalate the stakes in some way. And speaking of stakes…

Using Fear to Create Emotional Stakes

Fear raises more than pulse rates—it also raises emotional investment. Readers connect most deeply when they recognize the fear beneath a character’s choices.

Common core fears often appear across genres:

• Loss of control (thrillers, mysteries)
• Rejection or unworthiness (romance, contemporary)
• Failure or insignificance (coming-of-age, drama)
• Identity and belonging (fantasy, science fiction)

The genre may change how fear looks, but the emotion remains universal. Readers aren’t just wondering if the protagonist will win—they’re wondering if they’ll stop running from what terrifies them.

Fear and the Moment of Truth

The climax is where fear and choice collide and neither side is taking any prisoners. Your protagonist can’t win—inside or out—without facing the thing they’ve avoided all along.

• If they fear being seen, they must reveal something true.
• If they fear failure, they must risk everything on a plan that might not work.
• If they fear love, they must open up even though they could get hurt.

You’ll often see this mirrored in the opening and closing scenes. The character starts out dealing with this fear and failing because of it. Then in the end, they face a similar situation, but with a new mindset that allows them to succeed. Maybe the book starts with them walking away from someone who needs help and ends with them choosing to stay. Readers get that sense of, “They couldn’t do this before, but they can now,” and are happy for them.

The movie Finding Nemo is good example for all this.

Marlin’s fear is loss, rooted in trauma. After a barracuda attack kills his wife and their cache of eggs, he clings to his surviving son, Nemo. His lie: “If I can control Nemo, I can keep him safe.”

But control doesn’t protect Nemo—it isolates him. Every problem and conflict in the film forces Marlin to loosen his grip, trust others, and face the unpredictability of life, both for him and his son. By the end, he hasn’t defeated fear—he’s learned to live with it. He’s still cautious, but now he can breathe and let Nemo go.

Fear gives your story emotional resonance. It connects the external events to the internal journey and makes every choice the protagonist makes matter.

Remember…Characters don’t change because they want to. They change because staying the same finally scares them more than taking the risk.

EXERCISE FOR YOU: Identify your protagonist’s core fear and the lie it created. Now, brainstorm three story moments that directly challenge that fear—one early, one mid-point, one near the climax. What happens when the coping strategy that once kept them safe starts to fail? Those are the moments where growth begins.

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About Janice

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. and the chapter books Who's Haunting Who? and The Haunting of Cabin 13 for Lerner Publishing. For adults, she writes the Grace Harper urban fantasy series under the name, J.T. Hardy. When she's not writing fiction, she runs the popular writing site Fiction University, and has written multiple books on writing, including Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It), Plotting Your Novel: Ideas and Structure, and the Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft series. Sign up for her newsletter and receive 25 ways to Strengthen Your Writing Right Now free.

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