By Lauri Schoenfeld
We all go through pain—psychologically, emotionally, physically. No one shares their agony exactly in the same way as another because of our different personalities, upbringings, experiences, and perspectives. But we all deal with pain. None of us are free from it.
Your characters will always have something in one of these areas they’re striving to get through, understand, and process. They may be searching out who they are, and maybe because of their upbringing or culture, figuring those pieces out causes them a great deal of affliction. Perhaps the loss of someone they love has dramatically affected their worth, will, drive, or purpose for existence. Or physically, an illness they feel is so intense that even getting up to take a shower is more than they can bear. Each area can weaken your character’s spirit and heart.
Readers want to keep reading because pain is a universal thing, even if they don’t completely relate to what that character is dealing with. They want to root for them. The readers feel the agony, empathize with how much this space hurts the characters deeply, and want to be there to push them forward.
The hero’s journey for our characters is constant movement within that anguish. Getting to the next step will be more intense, scary, complex, and worse before it gets better. Our characters will want to leave, but they’ll have to make the hard choice to face the pain and keep going through the storm. Doing so will define them.
Here are a few examples from some of my favorite books. There are no spoilers on endings!
In Fault in Our Stars, the character Hazel Grace Lancaster is a seventeen-year-old who has thyroid cancer. It has started to spread into her lungs, so she uses a portable oxygen tank to breathe properly. Hazel feels suffering day in and day out. She wants to be understood. To appease her mother, she decides to attend a cancer patients’ support group and meets a teenage boy named Augustus Waters. They begin to build a friendship, and she finds out he had osteosarcoma but had his leg amputated and is cancer-free. With their friendship, they’re able to help each other with the struggles they both face.
In Shutter Island, Teddy Daniels is devastated by the loss of his wife, which took place in a fire. The grief he feels messes with him both emotionally and psychologically, sending him spiraling to look for answers about his wife’s death and his sanity. He wants truth and answers. The story makes you question the depth of this man’s sorrow and wonder where his head is at, but you’re rooting for him to figure it out.
In Wonder, August Pullman, also known as Auggie, has mandibulofacial dysostosis, a rare facial deformity. Surgery is not uncommon for him, as he’s had 27 of them. Auggie has been homeschooled by his mom for eleven years, so when he’s enrolled to go to 5th grade, in a public school, pain and fear of being different sets in. He wants to be accepted and liked. Auggie goes to school anyway and faces the unknown each day.
What hardship is your character dealing with?
Is it physical, mental, or emotional? All of them?
What would your character have to do to face that pain? What is the next step forward?
What is one thing that your character really wants and is in search for?
Hazel wants friendship and to be understood.
Teddy wants truth and answers.
Auggie wants to be accepted and liked as he is.
For fun and research, go through some of your favorite movies and establish what the character’s ultimate affliction and want/need (goal) is. Think about your own life story, a friend’s, or a family member’s. How has their pain and struggle made them tick? React? How have they handled it?
Now, write that novel. Bring the raw emotion in so the reader is sucked into feeling it all right along with your character.