The Importance of your character’s wound
I’m certain you learned in English class that all characters must have a flaw. This is what stops them from attaining their goal. It’s what gets in the way of their relationships. But where does that flaw come from?
It comes from the character’s wound. I know I’ve discussed wounds on this blog before, but just a quick recap:
A wound is something that happened in the character’s life — usually when they were young — that completely changes their life. For Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, her wound is when her parents died, and she had to be taken in by her aunt and uncle. In Good Will Hunting (the movie used by Michael Hauge — from whom I originally learned about wounds — as his example), Will was wounded when his father told him he was stupid and would never amount to anything.
From this wound comes a belief. This belief colors how your character sees the world. It determines what they do and how they behave. For Dorothy, when her aunt and uncle tell her to go away — someplace where she won’t get into any trouble — she believes that they don’t want her, that perhaps they will abandon her just as her parents did when they died. She determines that she will show them that she doesn’t need them either and runs away. It takes her the entire movie to realize that she is loved and wanted. For Will, he has to realize that his father…
