The Wound that Haunts Characters
Hey Story Crafters,
Spooky season is upon us! There’s a chill in the air, the nights are stretching longer, and the trees are losing enough leaves to look more like skeletons, in the right light.
(This time last year I was staying in a hotel, where the least annoying channel to watch was Freeform. So I heard the version of “Spooky Scary Skeletons” they used for their commercial a lot.?Click here for the link to the original version. )
I’m not really big on Halloween festivities, but I am a fan of spooky stories—and the autumn weather helps create the perfect atmosphere for enjoying those stories. The theme of?“haunting”?is one that sticks out to me. Not just the traditional spooky story kind of haunting, like a ghost haunting, but also emotional and/or psychological hauntings like regret, vengeance, or nostalgia.
The craft resources I’ve been consuming lately have been coalescing in my brain, into a way of thinking about character creation and development I want to share here:
A character’s?personality*?is shaped by?a physical/emotional/psychological wound**?that happened in their past (distant or not-so-distant), and causes the character to form?a misbelief***?about themselves, and/or the people and the world around them. Their personality informs their decision-making as the character pursues their primary motivation.
(*Citing one of my earlier posts on "3 Tips for Creating a Memorable Main Character ."
**I first heard this term in a webinar with Jessica Brody. I’m sure other writers have used this term as well when discussing craft.
***I learned this term from Lisa Cron’s?Story Genius.)
To look at it another way, a character’s wound causes a misbelief that?haunts?them until the wound is healed and/or overcome. In this sense, all stories have a degree of “haunting” to them, because the protagonist is (or the main characters are) haunted by a wound that shaped who they are when the story starts, how they interact with the world, and how they make decisions moving forward.
In spooky stories, the haunting aspect becomes literal. The protagonist faces a being (i.e., the “monster” of the story) that may or may not be the physical equivalent of their wound. In either case, this being is an external antagonistic force the protagonist needs to overcome (or “defeat”) in order to heal their haunting wound.
Boku dake ga Inai Machi | ERASED Anime
The anime is based on the manga series of the same name, written and illustrated by Kei Sanbe.
Caption: ERASED promo image.?Image Credit: Crunchyroll .
**Warning for Possible Anime Spoilers**
This anime is what got me thinking about the idea of a character’s wound haunting them.?There’s a line one character says about a hole existing inside of them that they try to fill with every action they take in life. In my mind, it translated to “this emotional hole is what’s haunting this specific character, and fueling their actions.”
(ERASED?isn’t technically a spooky story, but it does have a haunting aspect to it. Genre-wise, I’d classify it as a mystery/suspense with a dash of fantasy. The manga is classified as seinen (young adult men as the target audience), and since the anime listing doesn’t say otherwise, I assume its target audience is the same.)
The protagonist is Satoru Fujinuma, a 29-year old struggling manga artist who works as a pizza delivery person to make ends meet. Satoru also has a secret ability—whenever a tragic incident happens close to him, he travels several minutes back in time, getting the opportunity to prevent the incident from happening. He calls this ability “Revival.”
It's eventually revealed that Satoru gained this ability because of the regret he feels for the tragic incidents that happened in his hometown 18 years prior: a serial killer targeted and killed a few children in town, including two of Satoru’s classmates. The person convicted for the murders was someone Satoru considered a confidant, almost an older brother figure. Back then, Satoru didn’t believe the police arrested the actual killer; but since he was a child, he wasn’t treated seriously. His mother moved them away from the area, hoping to put the incident behind them. Satoru eventually forgot most of the details about the incident, and gained Revival.
In the narrative-present, Satoru unknowingly encounters the serial killer. The killer frames him for a murder to tie up loose ends. When Satoru starts to go on the run, Revival activates and sends his consciousness back in time, 18 years in the past, before the killings started. Satoru struggles to discover the serial killer’s identity, switching between his child-self to conduct an investigation in the past and protect the possible targets from being killed, and his adult-self who is on the run and trying to figure out who framed him for a murder he didn’t commit.
Satoru’s regret is the wound that haunts him to the point of developing a paranormal ability. By gaining Revival, he has the means to eventually heal the haunting wound caused the ability to develop in the first place.
领英推荐
If you’re into anime and haven’t watched this series yet, I highly recommend it. It is different from the manga, especially the ending, but it’s still an exciting story to follow.
Boku dake ga Inai Machi | ERASED?Trailer (English Sub)
Near the Bone?and?The Ghost Tree
Two horror novels I’ve read recently that stuck out to me are Christina Henry’s?Near the Bone?and?The Ghost Tree.
Caption: Book cover photos for?Near the Bone ?(a cabin in the woods with a mountain in the background) and?The Ghost Tree ?(a large tree with the title glowing superimposed over it).
Near the Bone?has the kind of setting you’d expect from a horror novel—deep in the thick woods outside of civilization where no one can hear you scream, with snow covering the ground. It’s quickly revealed that Mattie, the protagonist, is in a Bad Situation. She lives in a cabin in the middle of the woods on an uninhabited mountain, with only her older, abusive husband. Her wound is an ongoing one—she is constantly tormented by her husband, and haunted by pieces of a past she can barely remember. Only, they’re not as alone as she thought. There’s something in the woods leaving behind shredded remains of other animals—a predator neither she nor her husband can identify. They go off to find the creature and kill it, and in the process, they encounter a group of young people who are trying to get proof of the creature’s existence.
This encounter triggers Mattie into slowly remembering more about her past—about who she was, about her family, about the man who became her husband. She struggles between following her husband and teaming up with the group of young people, while they all try to defeat—or survive—the creature hunting them in the woods.
The Ghost Tree?is similar to?Near the Bone?in that there is a dangerous creature on the loose. However, its target is teenaged girls, and its hunting ground is localized to one town.
The protagonist, Lauren, is a teenaged girl haunted by the mysterious disappearance of her dad the previous year. Her dad’s disappearance is her wound; the mystery surrounding his disappearance, and the fact no one cares about what happened to him, haunts her. Her refusal to move on from his disappearance puts her at odds with her mom, and serves as another reason for Lauren to consider her mom “the enemy” (as many teenaged girls tend to do).
What I find interesting about this novel is that while Lauren’s haunting is specific to her character development, other point-of-view characters get their own chapters to narrate the goings-on of this town, and the creature that starts to wreak havoc on the community. There’s a distinct “story” thread (specific to Lauren and the wound that haunts her), and a distinct “plot” thread, which involves Lauren and other members of the community who give context to the creature and the killings happening in town, by either discovering this knowledge while pursuing an investigation (e.g., Lauren, a police officer new to town), or by already having the knowledge (e.g., Lauren’s grandma).
(This novel has similar vibes to?Stranger Things, so if you enjoyed?Stranger Things, you’ll probably enjoy?The Ghost Tree.)
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Best,
Leah
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