This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the 630th episode of the Helping Writers Become Authors

Parcast. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. What's the difference?

Your character's Ghost versus Wound versus Lie versus lie versus weakness.

One of the major keys to engineering characters who can create reader favorite moments is understanding your character's weaknesses.

But those weaknesses seem to be known in writer terminology by a dizzying array of names, including

ghosts, wound, and lie. So what's the difference and which

goes where in the story and how do they each operate differently or do they? On this podcast you may have noticed that I favor the terms ghost and lie.

In my articles and books on writing you will almost always see these words

capitalized as my way of indicating they are important

catalytic entities within story form as I teach it. However, you may encounter other writers who prefer

to use the term weakness or wound. Are these all

referring to the same concepts? So in many general ways all four terms do refer to the same thing and that is the fundamental pain point

at the core of the character's psyche. Whether large or small, traumatic or mundane, this pain is perpetuating a limited way of being in and

seeing the world. It constricts the character's ability to move forward toward the plot goal in a holistic and

efficacious manner. That said, each term does have a slightly different

connotation. So today, in response to several requests on the topic I'm going to

examine all four terms as well as how I personally use them in my own understanding

of story. But before we get started, let me just say that

perhaps the main point here is that writing terminology varies. Although certain

prevalent terms are widely accepted, there are also many

many different terms that you will see applied to the same or almost the same concept.

For example, I teach story structure as having three major plot points, the first plot

...