This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the 633 episode of the Helping Writers Become Authors Podcast.

I hope you enjoy this week's episode, How to Discover What Your Character Fears At the Root of All what your character fears.

At the root of all character motivations are a handful of

deeply primal drivers.

Love and hate, desire, and fear. Fear is a big one. As the appointed protector of our survival, fear

undergirds many of our reasons and motives in life. Therefore, understanding what your character fears can offer significant

insights into your story and its underlying themes. Over the last few weeks, we've been diving into some of your character's deepest motivating factors.

We've looked at your character's ghost, wound, weakness, and lie.

And we've also examined the thing your character wants and the thing your character needs,

as well as your character's desire, moral intention, and plot goal.

All of these often overlapping elements within a story correspond to either motivation or goal.

Although fear often plays a role in these elements, we have yet to discuss it as thoroughly as it deserves.

Within a story, your character's relationships to fear will offer many variations.

Not only will each character portray differing levels of fear,

different coping mechanisms,

and differing levels of capability in handling fear.

So too, will you find variation in the many different fears to which a

character may respond throughout a story.

You can sort a character's fears into two piles, little fears and big fears. Little fears are

incidental to the story. They may indeed not be so little, for example a

crippling fear of heights, but if they don't inform the character's

arc or the plots through line, then they exist merely to provide color and personality.

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