I have a confession to make: I unashamedly love wounded characters.
Perhaps it’s because there’s darkness in me. I’ve lived through some stuff, and it’s comforting to see those struggles reflected in others. To see a character who’s been through something traumatic, and can still be the hero of their own story.
When dark pasts and deep wounds are written well, it draws me in. I resonate with that character on a cellular level. I feel their victories and defeats, their brief glimmers of hope, far more deeply. As though these things aren’t actually happening to them, but to me.
Unfortunately, wounded characters are often written badly, and not just by writers who are still learning their craft. Authors at all stages of their careers can be guilty of writing wounds badly. And when they are written badly, the results are excruciating.
I’m sure you can think of a few examples off the top of your head: tortured souls that had you rolling your eyes and made your toes curl up. I wrote a good number of those stories myself while I was still learning. We all do.
But sooner or later, I got pretty frustrated with that.
And started looking for ways to do it better.
If we want the reader to really feel for a character, we need to stop explaining what happened to them, and start thinking about how it affects who they are.
Dead Wives and Burned Villages—Where Things Go Wrong
When tortured, wounded, or tragic characters go wrong, it’s almost always for the same reason: the writer tells us too much about it.
Even I can only read about how the hero’s murdered wife, broken family, or abusive childhood so many times before I get the urge to throw the book at a wall. And a lot of our readers feel the same way.
Here’s the problem. When we tell the reader directly about a tragic backstory, they end up feeling lectured. Worse, it can even feel like we’re trying to force them to feel sympathetic, which paradoxically has the opposite effect: leaving them feeling resentful, frustrated, and even making them hate the offending character.
It's all because of an interesting storytelling truth. At its core, writing isn’t actually about communicating exactly how a character feels—it’s about tricking the reader into feeling those things on the character’s behalf.
Story isn’t a dispassionate record of what happened. It’s a spell we cast with words, carefully controlling the reader’s emotions so we can transport them to another place and time.
All of which has a significant impact on our tragic heroine, and how we choose to tell her story.
The Importance of the “Now”
It’s good to remember that our reader doesn’t actually care about what happened in the past. As writers, we might feel very strongly about that backstory. We have likely spent hours carefully crafting it, after all. But to the reader, all that matters is what happens here and now.
As one of my Clarion West tutors once told me: the story can only happen in the present moment, moving forward.
Because of this, whenever we pull the reader away from that present moment—diverting into exposition, backstory, or other forms of telling—we’re taking them away from the story they came here to read. That doesn’t make those kinds of telling “wrong,” but it does mean we should always handle them with care. And that’s never more true than with a tragic backstory.
The fact is, if we want the reader to really feel for a character, we need to stop explaining what happened to them, and start thinking about how it affects who they are now.
This rings true. Real people who’ve lived through trauma don’t go around explaining it to everyone they meet, and yet the effects are plainly visible if you know where to look. Trauma bleeds into every part of a person. It shapes us, and forms the foundation of everything we do.
We just need to write our characters the same way.
Scriptwriting handles this especially well, since writing in pure dialogue makes telling much more cumbersome and obvious. And while there are undoubtedly some movies with awful tragic characters, there are also some hidden gems that can teach fiction writers all we need to know.
Which is why, for this week’s example, we’ll be taking a look at The Valhalla Murders, a Nordic noir series that has a lot to teach us about writing wounded people.
It’s Never Too Late to Turn Things Around—Arnar’s Story
If you haven’t watched it already, it’s well worth giving The Valhalla Murders your time. It’s excellent in many ways, but be warned: its central subject matter is dark, intense, and might be too much for some people. Proceed, but do so with care.
However, for the purposes of this post, we only care about one of the show’s lead detectives.
When we first meet Arnar, he’s not the most likeable character. He is stoic, buttoned down, and abrasive. He holds himself apart from everyone, although he has a clearly close relationship with his boss—the Reykjavik police commissioner.
It’s initially hard to get a read on Arnar, but there’s obviously something going on with his family. He barely reacts to learning that his father is terminally ill, and when he eventually visits the old man at the care home, the relationship is more than strained. It’s outright hostile.
Later, while he’s interrogating a suspect, we get a small glimpse of what’s beneath the surface, as Arnar rolls back his sleeve to show the other man a brutal set of scars.
You probably won't believe this, but I might be the only one here who understands how you feel. I know what it's like to be raised by a father who hates you. Who hates everything you stand for. To have siblings that turn their backs on you. I know how it feels to be neglected [...] I was in the same place you are. Fucked up on drugs, crazy and alone. These scars are a reminder of who I am now, and where I'm from. It's never too late to turn things around.
It’s the only time he speaks about his past directly, and the only time the story feels a little forced. But it’s necessary for the audience to get some grasp of his character, and it works for one vital reason: Arnar isn’t just spilling his guts for no reason. He’s pursuing his goal—attempting to build rapport with the suspect so he can get useful information. It works, and from that point onwards, his whole backstory is pure, glorious showing.
When his sister shows up out of the blue, Arnar freezes. He can’t get away from her fast enough. Retreating back to his hotel room, he empties half of the minibar into a glass, grips it tightly, then smashes it against the wall. The next morning, he goes for a run—forcing all of that energy into something less destructive. A hard-won coping strategy that anyone who’s lived with complex trauma will understand only too well.
He accepts the news of his father’s death in shaky silence, but tells no one. He just goes back to work. Even his boss—who we learn later is Arnar’s foster father—doesn’t notice the difference. If it wasn’t for his sister’s pleas, Arnar wouldn’t even have attended the funeral. And perhaps that would have been better, because when he does show up, he’s confronted by his monstrous brother-in-law who threatens, and then tries to cajole:
Don't do this to your sister. Don't ruin this moment for her.
You're always welcome back to the congregation. You know what you need to do [...] My door is always open to you, should you wish to return.
It’s clear the family are deeply religious, and the brother-in-law’s reaction when Arnar defies him and attends the service shows us that his split from the church was far from amicable. A group of men wrestle him out of the room, fighting and protesting, while his sister stands passively by.
Again, he pushes all those feelings down, but now the cracks are starting to show. He completely loses it on a suspect, almost coming to blows, and when the case goes straight to hell, Arnar collapses with it: drinking, going out to a club, and hooking up with a man he meets there for casual sex. But the next morning, we see his resilience again. The messy, incomplete way that he’s healed. Because he doesn’t wallow in his mistakes, he just lays his clothes out carefully, gets dressed, and keeps chasing his goal.
From there, the audience is left to put all the pieces together. Arnar’s sexuality, the oppressive rules of his church, the scars on his arms (seemingly from a suicide attempt), and the fact that he was fostered into another family. It’s given to us in fragments, out of order, but it’s all there, just waiting for us to see.
Part of what makes Arnar’s backstory so effective is that there’s nothing cliche about it. There’s no easy reach for a dead wife or burned village. What happened to him is unique, deeply thought out, and all the more horrible because of it.
But it also works because The Valhalla Murders is a true masterclass in trusting the audience. We’re never told directly about his past, and yet, we know it in our bones. Because it’s Arnar’s lived reality: woven through every part of his story.
Shaping the Present from the Wounds of the Past
As writers, we often feel the need to explain everything to the reader, but our stories can be much more powerful when we resist that temptation.
And Arnar’s story proves this. It’s moving precisely because it’s handled with such a deft touch. His backstory is never forced onto us, and more importantly, it never pulls us away from the story. In fact, it is the story, as the past returns to haunt him and he’s left to deal with the consequences.
It makes the audience care, because we don’t need to be told what he’s been through: we can see it written on every line in his face. It’s in every decision he makes, and every struggle that he goes through. And all the while, he’s still fighting for his goal. Trying to catch the killer and make the world a little less awful. Because when you’ve seen the depths of the darkness, the light becomes all the more precious.
Fortunately, it’s ridiculously easy to use this magic in our own work. We just need to ask ourselves two questions:
How does the past effect who this person is now? How does it influence their values, actions, and personality? And how can we show that through what they do and the decisions that they make?
Is there some way the past could haunt the present? Could a bully, abuser, or childhood friend return? What if it isn’t as obvious or direct as expected? How might that put the character under pressure in unique and unusual ways? And how can we show what happened to them through how they deal with that?
For more help, I can highly recommend The Emotional Wound Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. It contains a list of common (and not so common) traumatic events and explores how they might affect a character’s personality, actions, and choices—helping to make those tragic backstories more real, not by telling the reader about them, but by showing them in every living moment.
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I, too, have become frustrated with being held emotionally hostage by tragic backstories. They lost their family, I have to feel for them now, don't I? Furthermore, I need to be more lenient when they are cruel or callous, right?
I won't lie. The story I am most proud of reveals early on that the protagonist's mother and sister are both dead. But I don't consider her traumatized by these events. Grieved, but not traumatized. It's sad, not tragic. At least, to her.
But it lays the groundwork for choices she makes and how few supports she maintains due to the unwillingness to depend on anyone. It makes her vulnerable to the machinations of a predator.
Anyway, insightful amd validating article, this.
I tried exactly that with my books. Light on the backstories, piece-meal revelations only when the plot allows it. Some of my readers were annoyed though. "Why didn't you just give us the whole history upfront?". Can't please everyone, can we?