Why do some fictional characters feel so real? Why do some make our hearts race more? Why do certain stories haunt us long after the final page? The secret is not simply great writing – it is psychology. Understanding how people think, feel, and behave can help writers create deeper characters, believable conflicts, and emotionally gripping plots.
In this article, we will explore how writers can use psychology to help better understand their characters, help engage their readers and create more authentic and powerful stories. From character development to evoking readers emotions, we will explore how the science of the mind can become a powerful tool for writers.
Character development:
Psychology can help create more realistic and complex characters. Tools like the Big Five (OCEAN) or MBTI can help offer writers personality traits to build upon. For example, a character with low agreeableness could be more self-serving or blunt, while a character with high neuroticism may be more reactive or anxious and might interpret ordinary situations as more negative than others.
Characters’ backstory also plays a very important role. A character with a traumatic past might express signs of PTSD (either acute or chronic) or they may develop a change in their core beliefs. They may lose faith in people or become more cynical or suspicious of others.
Understanding and developing internal conflicts can help add more depth to your story. Including ideas like cognitive dissonance, where a character struggles between what they believe and what they do, can create internal tension within a character, and can affect how they interact with other characters or situations.
For example, your protagonist may want love, but they fear intimacy due to having avoidant attachment style, and this could cause them to push away their partners even as they long for an emotional connection.
Evoking Emotions in Readers:
There is a reason why horror works so well. We are psychologically wired to fear the darkness, isolation, and the unknown as theses once signaled danger. Horror stories often use these fears to create tension and evoke fear within the reader as what’s unseen is often scarier, as our mind is left to fill in the blanks.
We also feel the characters’ emotions when we read about them. We flinch at their pain and cry at death or heartbreak. This is because our brains can mirror those feelings thanks to our mirror neurons and writing from a close perspective can help trigger this response in readers.
Plot and Conflict:
Psychology can help drive the plot of the story just as much as the action scenes. Including emotional struggles, like guilt, fear, or obsession, can help to shape a compelling narrative arc and this can push characters to make more meaningful choices through the story.
Including inner conflicts within a character can help create tension and raise the stakes the characters feel. For example, a character may face mental health challenges within the plot like an identity crisis, delusions, or compulsions and this adds more depth and tension to the character.
Also, the classic story structures can reflect psychological growth. Like the typical hero’s journey mirrors personal transformation/growth. The hero normally begins in an ordinary world, faces challenges, undergoes a transformation and then they return changed. This mirrors how people can grow and change when they are faced with diversity. Freud’s stages (id, superego, and ego) can also help to show a character’s internal conflict/struggles, like a character torn between forbidden desires (id) and guilt (superego).
Writing Tips:
Psychology does not just help to inspire characters and plots; it can help you write them better. Look at some tips below:
- Use personality quizzes to get ideas about your characters’ traits and how they can handle conflict.
- Give your character fears or flaws and let this shape their actions, making them more human.
- Watch online interviews and make notes of their personality, body language and tones in voices.
- Ask a friend how a character may react to a certain situation. A new perspective can spark new ideas and thoughts.
Conclusion:
Using psychology in creative writing can help build deeper characters, believable plots and stories that connect with readers. It adds emotional realism and depth to the story, keeping your audience hooked. Try blending research with imagination, looking into a theory, and twisting it into fiction. Try writing a short story based on a psychological quirk and see where it takes you!