Wounding Event--The Backstory That Drives Your Narrator

A short post this week:  I'm just returning from teaching at a writing retreat and wanted to share this article in Fiction Writers Review by Michelle Hoover, on the wounding event, a pivotal moment of backstory that drives much of the internal quest of your narrator.  If you have trouble accessing the link, go to www.fictionwritersreview.com and search for "wounding event."


Equally applicable to memoir writers as well as fiction writers, it helps make sense of why the people in your story do what they do.

Your writing exercise this week is to check out the article then freewrite about possible wounding events in your narrator's backstory.  What's the haunting memory that drives them, almost unconsciously, in every decision and choice?