Character fears list: 120 fears and how each can drive a plot

A character's fear is what they will go out of their way to avoid: drowning, being left, being found out, a life that adds up to nothing. That makes it one of the most useful things to know about a character, because a plot can force them toward it. The 120 fears below are grouped as physical, social, emotional, existential and specific phobias, and each comes with one way it can drive a story.

After the list: how a fear differs from a wound and a lie, how to show fear in a scene without naming it, and how to write a phobia with care. A fear is also one of the fields worth filling in on a character profile, next to the want and the wound.

Physical fears: body and danger

Physical fears are about the body: pain, injury, death and the places where they wait. They give a plot its most direct stakes, because the danger can be put in the room.

1. Death — he takes a job at a hospice to prove he isn't afraid, and the first death on his shift proves he is.
2. Pain — she hides a symptom from every doctor to avoid one more procedure, until it can't be hidden.
3. Serious illness — a man who has always assumed the worst finally gets a real diagnosis, and nobody believes him.
4. Drowning — the only road out of the valley crosses the river at the ford where her brother went under.
5. Fire — a volunteer firefighter freezes at the doors of burning buildings, on the night his own street burns.
6. Heights — the stranded cable car can only be evacuated by a ladder over the gorge.
7. Being buried alive — the kidnapper knows about it, and that's what he uses.
8. Suffocation — a cave diver's guideline snaps with twenty minutes of air left in the tank.
9. Falling — the trapeze artist's comeback, one year after the fall.
10. The dark — the power fails on the night the intruder comes.
11. Blood and wounds — the only passenger on the stranded bus with first-aid training can't look at the cut, and the driver is bleeding.
12. Violence — a man who left a violent home has to break up a fight in his own bar.
13. Being hunted — she has lived for ten years under a new name, and a stranger at the school gate uses the old one.
14. Hunger — a grandmother who lived through a famine hoards food, and the family finds the cellar.
15. Cold — a frostbite survivor has to cross the same pass again in winter.
16. Wild animals — the cabin is the only shelter for miles, and the wolves have found it.
17. Disfigurement — an actor's burns heal into scars, and the part he's offered is the handsome one.
18. Losing the use of a hand — a surgeon's hand shakes after the accident, and the patient who needs her is her son.
19. Aging — a model spends her savings to look younger, and the scandal is a photograph of her real age.
20. Going blind — a painter losing his sight races to finish one last commission.
21. Losing one's memory — after nursing his mother through dementia, he hides every forgotten name from his daughter.
22. Infection — a nurse is quarantined with the patient she's most afraid of catching it from.
23. Childbirth — her mother died having her; she's eight months pregnant and the snow has closed the roads.
24. Being trapped underground — a miner who survived a collapse takes one last shift to save the house.
25. Car crashes — she hasn't driven since the accident, and her son needs to get to the hospital now.

Social fears: other people

Social fears are about other people: what they'll see, say and do. They run comedies of embarrassment and tragedies of exposure, and they're often what keeps a secret alive for three hundred pages.

26. Rejection — he never asks, so he's never refused, and the woman he loves marries his brother.
27. Humiliation — she would rather lose the case than be laughed at in court.
28. Public speaking — the best man can't give a speech, at the wedding of the friend who needs one.
29. Exposure — a judge with a conviction from his teens, under a name nobody knows.
30. Being found out as a fraud — the self-taught engineer with no degree is promoted to chief.
31. Gossip — in a town of four hundred, she would rather move than be talked about.
32. Losing status — the founder's son takes a job stocking shelves in the store his father opened.
33. Poverty — a man who grew up with nothing can't spend a dollar of his fortune, and his children leave.
34. Being ordinary — the child prodigy turns thirty with nothing to show for it.
35. Failure — she never enters the competition, so she never loses, until her own student enters.
36. Success — a writer sabotages the deal because a bestseller would mean being seen.
37. Criticism — he shows nobody his paintings, and they're found after his death.
38. Not belonging — an immigrant's daughter changes her name at school, and her grandmother comes to the school play.
39. Being left out — she organizes every party so she can't be left off the list.
40. Authority — the rule-follower finds proof her boss is stealing, and reporting him means breaking a rule.
41. Conflict — she agrees to everything to avoid an argument, and has now promised the same apartment to two tenants.
42. Being a burden — a father hides his diagnosis so his children won't have to care for him.
43. Disappointing one's parents — the medical student who wants to dance.
44. Being misquoted — a politician records every interview after one misquote ended his first career.
45. Losing face — the general won't retreat, because retreat looks like defeat.
46. Being replaced — the aging news anchor trains her replacement, and quietly sabotages her.
47. Fame — the lottery winner who hides the ticket.
48. Strangers — a hermit's cabin is the only shelter on the night of the storm, and the hikers knock.
49. Looking weak — the boxer who won't admit to the headaches.
50. Being alone in public — she brings a date she doesn't like to her sister's wedding.

Emotional fears: love and loss

Emotional fears are about the heart: love, loss, trust and the self. They're the ones a character is least likely to admit, which makes them the best engines for an inner arc.

51. Abandonment — she leaves every relationship first, at the first sign of trouble.
52. Intimacy — he'll tell a stranger at a bar anything, and his wife nothing.
53. Betrayal — after her partner's fraud she trusts no one, including the one person telling her the truth.
54. Being unloved — a child who earned love with grades becomes an adult who earns it with overtime.
55. Vulnerability — she won't cry at her mother's funeral, and the family reads it as coldness.
56. Losing control — the head chef who can't let anyone else cook, the week she breaks her wrist.
57. Commitment — the engagement ring has been in his sock drawer for three years.
58. Losing a loved one — a mother can't let her son enlist, and then comes the morning he does.
59. Repeating a parent's mistakes — the son of an alcoholic counts his own drinks on a napkin at every party.
60. Becoming one's parent — she hears her mother's words come out of her own mouth, aimed at her daughter.
61. Being forgotten by someone you love — her father's memory is going, and she visits every day in case today he doesn't know her.
62. Hurting someone — a veteran sleeps on the sofa so he can't hurt his wife in a nightmare.
63. Falling in love — a widower won't let himself like the woman next door.
64. Change — she hasn't moved a piece of furniture since her husband died.
65. Letting people down — the team captain fakes an injury rather than take the last penalty.
66. Seeming needy — he never calls first, and so nobody calls.
67. Losing one's identity — a retired soldier doesn't know who he is without orders.
68. Guilt — the driver in the crash that killed her friend becomes the most careful person in town.
69. Happiness — she ruins every good thing before it can be taken away.
70. Being lied to — a detective who can't switch off the questions at home.
71. Being replaced in someone's heart — a stepdaughter sets out to wreck her father's new marriage.
72. Boredom — a war photographer comes home and can't sit through a dinner party.
73. One's own anger — a gentle man is afraid of what he did once, and the night comes when he has to fight.
74. Being truly seen — an actor who only feels safe in a role meets someone who sees through all of them.
75. Grief — he won't open the boxes from his son's apartment.

Existential fears: meaning and time

Existential fears are about meaning: death in the abstract, time, faith, freedom, a life that adds up to nothing. Literary fiction runs on them, and a memorable villain often has one.

76. Meaninglessness — a priest who has lost his faith keeps saying Mass for the parish.
77. Being forgotten after death — a dying billionaire wants his name on everything, including the hospital that's suing him.
78. A wasted life — at fifty, she quits the bank to finish the novel she started at twenty.
79. The unknown — the explorer's wife has never left the county, and this year he doesn't come back.
80. Time running out — the transplant list moves at its own speed, and so does his heart.
81. What comes after death — Hamlet's “dread of something after death,” which “puzzles the will” and makes us “rather bear those ills we have.”
82. Judgment — a deathbed confession to a crime no one knew had happened.
83. God's silence — a missionary's prayers stop being answered in the year the village needs them most.
84. Freedom — a prisoner released after twenty years asks to go back.
85. Insignificance — an astronomer's work proves how small everything is, her marriage included.
86. A life already decided — the farmer's son who has never seen the sea is due to inherit the farm.
87. The future — a father builds a shelter for a disaster that never comes, while his family drifts away.
88. Loneliness — a lighthouse keeper dreads the last supply boat of the season.
89. Losing faith — a believer meets the evidence that could break it.
90. Fate — a woman told the date of her death by a fortune-teller plans her whole life around it.
91. Outliving everyone — the last of seven siblings sets the table for one.
92. Chaos — an air traffic controller can't sleep without a plan for tomorrow, and tomorrow brings a storm.
93. One's own capacity for evil — a juror realizes he would have done the same thing.
94. The end of the world — a teenager's climate dread meets her grandfather's denial on the family farm.
95. Losing touch with reality — a narrator can't trust his own memory of the night his wife disappeared.
96. Being unwanted — an adopted son finds the letter his birth mother wrote and never sent.
97. Becoming obsolete — a typesetter, then a travel agent, then a translator, each watching the job disappear.
98. Leaving no mark — a grandmother writes her memoir for great-grandchildren she'll never meet.
99. The truth — a son who won't take the DNA test.
100. Nothingness — an atheist doctor whose dying patient asks her what comes next.

Specific phobias by type

The groups above are everyday fears, the kind any character can have. A phobia is something else: a recognized anxiety disorder, in which the fear is far stronger than the actual danger and leads to avoidance. Under the current diagnostic criteria (DSM-5-TR) it is persistent, “typically lasting for 6 months or more,” as the StatPearls review of specific phobia puts it, and only a clinician can diagnose it. A character who hates spiders doesn't have arachnophobia unless the fear is out of proportion and shaping how she lives. Clinicians sort specific phobias into five types: animal, natural environment, blood-injection-injury, situational and other, and the list follows them. The Greek names are informal labels, not diagnoses.

Animal

101. Spiders (arachnophobia) — the cave survey turns up a new species, and she's the only biologist on the team.
102. Snakes (ophidiophobia) — the inheritance is a farm, and the dry well behind the house is full of them.
103. Dogs (cynophobia) — the new mail route goes past the house with the two Rottweilers.
104. Birds (ornithophobia) — the only witness lives above the busiest pigeon square in the city.
105. Insects (entomophobia) — her grandfather leaves her his beehives, and a debt only the honey can pay.

Natural environment

106. Heights (acrophobia) — for ten years she has taken only ground-floor jobs, and the firm that hires her is moving to the thirty-first floor.
107. Thunder and lightning (astraphobia) — a storm chaser's daughter, on the day her father doesn't call in.
108. The sea (thalassophobia) — the research ship is the only way to the island where her sister disappeared.

Blood, injection and injury

109. Blood (hemophobia) — a medical student faints at her first incision, and her family has paid for six years of school.
110. Needles (trypanophobia) — the vaccine is required for the job abroad he has wanted all his life.
111. Dental and medical procedures (dentophobia, for dentists) — a toothache on day three of a month in the wilderness.

Situational

112. Flying (aerophobia) — her father is dying in Lisbon, and the sea crossing takes days.
113. Enclosed spaces (claustrophobia) — the MRI that will show whether the tumor is back.
114. Elevators — the job interview is on the fortieth floor, and the stairwell is locked.
115. Bridges — the only road to the hospital crosses the bay.
116. Tunnels — the border crossing runs under the mountain.
117. Driving — he hasn't driven in twenty years, and his daughter's wedding is three states away during a rail strike.

Other

118. Vomiting (emetophobia) — the honeymoon is a cruise.
119. Choking — he hasn't eaten in public for a year, and the deal will be closed over dinner.
120. Clowns and costumed characters (coulrophobia) — she's hired to photograph a children's party, and the entertainer arrives.

Fear, wound and lie

Writers often use these words loosely, but they name different things, and a character tends to hold together when they line up:

• The wound is what happened: an event in the past that still has a grip.
• The lie is what the character concluded from it, a belief that once kept them safe.
• The fear is the future they're trying to prevent, usually the wound happening again.
• The flaw is what the fear makes them do.

The guide to character development covers the wound and the lie in depth. The fear is the link between them and the plot. The wound is over and the lie is invisible, but the fear makes the character act, and you can put what they fear on the page.

Follow one character down the chain and watch what it does to a single decision:

Nothing in the offer is dangerous. The fear changes what Ruth can say yes to tonight, and that one answer gives the plot a cost it can raise. At the climax the hospital loses power, and there is no week.

Classic novels run the same chain. In A Christmas Carol (1843), Scrooge's wound is a boyhood left at school, “A solitary child, neglected by his friends”; his lie is that money is the only safety; and Belle names the fear: “You fear the world too much.” Henry Fleming in The Red Badge of Courage (1895) shows that a fear doesn't need a wound. Never under fire, he tries “to mathematically prove to himself that he would not run from a battle,” and in chapter 6 “He ran like a rabbit.” Fear also sits underneath many flaws: the character flaws list has fear of failure and fear of abandonment among its psychological flaws, because each one shows up as a habit that hurts.

Show fear in a scene

“She was terrified” is a label. Readers believe fear when they see what it does to the body, to behavior and to choices, which is show, don't tell applied to a single emotion. Use one or two of these at a time:

• The body. A racing heart, a dry mouth, cold hands, shallow breath, attention narrowing to one thing. Some people freeze. Pick one precise sign: hands that won't unclench do more than a pounding heart.
• Avoidance. The seat farthest from the window, the route that adds twenty minutes, the call left to voicemail.
• Checking and preparing. Buckles checked three times, a second flashlight, the exits counted on arrival.
• Speech. Talking too much or not at all, changing the subject, a joke at the wrong moment.
• Misreading the world. A frightened character sees danger in ordinary things, and the reader can see the gap.

Charlotte Brontë builds a whole scene from the last of these. Locked in the red-room as a punishment, the child Jane sees a light on the wall:

The order is the lesson: a perception, a sensible explanation tried and rejected, the frightening reading, then the body, then an action. The adult narrator steps in to say it was probably a lantern, which lets the reader see the distance between what happened and what fear made of it.

The revision never says afraid. It uses checking (the buckles), avoidance (the middle seat) and one sign in the body (the hands), and the reader supplies the word. The pounding heart is gone; it's in too many books to register.

Let a fear drive the plot

1. Find the fear behind the want

   Many wants are a way of keeping a fear away. A character who wants a safe government job may be afraid of the poverty she grew up in. Name the fear and you know what the plot should threaten.

2. Show it early, while it's cheap

   Before the inciting incident, let the fear cost something small: a party skipped, a longer route home. The reader learns the pattern before the stakes rise.

3. Put the want past the fear

   Arrange the plot so what the character wants sits on the far side of what they fear. The job is abroad, the witness lives on the fortieth floor, the only boat leaves at dawn.

4. Raise the exposure in steps

   Each act brings the character closer to the fear with less room to avoid it. In a character-driven story, that's one source of suspense: the reader sees what's coming before the character admits it.

5. Make the climax the exact fear

   At the moment of greatest pressure, the climax usually works best when the character faces the thing they have been avoiding, not a cousin of it. A drowning fear tends to end in water.

6. Decide what facing it means

   In a positive character arc the character acts despite the fear. In a negative one the fear wins. Some stories do both: Henry Fleming runs in chapter 6 and spends the rest of the novel finding out what courage is.

Oscar Wilde built a whole novel on one fear. Looking at his finished portrait in chapter 2 of The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891 edition), Dorian says, “I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young,” and wishes it were the other way around: “I would give my soul for that!” The rest of the book is the price.

With a draft in hand, ask the Strokes Assistant to review a run of chapters and list each scene where the character avoids the fear and what the avoidance costs. A stretch with no cost may be where the plot has stopped pushing.

Mistakes with character fears

• A fear that costs nothing. If the character afraid of heights never goes near a ledge, the fear is a fact in a file.
• The convenient fear. Introduced in the chapter that needs it and forgotten right after. Plant it early, while it's cheap.
• The one-scene cure. A lifelong fear that vanishes because the climax needs it to reads as the author's convenience. Let facing it cost something and leave a trace.
• Fear by label. “She was scared” on every page. Show it once, well, and trust the reader with the rest.
• Only outer fears. A character afraid of sharks but of nothing inside herself has outer stakes and no inner ones. Pair a physical fear with an emotional one and let the climax test both.
• A fear unrelated to the want. If the fear and the goal never meet, the fear can't drive anything.