The Wound and The Contradiction
By Barbara O'Neal | January 23, 2024 |
Finding ways to deepen characterization
Over the holidays and now into the dark days of winter, I’ve been re-watching The Sopranos. A lot of former favorites don’t hold up, but Tony Soprano is a masterpiece, a combination of great writing with the perfect actor, and I’ve been enthralled. Really, the detail work in the show is remarkable and worth studying. (The New York Times published a guide to rewatching here.)
As I studied the writing, in this and a few other things over the break, I have been working on a theory of character rooted in two things, the wound and the contradiction.
The wound is the simple truth that every being carries with them a wound, a defining pain. The contradiction is that thing that sticks out in their personality or actions that is contrary to every other thing. Together, these two things will do a lot of heavy lifting to elevate your characters and make them memorable.
First, the wound. This is that thing that shapes them, a scar or mark or a memory they carry like a bag of rocks. It’s the think they can’t get over even (or especially) if it seems they’ve put it to bed. My grandmother’s father died when she was eleven, orphaning her and sending her through a long series of homes with relatives until she was old enough to make her own home.
I’m sure it’s not difficult for you to pick out a wound for yourself, maybe lots of them. The one we want for a character is the big one, the hard mark. A loss, probably, something that spun life in new directions.
Tony has been one of my favorite characters to teach for a long time, and I found even more to love this time around. He’s relatable and conflicted and piercingly human, but he’s also this tragic archetype that will never escape his fate.
We can relate to Tony Soprano because despite his status as a mob boss, he is everyman, a guy with a lot of responsibilities and a high-pressure job. He suffers panic attacks. He loves his children. He really listens when people talk to him. He’s a toucher, he puts his hands on people in gentle ways. By the standards of his world, he has absolute integrity. He rules his kingdom and his world with fairness and honor. He tries to prevent wars and unnecessary killing. He rewards loyalty. And he has an absolutely horrible mother he still wants to please.
Tony’s wound is his mother. She is a cruel and distant woman who is never satisfied, but somehow, Tony keeps trying. He can never be the fully realized man he wants to be because a big part of him is still that deeply wounded little boy who loved the mother who was cruel to him.
In the also remarkable television show This Is Us, all of the family members suffer from the same wound—the untimely death of the father of the clan, Jack. Each of them has suffered in a particular way, each not-coping with the wound in ways that profoundly affect their lives moving forward. One is a famous actor with addiction and insecurity issues, another a seemingly high-functioning professional with anxiety that can lay him out, and a chronic binge eater who cannot let go of the father she adored. Paradise lost, never to be regained.
Notice, none of these wounds are particularly original. There are only so many ways humans are wrecked, and most of them are rooted in not getting needs met in childhood, some way or another.
The wound gives us the material to build a character of great depth and width. If you know this wound, you will be able to build in relatability in a dozen different ways. Study trauma and the ways it manifests in personality and you will discover an encyclopedia of personality traits. Tony copes with his loss by serial womanizing. He blunts the pain by reaching for the arms of women, but he also suffers because he dreams of a family that can’t exist. Kate from This Is Us blunts her feelings with food, her twin brother with alcohol.
That leads us to the second half of the idea, which is the contradiction.
Robert McKee in his book Story talks about plotting from a quadrant of values. The lowest point is what he calls “the negation of the negation,” which is a complex idea of reversal which in plotting is the farthest place you can go from where you want to be. In character, that’s often the opposite of the main thing. If he wants love, for example, he doesn’t experience hate, he experiences hate masquerading as love. The main contradiction in terms of character is much the same. It will be something out of alignment with the top layer of character, a quality that almost always holds the seeds of possible destruction.
Tony Soprano’s main contradiction is that he’s a mob boss who suffers panic attacks so severe he has to see a therapist. Since secrecy is one of columns upholding the mafioso life, that presents a really big problem. The anxiety stems from his wound, his inability to make peace with his brutal mother, but at the heart of it, he’s a king archetype who doesn’t want the job. The anxiety, the wound, the panic attacks all hide the fact that he doesn’t want to be a mob boss. The way his wound manifests hold the seeds of his destruction: a mob boss can’t tell secrets, can’t have anxiety attacks, can’t fall apart.
But he does.
I write the Paradise Lost backstory quite a bit, which is not my wound but my grandmother’s. She lost her father and spent her life trying to recreate the paradise she lost. The contradiction is that she—much like Tony’s mother—was impossible to please. No marriage or family would ever live up to what she missed, so she spent her life wishing she could recreate what was right in front of her.
(Or at least I would not have said it was my wound. In fact, on a much smaller scale than being orphaned and sent away to relatives, I only lost that grandmother’s daily adoration when she moved away to California when I was seven. Wounds can carry weight even if they aren’t enormous.)
Contradictions can be layered, smaller ones adding depth. Tony houses a host of contradictions—he’s fat and smokes and has maybe a deviated septum or something that makes him breathe loudly, and yet, he is quite compelling sexually. Women love him. He’s the king of the New Jersey mob and has to sneak away to a therapist to help him overcome panic attacks.
I have always been a crunchy granola head vegetable and whole foods eater. I also smoked, kind of a lot. It used to drive someone I know completely around the bend—how can you be so healthy and then light up a cigarette?
That’s a contradiction. How can you add things like that to your character? How can you upend your reader’s expectations and break the mold a bit?
Work with this in big and small ways. Obviously it doesn’t have to be a wound from childhood. We are marked as adults as well, by death and loss and missing a big dream. Maybe a character didn’t get into the college they hoped for, or they missed going at all because no one could afford to send them. Maybe there was a deeply influential and damaging love affair at a young age, maybe with someone inappropriate, which brings shame along with loss.
What big thing left a scar? What little things? How do those wounds manifest in their lives? Brainstorm, and try writing down three, four, seven things that take you deeper and deeper into that character.
Same thing with the contradiction. What goes against the grain of a typical character, action they take that are not in line with their best interests, or might be a fatal flaw? In Game of Thrones, Daenerys Targaryen is a woman devoted to freeing the helpless, becoming the Breaker of Chains, but to do so, she has to be a woman of power, and (as happens all too often), that very power undermines her goals, turning her into the people she despises.
Look for little things, too. Brainstorm. Is this a beautiful woman with really ugly feet? Maybe feet that smell? It she a cop who is afraid of guns? What can you come up with that feels authentic and also challenging?
Most of us will never write a Tony Soprano, but it’s sure worth giving it a shot.
Who are some of your top three favorites and why? Can you pick out their wound and their contradiction? Tell us in the comments.
*Why the ducks?
Barbara O’Neal is the author of more than a dozen award-winning, bestselling novels, including the runaway bestseller, When We Believed in Mermaids, which has been published in more than 20 countries and spent many months on the Amazon Charts, as well as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Washington Post bestseller lists. Barbara lives on the beach in rugged Oregon with her husband, a British endurance athlete who vows he’ll never lose his accent and their zoo of cats and dogs. You can find more information on her newsletter and where to find her on social media at barbaraoneal.com.
I always wondered about the ducks, too. My gut told me they represented a freedom big T lacked. They could fly away! I grew up in North Jersey. Newark, Kearny, Nutley. Sometimes watching the Sopranos was like watching home movies, especially because of detail. The guy from the first ward who says pleurisy instead of plural. The rough talk and the sharkskin suits. The ability to kill and still worship their mothers. Thank you for this brilliant lesson. I’ll be spending time today with Robert McKee. And, favorite contradictory character for me has always been Scarlet 0’Hara.
I think you’re right about the ducks. And I love that the settings are so familiar to you.
Tony in therapy admits that the ducks fascinate him because they’re a family. He suffers a panic attack when they fly away and he tells his therapist (after some thinking) that that’s what he’s most afraid of, losing his family. But “family” has multiple meanings in the film, and Tony is an expert at telling himself what he wants to believe and hiding from the more painful truth.
I’ve never seen the Sopranos, but even so of course I know who Tony is, and I love the idea of his character and how you laid him out here. This was a wonderfully helpful post, Barbara. Thank you.
He’s iconic, for sure.
Hey Barbara — So much to add to the mental pot to let it steep. We watched the movie The Holdovers last night and it’s stayed with me. I said at the time that it’s genius to trap three broken people together. I saw then that the only thing they had in common was their brokenness. I can see now that what ultimately brings them together is that they are forced to share their wounds with one another. Their humanity is revealed and revived due to a sort of hyper-imposed empathy. I won’t even begin to list the contradictions, but with the hindsight of your marvelous essay, I can see the depth that they add.
Thanks to a gigantic infusion of insight from our Editorial Chief here at WU, my story begins with the revelation of my male protagonist’s most severe wound (among several). I can see today that perhaps my female protagonist’s most severe and enduring wound is a form of a paradise lost–crushed along with her romantic expectations as her counterpart flails on toward a destiny that is nothing more than an insufficient staunching of his original wound.
Damn, you’ve really gotten me thinking this morning. No big surprise. You always get me thinking. And feeling. It’s a gift, and I’m very grateful. Hope the coast isn’t being too cruel this winter. I’m sure it’s continuing to be a marvel, regardless.
Such brilliant insights into The Holdovers. Thanks, Vaughn.
Loved The Holdovers, and I’m so happy that Da’Vine Joy Randolph was nominated for an Oscar this morning; she was luminous in the role. Here’s to an era where supporting characters are written as meticulously as the inimitable Mary Lamb.
As for Vahldan, it was all there, my friend — just had to pull back the arrow a bit.
Now I want to find The Holdovers. The Paradise Lost wound is a very powerful one, I think, and there are always elements of misty nostalgia to it, painting the lost thing as something brighter than it was.
And thanks for your kind words. You’re such an encourager! The coast is pretty wet, but it’s not terrible. I still love all the thrashing of storms!
Thanks, Barbara…a wonderful piece. And as I read, I thought about my characters, found their wounds, realized that in the creation of story, realism leads you to imperfection. Life is challenging. We have all had our challenges and that experience finds its way into our stories. My father died when I was three…that’s my wound, and as I write it makes its way into my work. Thanks for highlighting a process writers cannot and should not ignore.
That’s a great insight, that realism leads to imperfection.
+1
Love that, Beth!
Hi, Barbara. I hope you are doing well. I just finished watching The Sopranos a second time. It was fascinating to notice all the things I missed the first time around. I had the same impression of Tony that you articulated here, but he was also needlessly mean to the people who were good to him. He and Johnny Sacks had a good working relationship. Yes, when Johnny was stricken with cancer, Tony never even visited him. Not once. And, then, he bought Johnny’s house at a deep discount and Johnny’s wife had to move in with her daughter. And, Tony was rotten to Carmela in so many ways. He was pretty much an absentee parent, buying off his children’s affection with gifts. Such a contradiction, as you point out. Wounds and contradictions are a great way to approach character development. Thanks for another thoughtful post.
Hi, Chris. Doing very well, thanks!
Absolutely, Tony could be extremely cruel, and most especially to Carmella. I am surprised by how much I missed the first time around. The details work is just excellent, and the writers plant a thing a long time in advance, patiently building powerful moments. I love it, even if I have to close my eyes sometimes.
Thank you for this post, getting my brain moving this morning. Dexter comes to mind, and Saul Goodman.
Dexter is a good example!
Terrific, thought-provoking post. Thank you!
Thanks for elaborating on “the negation of the negation,” which I find a little tricky to grasp!
Here’s a possible breakdown for one of my favorite complex characters, Walter White in Breaking Bad.
– wound: lost opportunity to be “great” and wildly successful, to be validated by society
– contradiction: crippling self-doubt–the truest cancer
I’ve somehow never seen The Sopranos but you’ve painted such a vivid and compassionate portrait of Tony that I now know I must watch it. Thank you!
The negation of the negation is one of my favorite things. When I get lost at that 3/4 mark in a book (and I almost always do), that’s the model I use to figure out the problem.
And I’ve never seen Breaking Bad, but that sounds right. I love the crippling self-doubt as the truest cancer.
Therese, the negation of the negation blew my mind. Desmond explained it really well here: https://staging-writerunboxed.kinsta.cloud/2023/09/20/desmonds-drops-the-limits-of-human-experience/ It was a lightbulb moment for me.
Barbara, what a meaty post! I find the contradiction fascinating–you end up doing the very thing you hate. Why? Human beings are endlessly fascinating. Writing helped me to discover my own brokenness and why I keep circling back to the same themes over and over: home, family, love. Love is a biggie–there are so many counterfeits. Thank you for a wonderful essay.
Late to the post, but wanted to thank you for reminding me about Desmond’s explanation of the negation of the negation. I was trying to remember where I read about it in a way that finally made sense. Of course it was at WU :)
What’s uncommon are posts so good that the reader goes back to them several times. That way, she can be sure she hasn’t missed something, or can reinforce a lesson learned. Yours today is such a post, and I thank you. Doc Martin’s sudden blood phobia (before literal wounds) would likely come from a psychic wound–his cold parents? I don’t remember it being fully explained, but maybe I missed a key episode. Like Tony Soprano, Doc appears to be an over-achiever in a field he actually hates. So, contradiction rather than wound would be the key. He’s much happier as a small-town GP than as a renowned surgeon. He wants to heal people, not slice them open.
I’m glad you spoke of smaller wounds. It seems to me that the idea of Big Wounds tends to obscure an important truth: the importance of a wound is established by the wounded character, not by others. Big, established wounds are easier to deal with, but wounds that are small and inconsequential to others can be massive to the one who suffers. Its seeming triviality can make the wound a source of embarrassment, something that must be concealed. I have a POV character who wasn’t wounded by a childhood experience, but the experience has stayed dormant (not been repressed) for decades. When related events lead him to remember it, a path is opened and the character’s destiny is altered. Thanks again for what Tony Soprano might call an ace post.
Yes, Barry! The wound is defined by the character. And the smaller wounds are sometimes invisible as wounds, like anything based in shame or societal expectations–a boy who isn’t athletic who feels shame that his body isn’t what the world wants it to be, or someone constantly berated in minor ways who begins to believe they can’t make good decisions. Dormant vs repressed is also a great distinction; the revelation can be a very powerful moment.
Oh, Barbara, I’ve not seen The Sopranos. Now that I’ve read your post, I’ll watch it!
You’ve explained an essential part of backstory in a way authors can grasp. I’ll share!
Hugs,
Dee
It’s a big investment of time! If you even watch the first season, you’ll see the arc.
Great insights, Barbara. Now I might have to watch The Sopranos and This is Us.
Thank you, milady. Thank you for this jewel of a mistress class in character development. So helpful today! Thanks!
I watched every episode of The Sopranos and very much related Tony’s character to my then spouse. Not that he was cold blooded killer/family man. But that someone can be so sweet, vulnerable and sometimes innocent yet still do horrendously vile things. And we still loved them. The thing with The Sopranos is that it allowed viewers to get sympathetically trapped in the story of a very bad guy. For a couple seasons. But then, around season 3 or 4 – the whole season was full of horrible crimes – like murdering women, friends, dismembering bodies, rivers of blood. And I sort of despised the writers for setting me up like that. I was that traumatized. I felt that sorry for a mafia guy. That’s like feeling sorry for Hitler because he was nice to his dog. I kept to the end only by curiosity as to how this tale would end. I’ve never wanted to rewatch it. With regard to the ducks. I think they represented innocence and vulnerability trapped, but even with wings, they cannot fly away. I think. I guess. lol.
I admit I haven’t made it to Season 3 yet. I’m still dipping in here and there in Season 2. I don’t know that I agree Tony is like Hitler. He’s definitely a villian in many ways, but I also think the complexity of his life and choices is interesting to study.
This is the epigraph I put in the front of my last novel, The Serpent Awakens. The focus of my writing has been the wound in my protagonist. Even the wound in other characters that are effected by the protagonist – what draws them to each other are the wounds. But that is how the light gets in. We can refer to the paintings and sculptures of Christ and his wound… as metaphor or reference. But unless you deal with your character’s wound you will not have a fully developed character.
Love that, Luna. And love your name.
Such a beautifully thought-provoking post. I know it’s often our childhoods that shape us – mine certainly did – but your focus on “big” and “little” wounds really provided a different perspective for me in honing in on a character’s motivation.
As for the ducks, my immediate thought was the metaphor (or a variation on it): “ducks are seemingly calm on the surface, but paddling furiously to stay afloat.” Which seems to apply to Tony Soprano, and perhaps the rest of us too.
Great insights on creating complex characters, Barbara–sharing in my newsletter!
Hi Barbara:
I imagine this reflects your presentation for the WU online university last weekend, which I was unable to attend, sadly. I’m also getting to your post a day late, so I’m fumbling the ball all over the place.
I think contradictions and wounds are essential tools of characterization, but I don’t think they are the only ones leading to depth. I’ve often considered contradictions a way to convey breadth in a character — they’re this but they’re also that — while secrets create depth: something is revealed, something else is hidden.
However, when, as you’ve pointed out, the contradiction lies in a “deeper” — suppressed, or unconscious — layer of the psyche, it can indeed provide exactly this kind of revealed versus hidden aspect. But for the contradiction to work, it has to at some point express itself, just as the secret at some point needs to be revealed. (By expression I don’t mean the contradiction needs to be explained.)
I’m a big believer in wounds, but again I don’t think they are definitive. A character can have a weakness — laziness, anxiety, cowardice — that defines the principle drawback to their leading a fulfilling life. A limitation — such as chronic illness (think TB prior to antibiotics), or being a woman in a man’s world — can function similarly.
Love this kind of discussion. Thanks so much for bringing such a meaty offering to the table.
I’m also late to the party here but had to stop in and laud you for such a meaty post, Barbara! I also have not seen the Sopranos, so thank you for taking this deep dive into its character lessons.