Find Your Fictional Characters’ Energy Motivators

How an ancient philosophy of energy can help you create better characters

by Deborah-Zenha Adams

It doesn’t matter what genre you’re writing — characters are the lifeblood of your story.  No matter how perfectly-plotted, tightly-structured, and wildly creative your story is, readers might not stick with it if the characters are hollow, bland, or just plain unbelievable.

You get that. We all get that. Characters must be well-rounded and fully-realized, with both positive and negative qualities to make them realistic and relatable. So why do our characters still sometimes ring hollow? More importantly, what can we do to ramp up the authenticity of the players in our fiction?

There are lots of charts and templates and lists of personality quirks that you can use to flesh out your characters, but here’s a caveat: you can’t just stick one trait onto an otherwise purely good or purely evil character and expect readers to fall for it. Flaws come in clusters, and they come from a source. If you’ve tried to develop in-depth psychological profiles of your protagonist and antagonist but they still aren’t breathing, I’ve got a quick and easy tip to offer.

Try using chakras.

What are Chakras?

Chakra is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘wheel,’ and it refers to wheel-like masses of spinning energy that helps to maintain health within the body and mind. Sometimes the energy wheels will be called spinning disks or even flowers. Mind you, these aren’t physical objects, but part of the subtle energetic body. The concept of chakras is ancient, and found in a great many spiritual and philosophical systems. It’s also a lot more complex than a blog post or a workshop can convey.

But have no fear. You don’t need to understand the fine points in order to create well-rounded and unique fictional characters.  In fact, we aren’t going to refer to chakras again after this introduction. Let’s just call it energy and move forward. When you’ve tried this system once or twice, you’ll find that it’s both easy and fun to use, and it adds a wealth of dimension to your writing.

How Can a Character’s Energy Status be Useful to the Writer?

You’ve surely run across a character in a book or story that just didn’t resonate. Maybe you couldn’t quite put your finger on the problem, but that character never won your affection. The likeliest cause is that the author failed to go beyond the surface and connect the dots in that character’s personality.

Anyone can design a villain who is 99% stereotypical evil, and give him an affection for puppies. You know, just to make him “well-rounded.”  While readers may not explore the why of it, they’ll know something’s off, something’s not working. They might even give up without finishing the story, or worse — never read that author again.

How do you Fix a Shallow Character?

One way to find your character’s depth is by incorporating a cluster of related energetic traits. Let’s say your protagonist is anxious, nervous, or just vaguely tense about nothing in particular. Now a single instance of anxiety isn’t a symptom of anything in particular. Maybe she just drinks too much coffee. But when your character is acting from an Earth Energy imbalance, for example, there will be a cluster of related behaviors. That character’s entire lifestyle will be affected — eating habits, housing, clothes, job, car, social interactions, you name it.

In my 7-part series of blogposts, I explain how to identify defining emotional and physical reactions to the world and how to use those clusters of energies to infuse life into your characters. This is Part 4 — Air Energy.

LINK TO PART 1, PART 2, PART 3

Part 4 — Air

You can find links to the other posts on my blog.

The Air Energy is associated with the ability and willingness to love and to serve others.

•          Loving
•         Compassionate
•         Empathetic
•         Peaceful
•        Centered
•         Content

A healthy Air Energy is built on balanced Earth, Water, and Fire. With Earth providing a stable and secure base, Water providing positive self-image and flow, and Fire providing determination and vision, Air Energy can move us forward with gentle determination, the way a spring breeze carries pollen to create new life. Characters with Air equilibrium seem to float through life, taking everything in stride and moving effortlessly toward the future.

Air Energy’s primary function is to serve as the pump that allows a heart to open and to love. These characters have compassion and empathy, a healthy self acceptance, and the ability to serve others.

Classic Air Energy Characters

Beth March, one of the four sisters in Louisa May Alcott’s classic Little Women, exhibits most of the traits of a balanced Air Energy. She’s kind, loving, compassionate, and would be perfect if only she didn’t dislike housework so much.

Snow White, on the other hand, was as perfect as they come. Not terribly bright, I’ll suggest, but caring and empathetic, and she seemed happy enough while sweeping and cooking and taking care of her seven male housemates.

Some of the symptoms of imbalance in Air Energy might be:

•          Antisocial or withdrawn
•         Critical and intolerant
•         Lonely
•         Lack of empathy
•         Fear of intimacy
•         Co-dependent
•         Jealous
•        Martyr syndrome
•        People-pleaser
•         Unable to say ‘No’

An imbalance of Air Energy can be summed up by the words “I’ll do anything to be loved” or perhaps “No one will love me, so I won’t love anyone.”

Because energy is constantly moving and changing, there is almost always an imbalance. As mentioned in an earlier section of this series, every energy affects the energies above it. This means that your character with an uneven Air Energy will also exhibit symptoms of imbalance in the areas of Ether, Light, and Consciousness. (These areas are addressed in Parts 5-7 of this series. You can find links to the other posts at Find Your Fictional Character’s Energy Motivators

Classic Air Energy Imbalanced Characters

For lack of empathy, you probably think immediately of the wicked stepmothers in fairy tales, and you’d be right to do so. These characters get plum roles in almost every story you’ve read: Iago, Simon Legree, Napoleon in Animal Farm, and even in comic books with characters like The Joker.

These are just a few characters from classic stories who likely suffered from Air Energy imbalance. You can probably think of dozens of other characters from literature (and real life) with this same imbalance. Go ahead and leave your thoughts about them in the comments section.

Questions to ask about your character:

When you discover (or determine) that Air Energy imbalance is present in your character, take some time to mull over the implications.

How does Air energy imbalance affect your character’s behavior and outlook?

• Has she withdrawn from society, either literally or figuratively? Is she lonely in isolation or does it sustain her?
• Does she criticize and ridicule those who are kind and giving?
• Or does she give too much, leaving herself without enough money or energy to support her own needs?
• Does she agree with everyone simply to get their approval?
• Is she emotionally tied to an abusive partner or authority figure?
• What caused the imbalance in the first place? Was it lifestyle, stress or trauma, a loss of connection to the authentic self? Was it caused by some outside force?
• What other symptoms might be present? Start with the brief list at the beginning of this post and extrapolate.

How to Strengthen the Air Energy Association in your Writing

You can reinforce the effect of Air Energy by using subtle indicators of this imbalance. For example, you might

• Use words and phrases throughout your narrative that call to mind the Air Energy qualities: light, breezy, stormy, hurricane, zephyr, floating on air, angelic, peaceable, open-hearted, and accepting.
• Use the color green, perhaps in clothing, furnishings, cars, foliage, or food.  What does this color mean to your character—money or jealousy, nature or infection?
• Bring in other elements associated with this energy. Is your character a pilot? Does she drift from job to job and place to place like Thumbelina? Is she a heart surgeon? Does she have a broken heart? Does she hoard stray animals in the guise of helping them?  Has she hardened her heart against a person or a group of people or the whole world?

Practice & Prompt

1. Choose any character from your work in progress. Make a list of physical, mental, and emotional traits characteristics that you’ve already assigned to that character. For example, let’s say you’ve written: kind, compassionate, empathetic, works in a helping profession, feels that her efforts are not valued or appreciated, is often lonely.

Taken together, these create a cluster of Air Energy attributes. The foundational personality of this character is still in a state of balanced Air, but those last two indicate that she’s in danger of losing her equilibrium. As your story progresses, will that work for or against your character?  Will it save her or plunge her deeper into trouble of her own making? Is she on the verge of imbalance in other areas? Does she perceive it or ignore it or is she too driven to care?

2. Where did her imbalance originate? When and why did the imbalance fluctuate and grow stronger or weaker? What scenes relay this information to the reader?
3. How might the imbalance be mitigated within the context of her story?
4. What element of your theme is manifested in Air Energy? How can you use the character’s imbalance to strengthen the theme and vice versa?

One or more of your characters will almost certainly be dealing with Air Energy imbalance. Now that you’ve experimented with ways to use that imbalance to flesh out a character, you’ll want to move on to other characters and their imbalances. Part of the fun of this character building system is watching how the energies dance with and poke at each other.

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Part V: Ether Energy will appear soon. You can find links to it and the other posts at Part 1-Earth Energy on my blog. Part 2-Water Energy on Laura’s Books and Blogs. Part 3-Fire Energy at The Muffin   

There are lots and lots of chakras, but I’m only using the primary seven in this series to give you an idea of how you might employ them in fiction. (If you’d like more information after reading this article, you can grab the free Chakra Basics PDF from my website )

by Deborah-Zenha Adams

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What about you, scriveners? Have you ever examined your characters in terms of chakras? Do you think this system would help bring your characters to life? What makes a fictional character seem authentic or inauthentic to you? 

About Deborah-Zenha Adams

Deborah-Zenha Adams is an award-winning author of novels, short fiction, CNF, and poetry, and served as executive editor of Oconee Spirit Press for ten years. She is also a certified naturalist and a yoga educator, a vegetarian, and a Prius owner. Yes, she’s the living stereotype of a liberal tree-hugger.

When not writing, sauntering, or practicing yoga, she partners with yoga studios throughout the southern United States to conduct her signature workshop, Write Your Yoga Story (even if you aren’t a writer). You can find her on Facebook. 

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