Nervous Wreck Protagonist?

Hi, everyone! I'm writing a protagonist with generalized anxiety disorder and I want her to be the hero of this fantasy story. Giving her this trait would be thematically significant since the story deals with overcoming fear. However, since she'll be going into dangerous situations and battling scary beings, I don't know how to keep her from crumbling under the pressure every time. Some ideas I had were making her take medication as well as giving her certain advantages from her anxiety - e.g. being prepared for most situations. Any other suggestions for making a strong character out of a nervous wreck?

edited 12th Jan '15 2:59:18 PM by derwafflehaus

I really don't think a generalized anxiety disorder will really work with your theme, since it is more biologically rooted. I think you would be better off choosing a more specific anxiety disorder or personality disorder that is more psychologically rooted. Then you can have the character go through characterization to become braver and more confident. Maybe they finally get a father/mother figure and/or a friend who pushes them out of their comfort zone.

exactly what I was gonna say except you said it way better. anyway I was also gonna recommend some good old fight or flight. If you get a big enough shock the rush of endorphins takes away anything unnecessary for survival like thought or emotion. It's your body's way of keeping you from collapsing in on yourself till the dangers either miles behind you or splattered across the wall. Be careful with it though. Too much too fast will wreck you, and not just mentally.

Some form of medicine to keep the worries at bay, like your friend suggested.

If it is high fantasy you could also use a temporary spell of fearlessness, or an anachronistically advanced psychiatrist's advice.

I think that if you use any kind of external solution like medication (or spells/potions), the story will ultimately fall flat because the character will just rely on that external solution. If your story is about conquering fear, it really does have to be an internal thing — something psychological, not biological.^note Like shiro_okami said. A character trait, maybe.

What if, rather than having an anxiety disorder, the character is just a coward? Character traits are overcome all the time in fiction, and "being a coward" is even one that's been done before — so you'd have other stories you could study to make yours work right. Edge of Tomorrow comes to mind.

So yeah. My best suggestion is "don't do an anxiety disorder; just make 'em a coward."

as someone who has an undiagnosed anxiety issue, I have to disagree with that idea. even if anxiety disorders tend to be rooted in biology, seeing someone try to deal with and 'overcome' it in a sense and end the plot in a better place both mentally and emotionally than they were at the beginning would mean far more to someone who does deal with those issues in real life, than just another 'coward overcoming their fear' plots.

I've seen that plot dozens of times, and more often than not they alienate me more than I can relate to them, or fantasize them. cowardice is not really the same as an anxiety disorder. cowardice is often considered a negative trait, something that's the character's fault, and for them to overcome. anxiety, especially anxiety bad enough for someone to qualify as a disorder, is not something someone can control, or really overcome. it can be reduced and managed, but it never completely goes away. and often someone with anxiety will need external help. very few people normally can actually pick themselves up and fix all of their issues themselves, and its even rarer if someone has anxiety issues. but there is nothing wrong with getting outside help. nothing in life is actually stopping someone from getting help from others in their internal issues.

if that's what you want to do, then great! just remember its not something that can be overcome in a traditional way. (there's probably more I could say here, but its not coming to me at the moment...)

You have a good point, there. Even so, what you have to keep in mind is that, for the sake of a story, "overcoming a character flaw" is a lot more dramatic — and satisfying — than "working around a mental/emotional disorder."

To put this in perspective, I have Asperger's Syndrome. There's a handful of movies out there about people with Autism or Asperger's. All of the "autism stories" I've seen have something in addition to the "working around the Autism" point. Adam, for example, is a romantic comedy where one character happens to have Asperger's. Rain Man is a road trip where one guy comes to understand his brother who happens to be an "Autistic Savant." In Community, Abed's Unambiguous Disorder-but-probably-Asperger's informs his character and how he reacts to the bizarre things that happen in the show. Parenthood has a child-character with Asperger's, but his role is more as a catalyst for the parents' shenanigans in a given episode.

The point is, I have seen absolutely no stories that featured Autism as a character arc. My guess is that it doesn't work to turn "overcoming a disorder" into a plot, and that most writers who have tried to make it work have failed.

So if you have a character with an anxiety disorder, it's going to be more of a character trait — not a story. It'll inform how they react to things, sure, but it won't be tied to the end-point in any way.

Now, you can use an anxiety disorder as a character trait, but if they're the sword-swinging hero you'll have to do some damn good writing to pull it off. Which is why I don't recommend it, and why I'd go with the "coward overcoming his fear" arc instead.

I don't really think Autism/Asperger's is really comparable to Anxiety Disorders in this case.

Autism and Asperger's are more of a character traits in fiction. You can't 'overcome' autism because it's not something TO overcome. its just a way some people are, and there's nothing wrong with that in and of itself.

an Anxiety disorder though? it's literally a person overstressing themselves disproportionally to the stimuli present to them, often to the point of breaking down. it is practically a well of angsting that never ends yet has no source. and in fiction seeing a character with an anxiety issue start in a place of misery and worry, and end in a state where the anxiety no longer controls their life would be a character arc, and one I personally would be quite satisfied with (if done correctly of course).

again though, it depends on the story. it would be difficult for your standard action hero to accurately have such a major anxiety issue if their gonna be fighting battles and whatnot. but it could work, especially if the anxiety is specialized in any kind of way. it wouldn't be generalized anxiety then, but there are many other types of anxiety disorders that could make a character a nervous wreck.

edited 25th Jan '15 12:13:13 AM by Jetyl

Fair enough. My comparison was pretty shaky, so I stand corrected.

Well, if you are going to give your protagonist an anxiety disorder, I think the only way you can feasibly get them into the Action Hero archetype in the first place is to have greatness thrust on them.

So to reach that, maybe give the protagonist a value related to "people should be able to live in peace" or something like that, and have whatever antagonist go against that value. That could nudge her from "worrying about me" to "worrying about them." From there, it evolves to the point where she's confident and action-y and heroic and it works.

At least, that's how I'd do it.