Ok, so there is this one sort of roadblock in my characters' history that I keep coming back to when I'm writing. Scars. My female character, Oze, has a trio of medium length, straight scars on her lower right arm, and my male character, MAxwell, has a deeper scar oj the bridge of his nose. The problem is, I just don't know what the backstory behind the scars should be. Please help!
You probably should have thought of the reason for the scar before you thought of the scar, lol. Did you add them just because they look cool? If they have no relevance to the plot, it might be better just to scrap them entirely. Maxwell's could be from a fight, since noses get broken a lot, but I really don't know about Oze's…
@"Write Like You're Running Out Of Time"
Haha, yeah probably should have. But I want the scars to be prominent the the building of the characters. And no, they weren't just because they looked cool lol. I just think that scars can tell a lot about a person, or even the opposite, give them a sense of unfamiliarity to strangers. I just really need a reason for how they got the scars. Also a side note, you know how some scars are more prominent than others? Well the scars on my characters are the ones that you don't notice upon initially meeting them, but the ones that you notice all of the sudden out of the random. If that makes sense.
Could Oze have possibly had a history with self harm? Light scars on the forearm typically are from self-inflicted wounds. Perhaps an animal attack? Or a childhood injury like falling off of something?
Here let me share the link to Oze, then we can discuss which history would work out best for her. I'm not that concerned about Max, because he used to get beat up a lot as a kid, so it makes sense for him.
Hmm… I'd say maybe a childhood accident would work better with her personality. She doesn't seem like she'd self-harm, but it's not completely ruled out since she keeps her emotions bottled up. Maybe she was being a bit too adventurous and ended up getting hurt?
That is a very logical possibility, thank you for helping me sort this out!
No problem! Glad I could help.
scars/injury to arms tend to be because a person was defending (like putting arms infront to protect from punches, etc.). not saying that this is always the case, but if she is a fighter, this could be from the times shes had to defend this way?
Also sometimes animal claws can leave nasty scars too (i know this all too well lol)
@Hac_KinG
Thank you for your input, and yeah, I know the pain too lol
Also sometimes animal claws can leave nasty scars too (i know this all too well lol)
Seconding this. My sister has thin white scars on her arms and face from her pet rabbit’s claws. (He’s not even a mean bunny - it’s just from times he decided he was going to escape from her arms.) They’re usually not noticeable until they’re pointed out.