Tag Archives: Solar Plexus Chakra and character development

How to Use the Solar Plexus Chakra for Deep Character Development

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This is the next in a series about how to utilize my Writing Through the Body Method™ which uses the chakra system as a practical tool for uncovering a character’s desires, wounds, and motivations. By exploring these psychological foundations, writers are able to portray their characters’ behaviors, reactions, and responses on the page with greater depth and emotional truth.

For example, the Solar Plexus (third) Chakra rules Personal Power and Agency. The Sacral Chakra relates to how your protagonist takes action to accomplish intentions, goals, and dreams. The Solar Plexus Chakra says I ACT.

By considering how your characters’ take action will give you clues about how to move your story’s trajectory along, or where self-imposed obstacles might show up.

Below is a brief explanation of the Solar Plexus Chakra, its traits and characteristics, and some ways you might integrate its attributes into your character development.

Third Chakra – Solar Plexus Chakra

Location
Directly below the sternum, above the stomach

This does not directly apply to your character but is used for visualization purposes when doing certain exercises within the Writing Through the Body™ method, offered here as an FYI.

Primary strengths
Courage to take risks, ability to deal with crisis, strong self-esteem and strength of character

This is about how your character responds to situations that require action, whether self-imposed or an expectation from an outside source.

Primary fears
Indecisiveness and helplessness, blind rage and destructive anger, lack of focus or purpose in life

This is where you’re able to start seeing your character move, take action, respond to crisis—or not—as well as how their innate internal drive is expressed when they don’t take action.

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Writing exercise

Take some time to sit quietly, and think about the aspects of the Solar Plexus Chakra as they relate to all your characters. 

Write a sketch of a character that may not be materializing as fully as you would like, and answer the questions below as fully and exhaustively as possible. 

Tip: Every time you arrive at a new place of understanding or identify a particular behavior or response in your character, ask “why?” Continuing to ask “why?” is how we get to the deep psychology of our characters. 

Example: Your protagonist has the desire to move across the country, but something is preventing them from doing this. Is it an exterior obstacle, and if so, how do they respond/react to this obstacle. Or is it a self-imposed obstacle—a fear, a connection to a person or people that’s keeping them in place, or some other kind of internal struggle?

Questions to begin your exercise:

• Establish your character’s intention, goal, or dream. Why do they want it?

• Have they already taken steps to realize this intention, goal, or dream? If so, what are they? What’s left to make it happen?

• How will they overcome the obstacle(s) in their way?

Let me know what you discover in the comments.

As always… Sending you mad writing mojo…

Happy writing!

Johnnie
OOOOO

How Understanding the Solar Plexus Chakra Can Improve Your Writing

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Photo by Kourosh Qaffari from Pexels

A common expectation from readers is that we show them the development of our characters. Readers want to see characters learn and change. They want to see witness the transformation.

This applies to fictional characters in novels and screenplays, and it applies to real-life characters in memoir. In the case of the non-fiction book in the self-help/how-to category, it also applies to the readers themselves – your Ideal Readers – who may consider buying your book because they want to see a change in their own lives. They want to be the one who’s transformed.

A common method for creating this expected arc is to create plot points that put characters in situations that will challenge their modes of operation, create friction, and require new decisions to surpass the obstacle and reach their desires.

When we embrace the elements of the third – the Solar Plexus – chakra, we can begin to look at our characters, our people, in a more complex way. We can use the awareness our characters gained about themselves in relation to others through the lens of the second – Sacral chakra – and begin to think about how they behave and act (or don’t) in the world.

The Solar Plexus chakra is where self-awareness comes from, which informs a character’s sense of agency in the world, their ability to take bold action to realize their dream or desire. No matter the kind of book you want to write, your people’s sense of agency is what drives everything. It’s what shapes the story and, in turn, the plot points in many storytelling scenarios.

If you’re telling a fictional or real-life story your readers want to experience the journey of becoming right alongside your protagonist. If you’re writing a self-help/how-to book, your reader wants to experience that sense of becoming firsthand by living it.

As writers of stories (in fiction and memoir) or inspiration and instruction (in self-help/how-to non-fiction), we need to be able to discern what we know about our people and what they know about themselves, and we need to be able to impart those differences to our readers.

What do your characters know about themselves, and what do you know about them? Does your protagonist or Ideal Reader have a full or depleted sense of agency? That is, does she/he take action or just let life happen? When and in what ways does your protagonist take action or recede?

Please leave a comment below. I’d love to know what you discover.

How understanding the solar plexus chakra will improve your writing

Posted on by

A common expectation from readers is that we show them the development of our characters. Readers want to see characters learn and change. A common method for creating this expected arc is to create plot points that put characters in situations that will challenge their modes of operation, create friction, and require new decisions to surpass the obstacle and reach their desires.

When we embrace the elements of the third chakra – the Solar Plexus chakra – we can begin to look at our characters in a more complex way. We can take their awareness about themselves and the world – in relation to their responses to other characters – that we discovered by looking through the lens of the second – Sacral – chakra to allow our characters to turn those reflections from others back on themselves. This is where self-awareness comes from, which informs a character’s sense of agency in the world.

This is not to say that all characters will achieve high levels of self-awareness over the course of their individual stories, or even if they do, that they’ll use the awareness wisely. In fact, most of them will not. But as the writers of their stories, we need to be able to discern what we know about them and what they know about themselves, which will inform how much agency we give them. And we need to be able to impart those differences to our readers.

What do your characters know about themselves, and what do you know about them? Does your main character have a strong or weak sense of agency? That is, does she/he take action or just let life happen?