Tana French's In The Woods and the allure of damaged characters

Messy relationships are my jam thanks to the author's Dublin Murder Squad series.

Hi friends,

Tana French’s In the Woods (2007) is one of my favorite stories because it melds a police procedural with a detailed look at how relationships work in a thriller. As her first novel, it won the Edgar, Anthony Macavity, and Barry awards and kicked off a career that now includes nine books.

In the Woods impresses me so much because it engages me every time I pick it up. Each sentence pulls me along to the next without effort, which is my definition of a page-turner.

If I dig down further, the characters are deeply flawed. French carefully peels back layer after layer of character and story to reveal the exquisite agony of damaged people. Her main character, Rob isn’t a good guy or even heroic, but he’s interesting. Given what he's survived, I want to know what will happen to him.

Digging down even more, I realize In the Woods is a masterclass in the scar trope.

Here’s my synopsis:

One Irish summer day in the eighties, three school-aged friends go into the neighborhood forest to play, and hours later, only one bloody child is found alive (violence). The other two children are never seen again, and the boy, Rob, has amnesia about the event (scar).

Twenty years later, Rob is a detective in Dublin’s Murder Squad (profession). He's changed his name, and crucially, in his mind, he's moved from his past trauma. (hidden identity). Adult Rob is an arrogant loner, longing for his first big murder case to solve (macguffin, ticking time bomb). Rob’s partner is the most recent Murder Squad addition, Cassie (loner, politics, profession). For someone not yet thirty, Cassie has been orphaned, stabbed, and ostracized by a former friend(scars). Rob and Cassie get their first big murder case, but it's in Rob's childhood neighborhood (forced proximity, scar, secret). Rob hides his past from everyone because he doesn’t want to lose the case (ticking time bomb).

The victim is Katherine Devlin, a promising teenage ballet dancer (profession) from the neighborhood. Her sexually assaulted body is discovered in an adjacent archeological dig site (suspects, violence).

The victim’s family includes her ill mother and her developmentally delayed twin. Neither are reliable historians of Devlin's family life. Katherine's older sister, Rosalind, and her father are the critical sources of information. The sexual assault casts suspicion toward a male perpetrator (suspects, red herrings).

This is the setup you need to know. Now, I will tell you who did it and, more crucially, why: Roselind groomed one of the archeology male students to commit the crime she arranged because she was jealous of her sister’s talent. Even Rosalind has a scar.

I’m jumping over all the delicious twists In the Woods delivers to reach this conclusion because it's time to talk about scars. (If you have not, I still want you to read any/all of Tana French's books because they are fantastic).

As the narrator, In the Woods is Rob's story. He tells us that in the beginning:

What I am trying to tell you, before you begin my story, is this---two things: I crave truth. And I lie.

This story is a journey to find Katherine's killer and an unflinching examination of Rob and Cassie's developing relationship. The show-do-not-tell mantra is something we hear constantly in storytelling. It's easy to say show, but how do you do that exactly? French’s method is meticulous story details.

In the Woods shows Rob and Cassie's relationship development from their first meeting to the bitter end, along with all the tiny reveals in between. What continues to impress me (even when I'm not reading it) is how French teased these relationships out.

Both detectives are loners and socially outside the Dublin Murder Squad clique; from the start, their inexperience and arrogance allow them to bond quickly. Rob's attraction to Cassie is disengaged early on (cue him rescuing Cassie in the rain with her broken moped and how her humor quashes that romantic impulse).

Soon, he thinks of them as twins reaching out slow blind hands in a gravity-free and wordless space. They finish each other's sentences and protect and respect each other. Yet, beneath their loner status, they harbor deep scars.

Scars are beautiful in storytelling because they provide unconscious character conflict. Rob believes what happened in the woods twenty years ago doesn’t impact his life. He says he didn’t become a detective to solve his case. But we know Rob craves the truth, and he lies.

Perhaps my background, including my many years as a wound care nurse, predisposes me to favor scars.

Let's back up a minute to think about what a scar is.

A scar is the body's natural reaction to healing a wound. The scar creates a new surface to heal the damage, but the resulting tissue differs from the original tissue. In a scar, the wound never goes back to normal.

And here’s the bit that is important for us as storytellers,

The problem is that scar tissue lacks the flexibility and elasticity of normal healthy tissue.

Scars don't mean the wound has gone away. It has patched up the source, but what remains is vulnerable to breakage.

I love the scar trope because it's a structural character flaw. Characters aren’t even aware of the depth or vulnerability of their weaknesses until conflict tests them in the story. Even then, they may not become conscious of their scar, but as the audience, we see it.

Rob will never bounce back from his trauma, and neither will Cassie (her trauma is introduced here and continues in the next book from her POV, The Likeness). Their scars undermine their friendship. Despite their best intentions, once under pressure, their carefully constructed relationship built on trust rips open.

In storytelling, wound and scar are often used interchangeably. Thinking about In the Woods made me realize why I cringe whenever I hear this, but I never really thought about why I do this until recently.

A wound is a break in the skin or other body tissues caused by injury or surgical incision (cut).

Wounds are the original injury, while scars are the result; they are two slightly different but essential mechanics in storytelling.

Rob decides to spend the night alone in the woods at a critical moment during the investigation. That event rips open his scar. Cassie rescues him, and they make love.

Boom! It's the culmination of what I knew as a reader, but the characters didn't; they were soulmates. French showed us how perfect they are as partners in every way. And yet, In the Woods is not a romance; it's a mystery/thriller, so cue the damage unfolding.

Rob may have escaped the woods physically years ago, but emotionally, he never got out. The trust he and Cassie accumulated between them splits apart because of his inability to form adult attachments. Plus, the wonderfully devious antagonist, Roselind, gives it a good push. (My feelings on female antagonists in mysteries and thrillers are demonstrated below).

Given what French shows us, how can we apply these ideas about wounds and scars to our storytelling work?

1). Consider the wound as an inciting event for your character’s scar journey.

In Rob's case, a third-person narrator relates the events to us, and Rob fills in later with more details from the police report. We experience the terror of this childhood trauma through a flashback. Since all the information is new, the flashbacks are exciting and varied; they establish world-building.

The timeline of the wound may be in your character's past or an event that happens in real-time as the story develops. This is a terrific use of flashbacks.

2). Use the scar as an example of how the character has supposedly moved on and how that character progresses through the story. Is the scar a secret? If so, why is that important to the story?

Rob tells us he never thinks of the event in the woods, which is no longer relevant to his daily life. Remember, this is the same guy who told us that I crave the truth. And I lie. Although Rob has changed his name, acquired a new accent, and become a professional, his hidden identity is a ticking time bomb as soon as the murder location is identified as his former hometown. If he reveals to his boss that he was a past victim, he's off the case. Rob's ambition and his lack of awareness about his trauma sets up his tragic professional and personal relationship arcs. Even when Cassie reveals she knows his true identity, she hides it from their boss because Rob assures her it's not an issue. Her trust in him is sadly misplaced.

3). Show us the scar splitting open in the storyline. Save the Cat discusses all is lost and the dark night of the soul in the third act of a story. This is scar-splitting territory for our character. We need to see this happen to our character(s). 

Rob decides to spend the night alone in the woods because of his frustration with the investigation. He doesn't realize how inflexible his scar is. This is where we see Rob’s life start falling apart big time. His estrangement from Cassie leads them to make mistakes in the investigation. They eventually figured out that Roselind masterminded the killing but also missed that she was still a minor. She won't be charged with the murder.

Meanwhile, their professional and personal relationships are ruined. Rob is reassigned from Murder Squad, and Cassie eventually joins another division. She eventually becomes engaged to their colleague, Sam.

What do you think about wounds and scars? Do you use them interchangeably? Does it make sense in your storytelling worlds to use them to show related but separate events? Let me know in the comments below! I’m still thinking about how this plays out in other examples of the mystery and thriller genres.

Let us know in the comments.

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