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What Really Drives Your Characters?

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There’s a lot of writing advice that tells you to find your characters’ goals. If you can work out what drives them in their lives, you can use those goals to drive the story.

Most of this advice will tell that your character should have two goals: internal and external. The alcoholic detective’s external need is to find the killer while his internal need is to get over the loss of his wife, which is what drives him to drink. The young student at the school for magic needs to combat evil (external goal) while also trying to win the approval of her peers (internal goal).

Having both an internal and an external goal adds depth to your character. This is what makes them seem more real, more three-dimensional (as the textbooks say).

But characters’ goals change throughout the story. And they usually have many smaller goal to achieve on their way to the final battle. In Star Wars, for example, Luke Skywalker first wants to leave Tattooine, then he has to find Leia, then get off the Death Star, become a Jedi, and only then can he destroy the Death Star.

There is, however, one thing driving the character to meet all those goals, whether they’re internal or external. What really drives characters to achieve their goals are their values, their idea of what is most important in their life. The things that really matter to them. These never change throughout the story, regardless of the goals the characters pursue. Identifying your characters values will help you make sure your character is motivated throughout the story and acts consistently every time. [Read more…]

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12 Signs You’re Afraid of Your WIP

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Writers are regularly intimidated by what might seem the oddest thing: the work that springs from their own minds. If you have days when you seek a reason to do anything but write, you may be one of them. Not because you’re suddenly dragging your feet—but because, in one or more small ways, you started dragging them long ago. If that’s the problem, soldiering on may not net the best results. (Full disclosure, I just read the exact opposite advice on Facebook today—“keeping your writing … [Read more...]

My Superpower is Slacking Off

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It’s summer where I am, and the days are hot and heavy. Condensation beads the sides of my glass of ice tea. The dog rests motionless in front of the fan and the lines of my WIP, which should be marching across the computer screen like ants across hot pavement, are still. It’s summer. The season of unlimited time and no time at all. I forget this every year. September to June I’m mired by the school calendar, my days shaped by carpools and sporting events, by ballet classes and dance … [Read more...]

Motivating the Reluctant Protagonist

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In a recent workshop I gave, two of my students had a similar problem: both their protagonists were stubbornly resistant to doing what the story required of them. This suggests the often-encountered problem of a writer trying to force a character into doing something contrary to her nature. But that wasn't the case here. Instead, the characters were consistent and credible within their fictive worlds. They just were having difficulty facing up to the challenges their stories presented. One … [Read more...]

Motivation: Make Writing Dessert Again

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I admit it. For years I hesitated to invite anyone into my home, cringing even when my parents crossed the threshold. If there is a way to keep a house clean while sharing it with a husband, two children, three dogs and a Maine Coon cat, I haven’t found it. Dust happens. Fur happens. Clutter happens. My kitchen was the stuff of nightmares. The forty-year-old popcorn ceiling literally came apart at the seams, raining bits of plaster on me while I attempted to cook. My husband unsuccessfully … [Read more...]

Just Tie the Darn Knot

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My nine-year-old son is so much like me, it hurts. He's sensitive and earnest; he dislikes conformity, even when it's in his best interests; he can be literal-minded and pedantic; and when he's anxious, he tends to adopt a "my way or the highway" mentality that's the very epitome of unhelpful. He's also curious, creative, intelligent, strong-willed, and has a social justice streak a mile wide. There are pros and cons to this similarity. We understand each other without needing to put in any … [Read more...]

Why Do You Write? And Why Aren’t You Writing?

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Alone is a reality TV show where ten competitors get dropped off on various parts of Vancouver Island, and are forced to figure out how to survive by themselves.  The last one standing won half a million dollars. My son is charmed by tales like My Side of the Mountain and Hatchet, and my husband is a fair outdoorsman.  As for me, I’d be the idiot who dies in the first hour because I tripped on a limpet shell and managed to strangle myself with my own rucksack. (I am what you’d call … [Read more...]

The Duplicity of A Character’s Desire

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Today's guest is the venerable Michelle Hoover, a true literary luminary who has won the PEN/New England Discovery Award been a MacDowell Fellow as well as a Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell University. Currently the Fannie Hurst Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University, Michelle also teaches at GrubStreet, where she leads the Novel Incubator program. Her debut novel, The Quickening, was a Forward Magazine’s Best Literary Debut Pick, a finalist in the The Center for Fiction’s Flaherty-Dunnan … [Read more...]

Tearing Our Passions to Tatters

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See If I Can Practice What I Preach Personally I've never cared for the word "succinct." Maybe you've noticed. Well, of course you have. But the terrifying events in Paris last weekend brought home something I'd been trying to clarify for myself for some time. It's about how we handle issues of craft and industry in publishing. And it's my provocation for you today. What if we're over-thinking, overwriting, overdoing just about everything we touch in publishing? Because we can. What if … [Read more...]