What's Your Character's Motivation?

Author: Stephen D. Rogers

You've got your story type, your setting, and your characters. Now what? The characters are all just standing there.

How do you get the ball rolling? Quick answer: start with a rolling ball.

The character who was holding the ball is now running in pursuit.

The character driving on autopilot is now hitting the brakes as the ball rolls across the street.

The character watering flowers now gasps or screams, freezes in horror or jumps into action.

That rolling ball provides what was missing: motivation.

What does each of your characters want? What do they want from life? What do they want before they go to bed tonight? What do they want from this particular exchange?

You should not make your characters go through the paces that your story requires. You should create the motivations that cause your characters to go through those paces themselves.

If you (or a reader) ever wonders why a character does something, and the answer begins, "Because I wanted--," there's a problem.

What the writer wants is immaterial. What the characters want is everything. And many of them will think they want everything, until the time comes to make tough decisions―tough decisions that you will force them to make.

Now that you know what each character wants, how can you delay gratification? That's conflict. The character wants something, and is kept from attaining that by the antagonist. Or by a facet of the setting. Or by the character's own flaw. Why not all three?

Conflict is often misunderstood as meaning only physical conflict. Imagine a character, however, who wants a glass of water to keep a coughing fit at bay. Unfortunately, the character is in the middle of an important meeting and is rightfully afraid to stand up and leave.

There's a lot going on there, and none of it is comfortable for the character. How the character acts―which bad choice the character makes for the greater good―will both reveal the true nature of the character and spin the story forward.

What does your protagonist desire from life? From a relationship? From a career? How does everything that happens play into those possibly conflicting desires?

What does the protagonist desire from the antagonist and every supporting character? What do they all desire for themselves and from the protagonist?

How can you create motivations for the antagonist and supporting characters so that these motivations are what frustrate the protagonist?

When you create this mesh of competing desires and motivations, you create a story that doesn't seem contrived. As readers, our sense of life-like is fulfilled, even when we know that of course the story is nothing but contrived by the writer.

You create three-dimensional or fully rounded characters by providing them inner conflicts. The character desires a promotion but desires to remain in the background. The character desires love but desires not to risk being hurt. The character desires to be an individual but desires the comfort of belonging.

Force your character to make choices between desires of equal value. People struggle because they both desire love and desire to protect their feelings. People do not struggle trying to decide whether to attend their wedding or hit the store before a sale ends. Neither should your characters.

What do your characters want? How many ways can you find to delay that gratification, ways that flow naturally from the setting or the desires and motivations of the other characters?

What's Your Character's Motivation?

Author: Stephen D. Rogers

This column first appeared on DM in 2008, but we think you'll agree that it still has some good information!

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