Character motivations

[Bethany J.]

I've always been bad at figuring out my characters' "deepest needs". I'd read those brainstorming questionnaires and get to the part that asks, "What does your protagonist want?" and blank out. Beyond defeating the villain or solving the problem of the main plot, I had no idea what they wanted!

What helped for me was realizing this isn't a plot question so much as a character question. It's not necessarily about a physical item, victory, or solution they're after, although their deep need does motivate those quests. It's about what they crave most as a person: love, admiration, security, etc. Maybe that's pretty obvious...I'm not sure why it eluded me for so long!

It recently occurred to me to phrase that question like this:
"[Protagonist] desperately needs to feel _____".

For my current WIP, when I phrased it like that it was pretty easy to pinpoint each character's motivation:

- Daik desperately needs to feel free.
- Brev desperately needs to feel like an adult.
- Joney desperately needs to feel right with God (and others).
- Marc desperately needs to feel understood.

How do you go about understanding your character's deepest motivations? What are some of them?

[Kristen]

Randy Ingermanson distinguishes between the story goal and the character's life ambition. That really helped me get a handle on things. Blayse's story goal is to unseat the new CEO of her late father's company. Her ambition is to be as respected in her field as he was in his. Her biggest fear is of failure.

[Bethany J.]

Oh, it's a good idea to pinpoint their biggest fear too! And that's a good separation to make, between the story goal and the ambition. I don't know that all my characters have a "life ambition"...yet! I will have to think on that one.

[j2starshine]

That is a great idea, Bethany. I will have to try it. I have had trouble with characters myself, but I discovered that it was tied into my own life and all the walls and barricades I have up/had up to protect my heart. I blogged about it a year or so ago, but it was eye opening to see how my writer journey was interconnected with my life journey. That said, I still have trouble pinpointing those desires and feelings. I'm still a work in progress as is my writing. ;-)

[Kessie]

Ooh, that's a good way of phrasing it! I think in the story I'm writing now, my protag desperately needs to feel respected.

I'll have to think about the others. Thanks!

[Bethany J.]

That is interesting to think about, j2starshine! (Writing life interconnected with real life.) Do you mean that you refused to have ambitions or desires, to protect your heart?

You're welcome, Kessie! I was hoping that that phrasing could give other writers a new way to think about it too.

[beckyminor]

Being a seat-of-the-pantser like I am, I find working my way through the story goal tends to reveal my characters' internal motivations, desires, and needs. Unfortunately, as things come to me, that does tend to require some backtracking so I can build in the right foundation for certain reactions or problems.

As for what my most recent protagonist, he most desperately needs to feel competent. (Which is ironic, because he is already, but just doesn't believe it.)

For the WIP I'll be tackling in September, my protag there has a desperate need to feel safe.

Gah! Looks like j2starshine's situation of personal life experiences worming their way into writing is alive and well here. I know I wrestle with constant feelings of being a bumbler and that I'm only one mistake away from everyone finding out that I actually have no idea what I'm doing...and as a child growing up with dying/disengaged parents, feeling endangered was a daily struggle. Ah, writing as therapy...

[Bethany J.]

I used to be primarily a seat-of-the-pantser, but now I can't bring myself to just throw words down - it kills my inspiration to have no aim. I also find I can't write well without *knowing* the characters deeply. I've been working on my main WIP, a trilogy, for 8 years now, so I'm incredibly familiar with the characters and writing them is second-nature to me. This new WIP is a lot of fun because I don't know the characters nearly as well (even though I wrote a partial first draft for it years ago...mostly garbage). It's great to immerse myself in some fresh new characters and really understand them!

Hehe, I can relate to some of my characters' motivations too, particularly Joney's. She struggles with legalism (usually trying to be right with God through her own behavior) and that's something I've certainly battled too; in many ways she's me in my early teens, except more fearful. And the final guy, Marc, I started to understand best once I realized that he was my same Myers-Briggs personality type, INFJ. His deepest desire is mine too...to have kindred spirits who "get" me (and love me anyway).

[Ranger Varon]

James' greatest desire is to live up his ideals of courage and nobility and gentleness and biggest fear is the fear of reaching out to anyone and getting hurt.

[fluke]

That is a good way to think about it. Time to open up the character profiles and slip these in.

Peter's desperately needs to feel like part of a group.
Karl desperately needs to restore his family name.
Michael desperately needs to feel like a hero.

[Kristen]

Something I learned from Rachel Hauck at the ACFW conference last year was to ask "why?" until you dig down to your character's core. For example, Blayse's biggest fear is of failure.

Why?

Because she thrives on success.

Why?

Because she's trying to live up to her father's example.

Why?

She overlooks the fact that he was a workaholic who worked himself into an early grave.

Why?

Because she derives her sense of self-worth from her performance instead of on her identity in Christ.

Mind blown. Thanks, Rachel.

[Bainespal]

Aug 22, 2013 8:27:35 GMT -5 beckyminor said:

As for what my most recent protagonist, he most desperately needs to feel competent. (Which is ironic, because he is already, but just doesn't believe it.)

That's potentially a very strong character arc, like Elend in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy. I think it's better to make the character afraid of something specific. Feeling incompetent is probably just a more specific version of being afraid of failure, but I would think that specific fears are generally more desirable for character arcs. (But then, I haven't done a whole lot of character-driven writing.)

[Bethany J.]

Kristen - That's a great trick! Thanks!

[stormiel]

I usually start off with a Myers Briggs personality type then dive into the character's life. At first personality types really messed me up. Then I discovered that my best friend, who has a wildly different background than me, also has the same personality type (we are both INFJ types also). That's when it clicked that a personality type is just a way a person processes the world around them. My friend and I are at different points on the scale. She leans far towards the F side and I lean a little closer to to the T side and it makes a world of difference between us. She's heavily emotional. I am too but I keep it in check with reason. I hide my feelings. She doesn't. I bottle it up. She lets it out. I find a physical outlet for anger (punching bag, running and such). She finds a verbal outlet. Both of us immediately want to fix everything.

Once I got through the personality type hurdle and was able to differentiate characters that way then I was able to take situations and see how they would react and start to question why. I think the more you ask why the more you end up diving into a character's past. Why do they see things like this? What made them this way? Why do they treat another person like that? Why are they misunderstood by another person? Why do they misunderstand that person? What experience taught them to act or react? What influence did another person have on them and why did it make such a deep impact? How are they wired? What are their idiosyncrasies?

Then I think of the small stuff and add it in. What kind of cookies do they like? How do they take their coffee? (Coffee says a lot about a person in my opinion lol). What do the small things tell me about this person? Like the woman who files her nails instead of actually listening to the person speaking to her. The little things tell me a lot about who this person is.

Then I look at it all and I look at the situation that they are in and who they are with. Who do they love? Who do they care about? Who do they trust? Who do they not trust? Why? What do they need from other people? What do they need from their situation?

Not everyone goes this route, but I write specifically Christian fiction. I don't do preachy, but I want to see how my characters would interact with God. Do they believe in God? Do they love Him? Do they know that He loves them? Did they get hurt? Will they allow God to heal their hurts? Are they legalistic? Do they understand grace? How does it help or hurt them?

Finally with all this in mind, I can look at my character and feel that I have a sense of who they are. Then I can ask how is life affecting them? What will make them hurt? What will heal them? What will make them thrive?

That's pretty much all I got. I just have to be really careful about not making them too much like me because then they all sound the same.

[Bethany J.]

Good thoughts, stormiel! I like to find out my characters' Myers-Briggs types too. (Hehe, I totally relate to wanting to fix everything immediately.)