Category Archives: Character Motivations

How to Motivate Your Main Character

You know, my partner Chris Huntley oft has said that the best way to rob a main character of motivation is to give him what he wants.  If you fill his need, he has no reason to go off and try to do anything.  Conversely, if you want to motivate a main character, take away something he wants.  Steal his jewels, rip his heart out, put the love his life in danger, violate his morality, end his way of life.  You pick it – you are the Author/God and the actions of your main character are pre-destined by the angst you give him.

Suppose you have a main character who’s problem is that he doesn’t want anything, doesn’t care about anything, and hasn’t had anything taken from him that he really cares about.  This happens to authors far more often than you might imagine.  So how to you solve this problem and get your main character moving?

All you need is one thing – one person or place or way of life that got under his skin, and somebody up and violated it.  And now, though he is still just as cynical and jaded about everything else, he is in a blood rage because of that one thing and will go to the ends of the earth (or beyond, in some cases) to satisfy his lust for revenge or to try and save that which he holds so dear.

For example, Keanu Reeves as John Wick (great movie, by the way) is a retired assassin.  His wife who drew him out of the business dies of natural causes.  Before she died, she ordered a puppy to be sent to him after her death to remind him of her and give him something to love.  And this incredible killing machine of a man, remains retired, and learns to love more deeply – until the son of a Russian Mob big wig kills his dog for the fun of it.  In the end, everybody dies except for Wick who is now back in business.

The options are endless.  Just pick one that is meaningful to you.  Choose a loss or a threat to something loved by your main character that matches one for yourself, and you’ll find you have no trouble conveying why he is motivated to do whatever you want him to do.

Melanie Anne Phillips
Creator StoryWeaver
Co-creator Dramatica

I do personalized story coaching.

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Your Characters’ Personal Goals

personal-goalsAlthough a personal goal for each character is not absolutely essential, at some point your readers or audience is going to wonder what is driving each character to brave the trials and obstacles. If you haven’t supplied a believable motivation, it will stand out as a story hole.

What is the reason a character becomes involved in the quest?  Do they simply believe in the cause, or is there something close to their hearts that is unique to them and can only be satisfied if the goal is achieved (or thwarted)?

Personal goals can range from through a whole range of issues such as improving social status, resolving a past inequity, proving something to someone, proving something to oneself, protecting a loved one, finding the truth, recapturing the thrill of past quests, completing a checklist, finding illumination and many more.

In fact, any goal you can think of could be used as either the common goal or a personal goal, depending upon whether all the characters are trying to achieve it or if it is the goal of just one character alone that achievement of the common goal will satisfy.

If your story has a common goal but no personal goals, consider adding more humanity and individuality to your characters by giving each of them a personal reason to participate in the overall quest.

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What Drives a Main Character?

certificate-of-justificatioA story begins when the Main Character is stuck up in the highest level of justification. Nobody gets there because they are stupid or mean. They get there because their unique life experience has brought them repeated exposures to what appear to be real connections between things like, “One bad apple spoils the bunch” or “Where there’s smoke , there’s fire.”

These connections, such things as – that one needs to adopt a certain attitude to succeed or that a certain kind of person is always lazy or dishonest – these things are not necessarily universally true, but may have been universally true in the Main Character’s personal experience.

This is how we all build up our personalities. We all share the same basic psychology but how it gets “wound up” by experience determines how we see the world. Eventually we reach a point where we’ve had enough experience to arrive at a conclusion that things are always “that way” and to stop considering the issue. And that is how everything from “winning drive” to “prejudice” is formed – not by ill intents or a dull mind but by the fact that no two life experiences are the same.

The conclusions we come to, based on our justifications, free out minds to not have to reconsider every connection we see. If we had to, we’d become bogged down in endlessly reconsidering everything, and that just isn’t a good survival trait if you have to make a quick decision for fight or flight.

So, we come to certain justifications and build upon those with others until we have established a series of mental dependencies and assumptions that runs so deep we can no longer see the bottom of it. This becomes the framework of our thoughts and the template for our behavior.

But what if the situation has changed in some fundamental way so that the entire pyramid of givens we have subconsciously assembled over a period of years is built on a false assumption – the one brick at the bottom that makes all our higher level beliefs and conclusions flawed?

Simply put, we can’t see it. And therefore we cannot help but assume that the problem lies with the situation or with the people involved in that situation, and not with our own point of view.

Stories begin at that moment – when the Main Character’s long-held subconscious belief system, world view, philosophy, or template for behavior comes into conflict with the world around him or her. And the story’s structure is all about how an Influence Character repeatedly brings this conflict to the surface in one context after another until there is so much evidence that the Main Character’s view is incorrect, that he or she must make a choice in a leap of faith: Do I stick with my long-held beliefs, even though they don’t seem to be solving the problem, or do I switch to a new point of view that seems to explain things, yet has never been tried?

Circumstances in the plot force the Main Character to make a choice, or his or her deliberation might go on forever because the evidence is perfectly balanced on each side of this thematic message argument. But in the real world, we are seldom confined in such a way and tend to perpetuate our points of view in the hope that things will eventually work out without having to undo our dearly held beliefs.

And that’s why psychotherapy takes twenty years for us to arrive at the point a Main Character can reach in a two-hour movie or a two hundred-page book.

Give each character a personal goal

Personal Goals are the motivating reasons your characters care about and/or participate in the effort to achieve or prevent the overall goal. In other words, they see the main story goal as a means to an end, not as an end itself.

Although a personal goal for each character is not absolutely essential, at some point your audience or readers are going to wonder what is driving each character to brave the trials and obstacles. If you haven’t supplied a believable motivation, it will stand out as a story hole.

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Characters’ Personal Goals

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Step 41

Characters’ Personal Goals

Personal Goals are the motivating reasons your characters care about and/or participate in the effort to achieve or prevent the overall goal.  In other words, they see the main story goal as a means to an end, not as an end itself.

Although a personal goal for each character is not absolutely essential, at some point your readers are going to wonder what is driving each character to brave the trials and obstacles.  If you haven’t supplied a believable motivation, it will stand out as a story hole.

Referring to the descriptions you wrote about what your story would be like if told through the eyes of each of your characters and about their personal issues, describe what each of your characters might have for a personal goal that would lead them to participate in the effort to achieve the central story goal.

Character Justification

Justification is the process of changing context to change meaning.  We see a clear example of this when a child comes up with an excuse for some small transgression, or even when someone says, “he made me do it.”

Justification is actually a good trait for survival or we wouldn’t have it.  It allows  us shift our point of view in space or time so we can perceive potential solutions to problems that are not visible from the original perspective.

The story of the Gordian Knot shows how spatial context can be shifted to find a solution to a seemingly unsolvable problem.  This exact same dynamic was employed in Raiders of the Lost Ark when the assassin comes at Indy with a sword and our hero just pulls his gun and shoots him.   Another example is “Don’t raise the bridge, lower the river.”

Temporal justifications are illustrated by the little pig who built his house of brick – not for a current problem but a potential future one, or every squirrel that buries nuts for the winter, rather than eating them all now.  Every retirement fund or medical insurance policy is a justification that actually creates difficulties in the present by limiting resources in expectation of a future life (which may never materialize).

All justifications are not of such magnitude or import, however.  Imagine, for example, a person, we’ll call him Joe,  who has a friend come to visit for the weekend.  Joe has a great time with the visit but in the morning when he goes to water his plants, he discovers his friend has parked in such a way to block easy access and he must walk around the long way to do the job.

Joe’s first reaction is mild anger at his friend for the inconvenience.  Almost instantly, he regrets feeling that way as he knows his friend was unaware of the issue.  So, he is able to dissipate some of his negative feelings by re-contexualizing the issue spatially with the notion that he would rather have his friend visit and have the problem than have his friend not visit.

But, this only balances the inequity by saying the benefits outweigh the costs.  So, Joe is still left with negative feelings due to the emotional value of his friend’s visit now being lessened by deducting the emotional cost of the inconvenience.  So, Joe, while watering, also tries a temporal justification by considering that he is a little out of shape and the extra exertion will do him good in the long run.

Joe now feels good about the extra walk and has fully eliminated the negative feelings and now has a positive cost-free perspective of both his friend’s visit and of the inconvenience.

Problem is, since the inequity has now been eliminated, the potential for further motivation is now also removed.  The end result is that Joe will not now consider buying a new hose to avoid the long walk around, which would have solved the problem once and for all for every visitor he receives in the future.

Bottom line – justification is neither good nor bad, except in context.  It may eliminate dissonance, but it also eliminates motivation.  If it perpetuates dissonance to continue motivation, it may, in time prove to be either a goal achiever or the preventer of a different, more important goal.

Understanding the mental mechanisms by which justifications occur can provide insight into our characters, furnish them with believable motivations, and offer valuable understanding for our readers/audience through the voice of the Wise Author.  And, by turning this understanding upon ourselves, we can learn to recognize these mental patterns within ourselves as they happen, allowing us to make a conscious decision as to the best perspective for our purposes, rather than subconsciously falling into habitual patterns regardless of their effectiveness in the current situation and circumstances.

Character Justifications

At the moment we act in response to a problem, each of us sees our approach as justifiable. If we later regret our actions or are called to task, we all have reasons why we should not be blamed or at least not held accountable. We call these reasons “Justifications.” To us, these justifications legitimize our actions. To others who find our actions unwarranted, our reasons seem more like excuses, and our actions unjustified.

Sometimes, we ourselves may be unsure if we are justified in our actions or not because there is a conflict between what our reason and our feelings are telling us. When we see no clear-cut response, we go with the side of ourselves that makes the stronger case.

How Characters Solve Problems

It is the nature of people and characters as well, to try and find a source of joy and a resolution to that which hurts them. This hurt might be physical suffering or mental torment. The resolution may be to rearrange one’s environment or to come to terms with the environment as it is. Regardless of the source of the inequity or the means employed to resolve it, all thinking creatures try to maximize their pleasure and minimize their pain. That is the primal force which drives us in our lives, and the dramatic force that drives a story.

If our environments would instantly respond to our desires and if our feelings would immediately adjust to new attitudes, all inequities between ourselves and our environments would be equalized at once. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Rather, to solve external problems we must apply effort to rearrange the material that surrounds us, and to solve internal problems we must adopt a series of paradigm shifts to arrive at a perspective that minimizes our anguish.

Characters’ Internal Paradigms

Characters hold onto outmoded views because they have built other views upon the outmoded ones. In fact, this is how we learn. We see something as an unerring truth, stop considering it every time we see it and accept it as a given. Then, we assemble our givens, look for patterns and accept the relationships between givens as being givens in their own right. Layer upon layer we weave an intricate web of interconnections, some based on the order in which things are expected to occur, some based on items or activities we associate as always occurring together.

Strength in Paradigms

When we encounter something at the top level of the most recently determined givens, it can be a relatively small feat to rethink our conclusions. If one of our base assumptions was wrong, however, there may be no way to reconcile the occurrence with our understanding without completely dismantling the foundations of our whole belief system. Not an easy task! It is much easier to discount the variance as an exception. Even more important, because we have not added the unusual incident to our knowledge base, but simply let it bounce off, the next occurrence of the same “new” truth will meet with the same strength of resistance as the first. We can hold onto our old paradigm unless so many different new truths hit us all at once that it becomes easier to create a new paradigm than to try and dismiss them all.

From the Dramatica Theory Book

Character Assumptions

We cannot move to resolve a problem until we recognize the problem. Even if we feel the inequity, until we can pinpoint it or understand what creates it, we can neither arrive at an appropriate response or act to nip it at its source.

If we had to evaluate each inequity that we encounter with an absolutely open mind, we could not learn from experience. Even if we had seen the same thing one hundred times before, we would not look to our memories to see what had turned out to be the source or what appropriate measures had been employed. We would be forced to consider every little friction that rubbed us the wrong way as if we have never encountered it. Certainly, this is another form of inefficiency, as “those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

In such a scenario, we would not learn from our mistakes, much less our successes. But is that inefficiency? What if we encounter an exception to the rules we have come to live by? If we rely completely on our life experience, when we encounter a new context in life, our whole paradigm may be inappropriate.

You Idiom!

We all know the truisms, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” “guilt by association,” “one bad apple spoils the bunch,” “the only good (fill in the blank) is a dead (fill in the blank).” In each of these cases we assume a different kind of causal relationship than is generally scrutinized in our culture. Each of these phrases asserts that when you see one thing, another thing will either be there also, or will certainly follow. Why do we make these assumptions? Because, in context, they are often true. But as soon as we apply them out of context they are just as likely false.

Associations in Space and Time

When we see something occur enough times without exception, our mind accepts it as an absolute. After all, we have never seen it fail! This is like saying that every time you put a piece of paper on hot metal it will burn. Fine, but not in a vacuum! You need oxygen as well to create the reaction you anticipate.

In fact, every time we believe THIS leads to THAT or whenever we see THIS, THAT will also be present, we are making assumptions with a flagrant disregard for context. And that is where characters get into trouble. A character makes associations in their backstory. Because of the context in which they gather their experiences, these associations always hold true. But then the situation (context) changes, or they move into new areas in their lives. Suddenly some of these assumptions are absolutely untrue!

Hold on to Your Givens!

Why doesn’t a character (or person) simply give up the old view for the new? There are two reasons why one will hold on to an outmoded, inappropriate understanding of the relationships between things. We’ll outline them one at a time.

First, there is the notion of how many times a character has seen things go one way, compared to the number of times they’ve gone another. If a character builds up years of experience with something being true and then encounters one time it is not true, they will tend to treat that single false time as an exception to the rule. It would take as many false responses as there had been true ones to counter the balance.

Context is a Sneaky Thing

Of course, one is more sensitive to the most recent patterns, so an equal number of false items (or alternative truths) is not really required when one is aware he has entered a new situation. However, situations often change slowly and even in ways we are not aware. So context is in a constant state of flux. If something has always proven true in all contexts up to this point then one is not conscious of entering a whole new context. Rather, as we move in and out of contexts, a truism that was ALWAYS true may now be true sometimes and not true at other times. It may have an increasing or decreasing frequency of proving true or may tend toward being false for a while, only to tend toward being true again later. This kind of dynamic context requires that something be seen as false as often as it has been seen as true in order to arrive even at a neutral point where one perspective is not held more strongly than the other.

From the Dramatica Theory Book