Writers in the Storm

You can create charming good guys and vicious villains, the hookiest of hooks, brilliant worlds, and twisty plots with the most intense cliffhangers, but if readers don’t care about your characters, they won’t recommend your book to their friends. Or worse, they’ll put the book down and never buy your books ever again. Why would they do that? Because they didn’t connect with your protagonist, antagonist, or viewpoint characters. Your reader wants to connect with at least one of those characters. They open the book wanting to love or hate your characters. But creating characters your readers connect with takes work. What makes readers not care? It could be one of several problems.

Why Readers Put Down Your Books

You’ve put a lot of work into writing your book. You love your characters and your story but your readers, be they critique partners, alpha or beta readers, or your book reviews, tell you your book was boring, or they couldn’t finish your book and put down your book, or they didn’t like it at all. It hurts. A lot. But it’s time to put aside your emotions and examine your reader and your story. 

If one reader has issues, the reader is probably not your target audience. If more than one reader makes similar complaints, it’s probably something your book does or doesn’t do. Evaluate it as objectively as you can. (Ask for help if you can’t.) Does it suffer from one of these common issues? 

• There is no problem that matters. 
• The conflict happens off stage.
• Unrelated cause and effect.
• Your character is a stereotype or trope. 
• You aren’t putting your reader in your character’s shoes.  
• Your character didn’t earn the ending. 

No worries. All authors experience at least one manuscript with faults that stop the reader. Take heart. There are ways to fix these problems in your writing. You can learn to create characters your readers will love or hate and will pay to read more of their stories.

The Problem Doesn’t Matter

If your character is happy and content, why should the reader care? Even if the story problem is a big bad guy or a world-ending catastrophe, if your character doesn’t care deeply and personally, neither will your reader. Being an altruistic superhero isn’t enough. The problem must matter to the protagonist or it won’t matter to the reader.

Remember the 2008 movie, The Incredible Hulk? Not a blockbuster. People didn’t connect with the film or the character because Banner’s needs and problems were largely unconnected to Hulk. In fact, he wanted to control Hulk. And Hulk’s limited reactions were usually “Hulk angry” or “SMASH!” 

Compare that movie to the deep characterization of the 2018 movie, Black Panther. We see T’Challa as a child yearning for a place he’s never seen. We feel the trauma of his father’s murder and we know his need to find his place, his destiny, to be the man his father wanted him to be. Most people can relate to that. Watching him struggle and fail and struggle again against a foe and against himself, we grow to care about him and his challenges. The problems T’Challa faced mattered both personally and in his larger world. His personal connection to the problem became the viewers’ connection. 

We human beings gravitate toward the personal.

The challenges we choose or we make for ourselves may have some level of altruism, but deep down, it is something specific and personal. Look for a personal connection your protagonist has with the problem in your story. Ask yourself: 

• Is this problem one that he could solve easily by doing one thing? 
• Does the problem challenge his beliefs, his morals, his sense of duty, or his worldview?
• Does the problem test his resolve to reach a solution?
• If he does not face this challenge, will it change his sense of success or worthiness? 
• What does he fear will be the catastrophe if he doesn’t act?

The Conflict Occurs Off-Stage

In fiction, conflict exists when some person, place or thing keeps your character from what he wants. It’s what forces your character to re-assess what he wants or how he’s going to get it. 

The reader is interested in how your character struggles to get what he wants. Describing action which takes place off-stage is a variation of telling and not showing. It distances the reader from your characters and from your story.

Guess what? If you avoid conflict in real life like many introverts do, there’s a good chance you’ll avoid it in your story. When the confrontation with that obstacle isn’t on the page, you must tell us what happened. So no matter how difficult or heroic that fight may have been, we hear it from the protagonist, which makes any actions he took less immediate and less important. A conversation or flashback can’t make him or the reader feel the immediacy of an on-stage conflict. And it can make him sound conceited.

Keep the story problem center stage.

Let your reader see, hear, taste, smell, touch, and viscerally feel his emotional responses to the obstacle. The reader can connect with those. Make those responses strong enough and it hooks the reader. Make them personal enough and the reader will not want to stop reading.

Sometimes things need to happen off-stage. Make certain what happens off-stage is not a pivotal point for the story. Backstory is an off-stage thing—usually. The character tells us about backstory; we don’t experience it with the character. Some backstory may be necessary to include in your book, but break it up into tiny slivers of information that you tell the reader over many pages. Let your reader walk in your characters’ shoes.

Scenes that lack conflict or tension.

A common scene that lacks conflict is a travel scene. A detailed description of a character traveling from point A to point B is a usually a bore even if fantasy plants and creatures fill the forest. Should your character need to travel, don’t drag us along on the journey unless something important challenges him or changes his course or you’re writing a travelogue. Instead of a travelogue, give the reader a summary statement or a jump-cut.

To keep the main story conflict center stage, ask yourself:

• How does this scene involve part of the story problem?
• How does this (scene or action) make your protagonist (or antagonist) closer to or farther from his goal?

Unrelated (or poorly related) Cause and Effect

If your protagonist acts in ways that are unrelated to the main story problem or unrelated to previous actions by your antagonist, you have created a haphazard appearing plot. There’s no relationship the reader can discern between the cause of one action and the effect. Note, we are not talking about subplot cause and effect. Your main story problem must remain both center stage and be a progression of challenges of increasing difficulty. 

How do you make certain you’ve got cause and effect?

For each scene in your book, ask yourself: 

• Do the actions of your protagonist challenge and confound your antagonist, and vice versa?
• Do your protagonist’s and antagonist’s reactions show how this action intensified their emotions and or needs?
• Is the character’s problem more challenging in this scene than in the previous scene?
• Does the action or reaction of your character lead him to try a different, more challenging action?

Your Character is a Stereotype or Trope

Stereotypes and trope-based characters are one-dimensional characters that go through the motions to fulfill the plot. The dialogue is task oriented and the characters only care about getting this plot thing done. 

There are some genres where character doesn’t matter as much as plot or location. But don’t fool yourself into thinking that character doesn’t matter at all. Your readers will respond better to your story if you give those stereotypes or tropes a little twist. Often in these types of stories, honor or duty can drive your characters’ actions. Give him a background need that motivates him. Maybe he needs to prove himself to his father. He could have done something dishonorable in the past for which he must make amends. You don’t have to, and probably shouldn’t, go deep into the emotions or needs, but sprinkle tiny doses throughout this type of story and your plot-loving and trope-loving readers will eat it up.

If you aren’t writing one of those genres, take a hard look at your characters. One or two one dimensional characters can glide through certain stories. Your protagonist and antagonist need to be more. 

To make certain your characters aren’t stereotypes or trope-based characters readers don’t care about...

Ask yourself:

• What about this character is like similar types in books or movies?
• What about this character is different? 
• How does this difference change the way he acts and reacts (from the other stereotypes)?

Put Your Reader in Your Character’s Shoes

Maybe you have a meaningful theme, a thrilling struggle, and intensely personal character problems, but your readers still don’t care. That often happens when you are telling instead of showing what your character feels or why he does what he does.

To put your reader in your character’s shoes, she needs to do more than see what’s happening. She needs to feel your protagonist’s doubt, his hope, his fear. She wants to hear what he hears, smell what he smells, taste what he tastes, feel what he touches and how his body responds to the situation.

Don’t know how to do that? Learn how a human body reacts to these intense feelings. Study why people similar to your characters think and act as they do. 

Do you need a degree in anatomy and physiology and one in psychology to put readers in your character’s shoes? Not unless you want to.

Be an observer.

Start with yourself. Record what you feel in which body parts and what you sense (sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing) when you experience intense emotions. Journal interactions between people you watch at the mall, the restaurant, or the public park. Save snippets of other authors’ writings you felt viscerally when you read it. Practice writing variations of those feelings. It will get easier and more intuitive as you practice.

You don’t have to create a good or likeable character. Even if your WIP is an anti-hero story or a horror story, your reader needs to connect to your protagonist or viewpoint character. Look for successful examples in fiction or (cautiously in film and television) Examples like: Sauron, Professor Moriarty, Hannibal Lector, or Shere Khan.

Read each page of your WIP and ask yourself:

• Does the character use as many of his five senses as possible on each page? (Hint: five on a page are the ideal.)
• What physical feelings are on this page? 
• What internal reaction is on this page? Or, What emotions are on this page?
• Am I using the same senses, physical feelings, or internal reactions over and over, or are they varied and different in intensity?

Your Character Didn’t Earn the Ending.

When you create situations and conflicts that your protagonist does not or cannot solve, the reader will feel your character didn’t earn the victory or the tragedy at the end of the story. Even in a story with an ensemble cast, there has to be at least one member of that team with whom the reader connects on an emotional level.

I get it. You love your characters so much you don’t want to hurt them that badly. That is what Janice Hardy calls “the Nice Writer Syndrome.” That can be deadly to your readers’ interest. 

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

HELEN KELLER

Throughout your book, your protagonist must make tough choices and do things that he doesn’t want to but feels he must or the antagonist forces him to do. Embarrass him. Set him up to make bold choices that frighten him. Make him fail even when he tries his best. Make him try harder. Create a situation where your protagonist must do something awful, so bad he can’t see a way to redeem himself. Make your character give in to temptation, then make him pay the consequences for his actions. Prey on his weaknesses. Break him. Make him claw back toward redemption. Make him avoid learning or improving until he can’t help but learn. Hint: the lesson learned is the theme of your story.

For most stories, the character’s pain and the way he deals with it are the emotional frame of your story. Your reader recognizes it and relates to it even when your protagonist is a superhero or alien.

One way to increase your character’s pain is to brainstorm different outcomes for each scene.

Ask yourself:

• What would he believe is the best possible outcome?
• How could that hurt him?
• What makes him change his mind?
• What challenges the way he thinks right now?
• Is what comes next the worst thing he ever imagined could happen?
• What would break him? 

Do You Need to Hurt Your Protagonist That Much?

Yes. You need to bring your protagonist to the edge of destruction. Bring him to a disaster that has the real potential of breaking him beyond repair. While some genres demand the disaster be a world-ending trauma or event, it doesn’t have to be. But your protagonist needs to think and feel the wrong outcome will destroy his world.

Making a horrible thing happen to your character isn’t enough. Why? Because horrible things happen every day. Horrible things happen to many of us. But none of us are who you’re writing about. You’re writing about someone specific. If the disaster you have planned is equally horrible for any of your characters, you haven’t found the right horrible thing yet. Why does it matter to this character? Root the disaster in your character’s greatest fear, his misbelief. For example, one of T’Challa’s misbeliefs was that his father never failed him. Yet his father killed his brother and orphaned his own nephew, who became “a monster of our own making.” 

Every decision your protagonist has made during the story has led him to this moment, to his dilemma. Meaning it’s all his own fault! Without that disaster, without his self-indictment, the reader doesn’t cheer for the character when he finally overcomes the disaster.

Learn to hurt your protagonist in the feels. No, not necessarily a bodily injury or even death. Start with something small but vitally important to him. Dangle it in front of him, then snatch it away. Pretend you’re just teasing until you can take writerly pleasure in torturing your characters. 

Having trouble getting to that point?

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• What choice would make your character find it nearly impossible to make? 
• What forces your character to feel powerless, hopeless, unredeemable, alone?  
• How does this disaster make the character blame himself for the disaster? 
• How does it make him face his fear and misbelief?

Parting Thoughts

We humans suffer various degrees of challenges every day. Friedrich Nietzsche said, “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” We can say the same of reading fiction. Our readers read to see how story characters react to suffering and what meaning those characters find in their suffering to escape or cope with real life. If you deliver a character journey where the protagonist suffers and survives and finds meaning, your readers will pay to love and hate your characters. 

How have you made characters in your WIP suffer and find meaning? 

About Lynette

Lynette M. Burrows is an author, a blogger, a creativity advocate, and a Yorkie Wrangler. She writes thrilling science fiction about women who make courageous choices.

Her Fellowship Dystopia series, My Soul to Keep and If I Should Die, takes place in an alternate 1961. Miranda, the daughter of America’s premier preacher-politician, breaks the rules and discovers the world beyond privilege is far darker and more dangerous than she knew. The third book in this trilogy, And When I Wake, will be published in 2024.

Lynette lives in the land of Oz. When she’s not procrastinating by avoiding housework and playing with her dogs, she’s blogging or writing or researching her next book. You can find Lynette online on her website, Facebook, or on Twitter @LynetteMBurrows. 

Images displayed in this post were purchased from DepositPhotos.com.

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

The best stories are the ones that come alive in a reader's imagination. They pull the reader into the story world and sweep them away in the struggles and dreams of the characters. For us writers, envisioning our stories is the easy part, and the trick is getting what's in our heads onto the page. When we don't, we get a story that falls flat and dies—and who wants that?

One of the best ways to bring our tales to life is to show them, not tell them. Sadly, this is also one of the hardest things for new writers (and some experienced writers), to do. "Showing" is a moving target that varies by which point of view you use, the narrative distance, and even the genre. What works for a first-person literary journey might not work for a multiple third-person thriller.

Luckily, there are techniques that help you better show your scenes no matter what perspective or genre you write in.

1. Create a Strong Point of View

Point of view (POV) is the silver bullet of writing. If you master this, 95% of the common writing problems a writer faces will vanish. A solid point of view puts you (and your readers) firmly in a character's head, seeing the world through their eyes, and experiencing that world as they would naturally experience it.

This lets you to decide which details to use when describing, what actions the character would take, and what they'd think about as they struggle to solve their goals. Seeing the story through a character's eyes means you'll write it as that character sees it, not as you see it. It helps keep you from pulling away and describing (telling) the scene from afar.

For example, a solid point of view changes a detached, flat sentence into something alive and shown:

Weak POV: Sara was so upset that John forgot their anniversary that she threw a vase at him.

Strong POV: Sara heaved the vase at John's head. "Does twelve years mean nothing to you?"

The weak POV explains the situation—it tells what Sara did (throw the vase) and why she did it (she was upset). The strong POV shows how someone in this situation would act—it shows what Sara did (she threw the vase and voiced her unhappiness) and lets readers figure out how she feels by watching her actions.

Writing the scene from inside a character's head allows readers to watch the situation and guess why the characters are acting and how they feel about it all. It makes them part of the story, not a spectator on the sidelines getting a detailed play by play of the action.

Look at your current story—what point of view are you using? Do you have one POV character per scene? Do you show the scene through their eyes? Are you describing things that the POV character wouldn't know or be able to see (common in weak or unfocused POVs)?

Try picking a POV style you're comfortable with and writing the story with that POV. For new writers, it's much easier to pick one or two characters and write from their POVs only. Trying to show the entire story from multiple characters or an omnificent narrator is difficult to do until you get the hang of it.

If you're not sure which POV style you prefer, try writing a scene from both a third person and a first person perspective. Odds are one will feel more natural for you, and for the story itself.

2. Control Your Narrative Distance

Narrative distance is how close readers feel to the story. A close narrative distance makes them feel inside the narrator's head (such as in first person), while a far narrative distance makes them feel as though they're standing off to the side watching (such as in omniscient third person). A closer narrative distance feels more immediate and intimate, as though the story is happening in the moment as the reader reads it. The farther the narrative distance, the more detached and impersonal the story feels.

Where you put your narrator determines how close readers feel to your story. If you're inside the head of a character seeing the world through their eyes, readers will feel a part of the narrative. If you're explaining the story from a distance, readers will be kept at a distance and not connect to the characters the same way.

For example:

Far narrative distance: It's over, Bob thought, realizing she'd never forgive him for hurting her.

Close narrative distance: He sank to the floor, numb. It's over. She'll never forgive me for this.

Narrative distance is closely linked to point of view, as you can see by these examples. The farther the narrative distance, the more detached the point of view feels. The closer the distance, the more personal the POV. The two work in tandem to dramatize (show) the story.

Look at your current story—what narrative distance are you using?

Does it feel like the characters are living the story, or more like someone outside the story explaining what's going on? Does it jump around from close to far depending on what's happening?

Try revising for consistency. Pick a narrative distance you're comfortable with and keep everything in the story at that distance. Some red flag words that often mean you're telling more than showing include: realized, knew, decided, because, and felt. If you see a lot of these words in areas that also feel a little distant, odds are you're telling from a far narrative distance.

If you're not sure what narrative distance you prefer, try writing a scene from both a close and a far distance and see which one reads better, and which is easier for you to write. But remember—the goal isn't to tell readers everything and explain the scene, it's to show them enough details so they can figure out the what and why by observation.

3. Show What the Characters Do, Not What They Intend to Do

Once you have a solid understanding of point of view and narrative distance, you'll be able to show what the characters do and bring the story to life. Stories are about interesting people solving interesting problems in interesting ways. So, show what they do, not what they plan to do.

One of the most common "tells" is to explain motive. My favorite example is simple, yet something writers write every single day:

She reached over to pick up the cup.

Here, we see the action (she reached over) but then the reason why is explained (to pick up the cup). We never actually see her pick it up, because the action isn't described—just the intent to do it. To turn this from told to shown, we'd change one word:

She reached over and picked up the cup.

Now we see the action and can guess that she reached over to pick up the cup, because we see her reach and then pick up the cup.

While this is a small tell (and writers do it all the time), it's a great example of how easy it is to explain motive and not actually show the action in the scene. Some common red flag words for explaining motive include: to [verb], when, decided, because, in order to, and tried.

Not only will showing the action make scenes feel more immediate and alive, they'll keep readers invested in what's going on, because they won't be told everything ahead of time.

For example, if your character thinks, "All I need to do is sneak past the guards and slip out that window and I'll be able to escape," and then you show him sneaking across the room, you lose all the tension. Readers already know the goal (to get to the window and escape) and they assume it'll happen, because you just told them it would. There's no suspense and no reason to keep reading.

But if you just have the character start sneaking and working his way across the room while guards patrol mere feet away and readers aren't told why...then readers will wonder what he's up to and why he's risking getting caught. They'll keep reading to find out. Tension stays high and there's something they want to know—does he escape and how.

Look at your current story—how often are your characters thinking about what they plan to do instead of actually doing it?

Are they "deciding" to act? "Trying" to act? Moving to "do something" but are never shown physically doing it? Revising these simple explanations turn a flat scene with nothing happening into a scene with lots of action.

And don't forget—"action" doesn't mean the life-or-death explosion-heavy scenes from a summer blockbuster movie. Action is just characters physically doing something. If they're interacting with the external world then they're acting, and that keeps the story moving. If they're thinking and describing what they plan to do, they're internal and not doing anything at all.

Try reworking any scenes that feel too internal with the characters thinking and musing instead of acting. Look for ways to dramatize those plans

Showing and not telling is all about making it real for readers. Half the fun of reading is figuring out what's going on and why the characters are behaving as they do. The more we explain those reasons, the less reason readers have to read our stories. But when we show characters acting in intriguing ways and readers have to work to figure out why—they can't stop turning the pages.

For more on showing and not telling, check out my book, Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting it), and learn what show, don't tell means, how to spot told prose in your writing, and why common advice on how to fix it doesn't always work.

What do you struggle with in your writing? What's keeping your scenes from coming alive?

About Janice

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. She also writes the Grace Harper urban fantasy series for adults under the name, J.T. Hardy. When she's not writing fiction, she runs the popular writing site Fiction University, and has written multiple books on writing, including Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It), Plotting Your Novel: Ideas and Structure, and the Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft series. Sign up for her newsletter and receive 25 ways to Strengthen Your Writing Right Now free.

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by Stefan Emunds

This is the fourth article of the article series The Yin and Yang Relationship Between Psychology and Storytelling. The first article covers reader investment and reader engagement. The second article explains how to create story experiences that feel real to life. The third article shows how to tap your readers' subconsciousness and engage them in your story.

This article dives into characters’ goals, motivations, wants, needs, and objects of desires. It also touches on the difference between sympathy and empathy and why that matters for storytelling.

Why Do Writers Need to Know Psychology?

Writers need to know psychology for four main reasons:

• Know how readers think and feel and use that knowledge to engage them.
• Understand the psychology of experiencing so they can create story experiences that have a real-to-life feel.
• Design characters with plausible traits, flaws, talents, motivations, etc.
• Know themselves — why they write, what they really want to write about, and how to get out of their own way.

The Eight Crafts of Writing

This article is written with the eight writing crafts in mind. The eight writing crafts are:

• Big Idea (aka theme)
• Genre
• Narrative
• Story Outline (aka plotting)
• Characterization
• World Building
• Scene Structure
• Prose (aka line-by-line writing)

Note: To avoid confusing readers, the author of these articles avoided the alternation of she and her and he and him. Instead, he uses the nonexclusive she and her to mean writer and reader.

Objects of Desire, Goals, Motivations, and Needs

Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. — Kurt Vonnegut

I like Kurt’s advises on writing. They are simple and witty and go a long way. But if it comes to wants it’s a bit more complicated than that. Wants don’t exist in a vacuum. Characters also have needs, motivations, goals, and objects of desire.

Let’s have a look at what the difference between motivations, needs, goals, and objects of desire are and how they move stories forward.

Motivations

Motivations can be emotional, for example, a fear-flight response. Fear is the emotion and flight the motivation. Motivations can also be feely, like the motivation to find someone to love. If you want to know the difference between emotions and feelings, read this article.

You need to give your protagonist and antagonist strong motivations. If the protagonist just wants to get back onto her couch, she won’t embark on a life or sanity-threatening adventure. Strong motivations are love, hate, revenge, and the motivation to win and succeed.

The antagonist needs to have even stronger motivations because you need her to be mean and break rules.

Wounds

I’m sure you have heard this already: your protagonist needs a wound. Wounds boost empathy and empathy is the main story engager.

The protagonist’s wound gives rise to her motivation. Imagine a woman who was bullied by her mother as a child and suffers from an inferiority complex. The inferiority complex turned her into an approval seeker. Seeking approval is the motivation.

Objects of Desire

Desires give form to motivations. Hunger prompts the motivation to find food, which turns into the desire to buy a pizza or steal an apple. Looking for someone to love is a motivation, wanting a husband or a child is a desire.

Mind the difference between emotional and feely desires. Emotions want to eat pizza, but feelings want to have dinner at an Italian restaurant. Emotions want sex, feelings want a honeymoon.

It needs to be clear what characters want, because readers need to understand what drives the story. That’s where objects of desires come in.

Motivations are abstract and can’t trigger readers’ imaginations. The show, don’t tell rule applies: Don’t tell readers that a character is greedy, show how she is hoarding cash in the basement (cash is the object of desire).

Objects of desire move your story forward, but they may run out of steam after a chapter or two. To move your story from the inciting incident all the way to the climax, you need something more persistent. 

Goals

Most of our desires come and go, and we have little control over them. Goals are different. We pursue goals consciously and with intent.

Goals involve decision-making and planning. And we sacrifice for goals. To win a gold medal is a goal. Or to become an accomplished singer. Or to become the president of the United States.

The protagonist pursues the story goal from the inciting incident to the climax. On the way, she needs to overcome all kinds of adversity. To do that she needs an undying motivation and a clear goal.

Needs

Needs can be physical or mental, like the need to survive or the need to overcome a flaw.

Needs are usually subconscious. The needs of your story characters belong to your story’s subtext.

If you want to make your story characters more interesting, oppose their motivations with their needs.

Remember the woman who was bullied as a child? Let’s give her a name: Laura. Laura needs to become confident. But she ignores that need. Instead, she wants to make a career. She believes that this will allow her to gain her mother’s respect. And everybody else’s.

Laura’s Motivation, Objects of Desire, Goals, and Need

In real life, motivations, objects of desire, goals, and needs belong to people. But in stories, they should serve Story Outline and Genre. Let’s see how this plays out in Laura’s case.

As mentioned, Laura suffers from an inferiority complex. In this context, Laura’s mother is the antagonist.

Laura's Needs

Laura needs to get rid of her inferiority complex. She should do that by going to therapy and developing self-confidence.

Instead, Laura wants to enforce her mother’s respect by becoming a successful television writer. This is Laura’s original goal before the inciting incident. Turns out, Laura’s mother doesn’t think highly of television writers. Laura is frustrated.

One day, a TV host quits her job without warning. Laura replaces the TV host for one show. She does a good job, and the producer offers her the vacant position. This is the inciting incident.

Laura's Goals

Laura reacts to the inciting incident by formulating the story goal: to become a celebrity TV host. Her mother admires TV hosts, and Laura believes that now she has a real shot at her mother’s approval.

In this case, the inciting incident tempts Laura to go on an adventure. Protagonistic forces dominate and the overall mood is excitement. If antagonistic forces dominated, the inciting incident would disrupt Laura’s life. For instance, she could have lost her job and the story goal would be to find a new one.

Advanced Writer Tip: The protagonist’s motivation and story goal need to be on par. Weak motivations make stories melodramatic. If characters are over-motivated, the story becomes comical. It would be comical if Laura tried to overcome her inferiority complex by becoming a successful babysitter. And it would be melodramatic if Laura got an inferiority complex because she was bullied just once by a stranger.

Her heart set on the story goal, Laura climbs the hierarchy of the TV network and squashes collegial intrigues. But she hits a roadblock on the road to fame. The producer defies her illustrious TV host jobs because she lacks charisma. Her inferiority complex smothers her confidence, which smothers her charisma.

Laura's Goal at Midpoint

At the story’s midpoint, Laura retreats and faces her inner demon. She realizes that she needs to develop genuine self-confidence. Confidence is the key ability.

The story’s midpoint is an auspicious moment for revealing the protagonist’s wound. It makes the midpoint scene memorable and boosts empathy, which is the root story engager. You can read about all nine story engagers here. 

After acquiring the key ability, Laura modifies the story goal. She wants to confront her mother about the childhood bullying and tell her about her success as a TV host.

Laura visits her mother and demands her respect, but her mother just laughs at Laura and lists all of her failures and flaws. Laura realizes that her mother has never loved her and will never respect her, even if she would become a celebrity TV host. This throws Laura into an emotional pit of despair — the all-is-lost moment. Laura considers dropping out.

Laura's Goal at All-is-lost moment:

The all-is-lost moment is a dramatic device. For purely dramatic reasons, the protagonist should fail to vanquish the antagonist with the key ability and experience an all-is-lost moment. This serves as a contrast to the climax. After the all-is-lost moment, the protagonist should take on the antagonist in the climax against all odds.

Laura realizes that her mother has an even deeper inferiority complex than herself and made up for that by bullying Laura as a child. Laura rebounds. She goes through an internal transformation and gains genuine self-confidence.

The climax: She visits her mother a second time, cuts her down to size, drives to work, stomps into the producer’s office, and demands a prime-time TV host job with a charismatic speech.

Here is a picture of Laura’s motivations, objects of desire, goals, and needs:

Laura changed her goal three times. She abandoned her original goal for the story goal and adapted the story goal twice: after the midpoint and after the all-is-lost moment. This does not introduce inconsistency. We can reach a mountain top by taking the road, by climbing or by flying a helicopter.

On a side note, if a story goal is too lofty, you can break down the story goal into sub-goals. The sub-goals become scene and act goals.

A Word on the Antagonist’s Motivation, Objects of Desire, Goal, and Need

Ideally, the protagonist and antagonist mirror each other and offer complimentary answers to the story’s big idea or theme.

The protagonist’s and the antagonist’s motivations can be the same, e.g. to find someone to love. They can even have the same story goal, like seducing the same man.

The protagonist and antagonist may even have identical needs, e.g. to love unconditionally. While the protagonist will look inside and learn how to love unconditionally, the antagonist will look for other means to secure her love interest.

The protagonist and antagonist differ in the means they use. For the antagonist, the end justifies the means, the protagonist has principles. Protagonists arc, antagonists refuse to arc and take the easy way. The protagonist tells a prescriptive tale, the antagonist tells a cautionary tale.

Characterization

Once you decided on your character’s motivations, desires, goals, and needs, you still need to make them believable. You do that with Characterization. For Characterization you need to know psychology too. The next article of this series will dive into that.

I hope you enjoyed this article, and it helped you to fine-tune your protagonist’s motivations, objects of desire, goals, and needs.

Why don’t you share the motivation, object of desire, goal, and need of your WIP’s protagonist in the comments?

About Stefan

Stefan Emunds is the author of The Eight Crafts of Writing. He writes inspirational non-fiction and visionary fiction stories and runs an online inspiration and enlightenment workshop. Stefan was born in Germany and enjoyed two years backpacking in Australia, New Zealand, and South-East Asia in his early twenties. Prior to becoming a writer, he worked as a business development manager in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. At the moment, he lives with his son in the Philippines.