How to Motivate Your Characters

What drives your story? What makes your story, well, a story?

For me, the answer to both of those boils down to your characters. Your characters will propel your plot and in turn, they will take your readers on their journey to whatever destination they are heading.

I came across a Tweet from writer Laura Silverman from several years ago. I can’t find the original Tweet in her feed, but her advice is extremely helpful. She says:

When drafting your story or even when you’re writing your character profiles, ask yourself these three questions:

1. What does my character want?
2. What stands in their way of getting it?
3. What happens if they don’t get it?

With the answers to those three questions, you now have: 1. Tension, 2. Conflict, and 3. Stakes.

Building the tension that then leads into conflict for your characters is essential in keeping your reader hooked and driving your plot. If there is nothing at stake for the character, then why do any of their choices matter? Actions and situations that happen to your character throughout your story should increase the conflict for your characters, so as your characters go through their own journey, they start to evolve and maybe even change what they want.

People (assuming that your characters will be people) always want something. Even if your character is the antagonist, getting in the way of what your protagonist wants, they are doing what they’re doing for a reason. What will happen to them if your protagonist succeeds? Thinking about that, not just focusing on the “good guy,” will help give all your characters dimension and make your plot more captivating.

As your characters go through their own trials and tribulations, what they encounter will help shape them. They will grow, make different choices, either good or bad, but more importantly, they won’t be one dimensional. You want your characters to be round and full of life, not dull, flat characters. Some of your characters who aren’t essential to the plot can be less complex but work at building up your primary characters and fleshing out their desires. Make your characters make difficult choices – in doing so, you’ll reveal their true nature.

In a future post, I want to explore how to fully build out character profiles, but for now, I have a different exercise in mind (this is taken from my favorite thing ever, Neil Gaiman’s Master Class).

Exercise:

Take one of your main characters and write out their most important desires. Beside each of the items, write down the things or people that stand in their way of getting it. Do this for all your main characters.

Once you’ve figured out their desires, create an outline of them through your story. Find a point in your story where your character shows what they desire, gets stopped in attaining it, or even changes their desire, and write a scene for it. This can be on an index card or slip of paper. Arrange the cards in order and look at the structure. Does it make sense? Can the scenes be rearranged to have more impact? Are certain things not working? Experiment and move around the cards, even plopping in new ideas as they come to you until you are happy with the results.