What drives your character? Story involves characters who have some motivation, something that moves them forward. Desire, wish, need, problem and the motivation to seek a solution. This can’t simply be announced: we wouldn’t believe it. It has to be felt and enacted. Motivation is the agent of change, and change is the key to story. (Next week, we’ll look at motivated action.)
- What does your character want/ need? Junot Diaz, The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao:
“Senior year found him bloated, dyspeptic, and, most cruelly, alone in his lack of a girlfriend.” 28
“There was the initial euphoria of finding himself alone at college, free of everything, completely on his fucking own, and with it an optimism that here among these thousands of young people he would find someone like him. That, alas, didn’t happen.” 49
2. What does your character wish for or fantasize will happen?
Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca:
[He carelessly offers to let her borrow a book of poems that was in his car.]
“I was glad, and held it tightly with my gloves. I felt I wanted some possession of his, now that the day was finished. . . . I wished he were less remote and I anything but the creature that I was in my shabby coat and skirt, my broad-brimmed schoolgirl hat.” 32–33
“My mind ran riot then, figures came before me and picture after picture—and all the while he ate his tangerine, giving me a piece now and then, and watching me. We would be in a crowd of people, and he would say, ‘I don’t think you have met my wife.’ Mrs. de Winter. I would be Mrs. de Winter. . . . I hear myself talking on the telephone: “’Why not come down to Manderly next week-end?’ People, always a throng of people. ‘Oh, but she’s charming, you must meet her—‘ This about me, a whisper on the fringe of a crowd, and I would turn away, pretending I had not heard.” 54
- What obstacles does your character face (problems) to getting his/her goal (desire), and why do they matter to him/her (stakes)? Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
“21. I THOUGHT IT WAS JUST THAT SHE HADN’T MET THE RIGHT PERSON
The fact that she stayed home all day in her pajamas translating books by mostly dead people didn’t seem to help matters much. Sometimes she would get stuck on a certain sentence for hours and go around like a dog with a bone until she’s shriek out, “I’VE GOT IT!” and scurry off to her desk to dig a hole and bury it. I decided to take matters into my own hands.” 48
“23. MY MOTHER KEEPS A PHOTOGRAPH OF MY FATHER ON THE WALL NEXT TO HER DESK
Once or twice I passed her door and heard her talking aloud to it. My mother is lonely even when we’re around her, but sometimes my stomach hurts when I think about what will happen to her when I grow up and go away to start the rest of my life. Other times I imagine I’ll never be able to leave at all.” 50
Your turn: what does your character need, fantasize about, plot and plan? Do you get stuck around character desire? Try imitating these examples, swapping your own content for theirs, and discover your character’s drive. Let us know how it goes. Post your thoughts and questions in the comments below:
I remember the discovery of what my character “Girl” wanted. She was aimlessly traveling the country, but once I understood how much she desperately wanted to belong (of course most humans do) and wanted a place of belonging, then I knew what drove her and what drove the book. I could organize every chapter of my (what must have been by 5th or 6th draft) in a new way. I sketched it out on huge paper and made ever major, as well as many minor, actions be motivated by that drive. The book came together and was so much more fun to write. She had a reason to be, to travel, to hurt, to connect.
How does one perform a motivation that is inside of a non-fiction narrative? In fiction, it seems you are freer. In non-fiction, especially if it is about yourself or a relative, how do you project motivation and desire, without making yourself too vulnerable to the reader? That is what I am struggling with in this exercise.
Viji, Thank you for these questions.
First, writing narrative non-fiction is tremendously vulnerable! Not sure we get to make our way around that.
The motivation/ desire is always in the scope of the story–what does this character (whether the you in the story or someone else, invented or not) want IN THIS STORY? Writers sometimes get confused and make the desire too general, too much about the character in general rather than the character in the story. In non-fiction, when we are looking at our lives for stories, we are looking for places where we were motivated and blocked–because that is story.
Finally, we embody this desire, showing it in action, and we bind the reader to us through empathy and identification, thus making the reader as vulnerable as we are, in our shared humanity.
Katia,
Thank you so much for sharing this terrific view into your process and how it shaped your wonderful book! It’s always helpful to know that we do not have to know all of these aspects of our story and character right away–sometimes we have to write our way toward them, figure them out through many drafts. But they are tremendous tools when the time is right.