Here’s another way to think about motivating your character.

Step One – Core Need
Start with a Core Need, preferably one that developed in childhood. For inspiration, check out the post on 16 Basic Needs or the one on Desires and Fears. They both mention things that could be used as a core need for your character.

You want a need that is of utmost importance to your character, but not necessarily one that they are aware of. In fact, it is probably better that they know nothing about it, but it still drives them on. If your character is exceedingly self-aware, he or she could be aware of the need, but helpless to break its hold over their thoughts and behaviors. Or perhaps they merely accept it as part of themselves – “This is the way I am.”

Step Two – Inner Wound
Next, create an Inner Wound for the character. This is a traumatic event that happened in your character’s past that deeply wounded him or her. And remember that traumatic does not have to mean violent. A thirteen-year-old who is ridiculed and humiliated by his classmates for his attempt at writing a story would feel just as violated as someone who had been physically attacked.

If the wound has some connection to the character’s core need, even better.

Step Three – Outer Goal
Taking these two items – the core need and the inner wound – you want to examine your story setting and determine a goal for your character. The outer goal is an intentional one that the character sets out deliberately to attain.

Step Four – Inner Goal
The last piece is the Inner Goal. It is related to the Outer Goal usually, but probably isn’t one that the character is fully aware of. It subconsciously drives the character’s thoughts and actions.

Sound complicated to put together? Let me give you an example from one of my own story ideas.

My character is a teenager in a fantasy setting. Her core need is to belong. While growing up, that need is met by her family. But as she hits her late teens, she develops a magical “gift”. The people in her village consider it to be a curse. They kill her father and banish her mother and siblings to a meager, dirt-scraping existence. This is her Inner Wound – her family was destroyed because of her very own nature.

To spare her remaining family any further harm, she leaves them and strikes out on her own. Her Outer Goal is to find others like herself, to see if there is anyone else with a “gift”.

Her Inner Goal, the one that she isn’t really aware of is to bind those others into a family, to keep them safe and whole. Her Inner Goal reflects her Core Need – to belong. Since she lost her real family, she’ll create her own family to belong to.

If you asked her what her Inner Goal was, she couldn’t tell you, but you’d see the effects of it in her actions. After she had located others like herself, she would be constantly striving to keep them together, and to find a place of safety for all.

With these four pieces of information, you can build a character that will be motivated to take immediate action.

As a bonus, you can use them to do a little plotting as well. Since you know her Outer Goal and Inner Goal, it is easy to come up with ways to thwart her efforts.

For example:

  • Prevent her from finding others (they all hide their own gifts for fear of discovery)
  • Once she finds some, prevent her from rescuing them from their current circumstance
  • Let issues divide her new “family” – instability, power struggles, members leaving
  • Make her a pariah in the new family or have her cast out of the group she formed
  • Have the group/family under constant threat of attack

Each of these obstacles creates numerous possibilities for plot events. And the events that happen will give your character some realistic reasons to keep on struggling. She has to fulfill her core need, after all. Give this method a try and see how it works for your characters.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!