Video transcript: Welcome back to Write Better Right Now and our discussion on plot. In my last video on plotting, I talked about packing your plot full of action by being mean to your character. But it's not enough to simply have a character who is suffering from a lot of bad things happening to them. You want the right character for your plot and the right plot for your character.
That means thinking about their goals and motivation, as well as the conflict keeping them from reaching their goals.
• What do they want or need? (Goal)
• Why is it important? (Motivation)
• Why is it difficult? (Conflict)
The goal is what they want or need. I've added the word consciously here. I'll talk a little in the next video about want versus need, because those can be different things. A character might think they need something in particular, but what they really need is different. In this case, their goal is what they are trying to achieve—what they consciously want or need.
The motivation is Why is it important? The stronger the motivation, the stronger your story. If they could not reach their goal and it wouldn't matter very much, you're not going to have a lot of drama.
Then the conflict comes from Why is it difficult? If it's too easy to achieve that goal, you're not going to have a lot of drama either.
All of these things need to be strong and all of them need to be clear to the reader at the beginning of the story and throughout the story. You want to establish the initial goal, motivation and conflict. Then you want to remind the reader of that as the story goes along.
It's possible that a big goal might have different parts. Then you would establish the immediate goal and how it relates to the big goal. Or some characters might change over time in what they are trying to achieve.
In Star Wars, initially, Luke just wants to become a pilot and have adventures, but he is held back in his farming town. After his aunt and uncle die, he has nothing to keep him there. Then he sees a video of Princess Leia and he wants to rescue the beautiful princess. And then, as he learns more about what's going on in the world, he wants to help save the galaxy. All of those relate to his internal desire of having adventures and being a hero, but the specifics change over time.
But as the audience, we always know what he wans to achieve at any particular time.
Let's look at a few specific examples in books.
In the Accidental Detective series, the main character, Kate, moves back to her childhood hometown and moves in with her father after she's injured in a bombing. Initially, she wants to recover and go back to her job as an international war correspondent. The first paragraph of the book is:
My childhood home had faded in the harsh Arizona sun and now showed its age, rather like me. I’d never dreamed of living here again after 30 years of traveling the world.
This is temporary. You’ll find a way out.
She goes home, she talks to her father briefly, and on about page two:
Dad handed me an envelope. I leaned on the door and propped my cane against the table so I had two hands to tear open the envelope. The handwritten message inside was brief.
Kitty—Please come see me ASAP. I need your help.
—Heather Garcia
“She sounded . . .” Dad hesitated. “She asked about your journalism and begged me to bring you in as soon as possible.”
Heather Garcia is an old high school acquaintance who is now the director of the nursing home where Kate's mother is. Initially, I had it a little bit later that Kate finds out the problem from Heather. Some deaths were attributed to natural causes, but Heather is worried maybe something else is going on, and she asks Kate to investigate. Since Kate's mother is in this nursing home, that gives her a very strong motivation to want to find out the truth.
I moved the problem up by having this note right at the beginning, so that the reader has a quick clue that there's going to be something more than Kate's initial goal of healing and getting back to her main job. Then over the course of a few books, Kate realizes maybe she's not going to become a war correspondent again, but maybe she can build a different life for herself here in Arizona.
That's an example of a goal at the beginning that is quickly replaced with something more immediately important.
In The Eyes of Pharaoh, a middle grade mystery, this main character has two goals. It’s fine if your character has more than one important goal. It can actually add depth to a book. Her general goal is that she wants to win a contest so she can set herself up as a professional dancer. She thinks that will secure her future. But then in the first chapter, her friend, a young soldier, says he has discovered a plot against Egypt. She's not sure if she believes him, but then he disappears. So she has to choose between these two things:
Is she going to work on her dance routine and practice, or is she going to try to track down what happened to her friend? Having those two things in conflict gives the book a little more depth and it forces her to make difficult choices.
So you can have multiple goals, and of course, you might have more than one main character and they might have conflicting goals. That can be a great way to add drama as long as both goals are important and you have strong motivation for why they want to achieve them.
In Bunny Birds, a graphic novel for middle grade readers by Natalie Lin, she says, “Aster’s goal is always to rescue her family, but the definition of ‘rescue’ evolves over time as Aster comes to learn more about the wider world and the more toxic aspects of her family’s culture.”
This is fairly common in books: a character sets out with one goal, but as they learn more about the situation and the complexity, they might shift their thinking. So you can certainly do that. You just need to show how their thinking is changing and why that goal shifts.
Reasons to Hate Me is an upcoming young adult novel by Susan Metallo Oliver. She says, “The problem is established on page one: the protagonist is being slut-shamed for supposedly seducing her best friend's boyfriend. Her goal is to pull the rug out from under the cyberbullies (and reclaim some power over her own story) by blogging more interesting reasons to hate her.
“As the story progresses, her goal shifts. First, it's a reveal to the reader that she doesn't actually care about the bullies—it's her ex-best friend she's hoping to reach. But after a confrontation at the midpoint, her goal shifts again as she realizes that maybe restoring that friendship wouldn't be healthy.”
That’s another example of a character setting out toward one goal and as they come to understand the situation better, shifting that goal.
Exercise:
• What is your main character’s goal for the book?
• Do they work toward that goal throughout the story?
• If their goal changes, do you show why?
An exercise that you can do is ask: What is your main character's goal for the book overall? Make sure that you have established that goal fairly early and either maintained it or shown how it changes.
When did you actually introduce it? Can it be introduced earlier? As I said in my videos about openings, you need to establish enough of the setting and characters and so forth that the
reader understands what's happening, but look for ways that you can at least give clues about that main goal as early as possible.
Then: Do ethe characters work toward that goal throughout the story?
Because sometimes writers can get off track. They might start thinking that the story is going to go in one direction, and then they get new ideas and something more exciting is appealing, so they kind of veer off. That may mean that you need to go back and change your beginning to better fit with the later parts of the story. Or it may mean that your character has discovered a new goal and you just need to make sure that you're showing the reader why that character has changed goals.
So if your characters change their goals as the story progresses, do you show why? Make sure it is on the page. Don't assume that readers will understand your character's thinking if you don't put it in words and show their thoughts.
It's very important to make sure that you establish the character's goal, motivation, and conflict early in the story, regularly throughout the story, and then have it come to a conclusion at the end.
That's it for today. Next time I will go into more detail on motivation. After that, we'll talk about conflict.
Thanks for joining me today. Please let me know in the comments if you have questions or if there's particular topics you'd like me to go into in more detail. Thanks.
Chris
Share this post