Worrying and wishing are not goals

First of all, for those watching the video, I started coughing right at the end so I cut off the last word. Next week I'll be talking about raising the stakes!

Now for the full transcript:

Hi, welcome back to Write Better Right Now. I have been talking about plot, specifically goal, motivation, and conflict, which are incredibly important for making sure that you have enough drama and tension in the story.

The goal is what your character wants or needs to do,

motivation is why it's important,

and the conflict is why it's difficult.

Going deeper into conflict: Why is it difficult for the characters to achieve their goal?

Not just why is life difficult for them, but why are they specifically going to struggle to achieve the goal that you set up pretty early in the story?

One of the big problems I see when I do manuscript critiques is that a novel might have multiple chapters at the beginning where the character is suffering a lot and their work or school is terrible, their family situation is terrible, or they're in a fantasy world and everything is terrible there. They're miserable.

But misery is not a goal.

It's just passively being uncomfortable with things. Worrying about what might happen or what is happening is not a goal, and wishing for things to be different is not a goal. If that's what your characters are doing, keep in mind that you are writing passive characters who are, at best, reacting to the situation around them, and maybe not even doing that, maybe just suffering through it.

Characters have a goal when they want a specific thing, not a generic or general, “I wish life were different,” but specific thing that they want. They have a plan to get it. It doesn't have to be a great plan. It doesn't have to be a realistic plan at this point, but they should have some kind of plan. And then they should do things to work toward that goal.

That's what makes characters active and gives you that goal, motivation and conflict.

Now, there may be times when you have a passive character. It has been done. It's probably more common in literary novels that aren't really about the plot. If you have a really good reason for wanting to write a passive character, fine, go for it. But it is going to be harder to get your readers engaged and keep their attention if you have a passive character who isn't doing anything to reach a goal.

So let's assume that in most cases you're going to want to write an active character, particularly in most genre fiction and children's books. We need to know the goal that you hopefully established pretty early. We need to know why it's important. And then we need to see their effort to reach it.

It doesn't mean you can't have your characters worrying or hoping. You absolutely want to show those feelings. If a character doesn't worry, then the reader might think there's no reason to worry, or they might wonder about a character who doesn't seem to be concerned about the situation. You want to show their emotional reaction to what's happening. You want to show how they feel about working toward their goal and why it's so important to them—but don't just have pages and pages of worrying.

Have them worry a bit, but then make a choice and move forward.

They should choose to do something to try to get where they want to go. I’ve mentioned that my brother is a scriptwriter and wrote the original story that became the movie Sweet Home Alabama. After I saw it the first time, I was talking with him about it, and particularly the ending. Melanie waits until really the last moment, she's ready to walk down the aisle to get married to the New York fiancé when she realizes that's not what she wants.

What's unusual about this movie is that the New York fiancé is kind of a great guy. He's not just good-looking and successful and wealthy. He's actually very accommodating when she starts to freak out about things. He accommodates a lot of her requests. He would probably be a fantastic husband for a lot of women. It makes Melanie seem kind of cruel that she strings him along to this point before she figures out that's not what she wants.