Goal, Motivatin, and Cost

Have you ever started reading a novel where the main character decides to face an impossible task and an implacable enemy with the odds so far in favor of the bad guys that success, let alone survival, is minimal at best?

Sounds like a great novel, doesn't it?

I've just finished two novels where the main character is in that impossible situation.  In one novel, the hero must face these impossible odds to save his young daughter from a very ugly death.  In the second, the heroine must find out the truth about the death of a young woman she's never met, and the outcome appears to have no real value to her.  She's not even working for money.

I zipped through the first novel like a speed-reading lunatic to find out how the hero managed to save his little girl.  I cared about the results from page one to “The End.” 

The second novel I very nearly tossed away after the first few chapters because I hate stupid and suicidal main characters who have no real reason to go forward in an impossible situation, but I persevered out of curiosity and a fondness for dissecting author mistakes.  

After over half the novel, the author of the second novel finally lets the reader know why the heroine has continued forward in the investigation, but by then, the damage has been done to the novel and the reader's reactions to the heroine.  The reader also realizes that the author has cheated by withholding vital information which a fair author would not.  At this point, the odds of the reader picking up the next book by this author are slimmer than the original chance of the hero's survival.

As an author, you must balance the main character’s goal, its cost to him, and his motivation.  If the goal and the probable cost for the main character is great, the character must have motivation that equals both.  

Thinking Through a Minor Character

 You are an old and powerful fae (fairy) with lots of human money and your own retainers.  You discover a powerful magical artifact, and others want to kill you and take it.  Do you

1.  Hire fae warriors to protect you the moment you realize you are in trouble.

2. Contact other powerful and friendly fae for help to get you to your own protected domain.

3. A long time after you find the artifact and have done nothing to protect yourself and the artifact, you leave a message on the answering machine of a half-fae private detective who has neither the power nor the skill to protect you.  Then you don’t bother to tell her who is after you or why even though the assassins have just broken in the door.  You do, however, ask her to solve your murder.

Unfortunately, in a novel I recently read, the author chose #3.  She obviously hadn’t given any thought to the background, skills, and options of her murder victim so she created this whooper of a ridiculous storyline.  

If she’d wanted a victim who had no means of protection or power, she could have created someone to fit the bill.  

Creating a believable story requires not only a good viewpoint character with her strengths and weakness fitting the storyline; it also requires the same careful thought about minor characters who influence her and the storyline.

Finding Your Character's Weakness

According to Greek myth, Achilles' goddess mother dipped him as an infant into the River Styx to make him invulnerable to injury, but the heel she held him by wasn't dipped.  As fate and story would have it, he died when someone shot him in that heel.   

Most people and the most interesting fictional characters always have an Achilles heel, that one weakness which will defeat them unless they overcome it.

As a writer, you must figure out what your main character's weakness is and attack it through plot.

That weakness can be fear of some physical danger.  If like Indiana Jones, your character is afraid of snakes, then snakes he must face to achieve victory.  

A better weakness is an inner one.  If your character prides himself on his dignity and fears ridicule, he must find the strength, at his high school reunion, to race across the room in his bunny underwear to protect his girlfriend from the same bullies who just stripped him.  

If he fears death, he must find the strength to risk dying for something or someone who is more important than life.

Minor weaknesses and disasters can add conflict to a scene, but that one Achilles' heel of your character and his attempts to overcome it are the heart and soul of a good story.

 

Big Question, Part 8

 FLESHING OUT THE CHARACTERS

Once you have a general idea of the characters and the plot, you will need to start fleshing them out.  The major characters have to be more than just elements of the question.  You have to make them real people.

Part of this process of making them real people is adding to their emotional complexity.  First, look at the various givens in the characters' personalities you created so far. Why are they like this?  What in the past shaped them?

For example, Cadaran d'Hasta represents the evils of Arden's society, but as I considered her and why she is what she is, she became more of a person.  I decided that her own motivation stems from a need to dominate others, a refusal to be defeated, and a genuine contempt for women weak enough to love a man.  

She hates men, and she refuses to accept defeat by a man because she was raped when she was a young soldier, and she can't accept that a man ever defeated her.  Every man in her bed, since then, has been dominated and abused to prove this to herself, and she likes men who are sexually rough because it proves she can take it.  

I gave her good qualities to make her fully rounded.  She's loyal to her troops and fair, and she repays loyalty.  Her sarcastic wit in her scenes with Kellen makes her more than a snarling rapist, and in their verbal give and take, the reader can get a glimmer of the possibility that these two people could be friends under very different circumstances.  

MOTIVATION

One very important aspect of creating great characters is proper motivation for what they do in the novel.

If Mara decided to save Tristan from the harem because he's great in bed and she wants to keep him, the totally selfish motivation wouldn't be strong enough for the plot or for the reader.  

The motivation must be understandable, strong, and for the main viewpoint character or characters, the motive must be one the reader will approve of.  For Mara's original motive, I chose a desire to save a brilliant fellow scientist on the verge of a scientific discovery that will benefit all humans.  Later, her motivation includes her love for him.  

Even with Cadaran, I created a motive greater than a need for money or political power.  I gave her an obsessive need to dominate.

Don't try to be totally inclusive in this creation of characters.  Sketch out the major personality points, decide what the characters look like, and maybe decide on a mannerism or two that fits their personality. 

Mannerisms are especially useful for secondary characters.  Novia, for example, tends to grind, throttle, and maul things with her hands as if she's fighting her need to do that to Tristan whom she hates and fears. 

As you write the novel, characters will often surprise you with insights into them that will add even more depth.  Accept these gifts from your Muse as such and don't toss them out because they don't fit that original character sketch.

In STAR-CROSSED, Floppy, the alien version of a cat, was only supposed to be a cute, fuzzy reminder that Mara lives on a different planet, but in his first scene, he hopped onto Mara's lap and pointed at the data cube to let me know that he was human smart, not a pet, and he wasn't about to let me or any other character take care of Mara when he could do it himself.

He proved to be a great addition to the novel and a reader favorite so I'm glad I listened to my Muse and this opinionated cat.

My insight into Cadaran being raped as a young soldier came when I was writing an early scene between Cadaran and Kellen, and Kellen remarks, “Did some big bad man mangle you?”  My mouth flopped open as I realized that's exactly what happened to Cadaran.  My Muse through Kellen had given me the final piece of Cadaran's emotional puzzle.

In one of my first stories, I had the main character in a surly mood in the opening scene without telling the reader why he was acting the way he was. A friend who critiqued the story wrote in the margin, "Who pissed in his oatmeal this morning?" It's a comment I hear in my head every time I discover I need to rewrite an under-motivated character.

Characters should have very good reasons to act as they do. We must give them motivations that the reader can understand. The most common mistake most new writers make is having a character act in a certain way because the writer needs her to act in a certain way.

This is as true for the villain as it is for the main viewpoint character. If your bad guy doesn't act without proper motivation, the whole story falls apart.

Character Motivation as a Hook

"Keeping the Reader Reading,” Part 4.

In one of my first stories, I had the main character in a surly mood in the opening scene without telling the reader why he was acting the way he was. A friend who critiqued the story wrote in the margin, "Who pissed in his oatmeal this morning?" It's a comment I hear in my head every time I discover I need to rewrite an under-motivated character.

Characters should have very good reasons to act as they do, and we must give them motivations that the reader can understand. 

In THE GAME WE PLAY, Nick’s motive for stealing the ransom from a very dangerous person is obvious-- he’s the father of the two kidnapped children, but Faith is hired help so I had to create a back story reason for her decision to risk her life to save the kids--  she has known them for over a year because she teaches children’s gymnastics at the Y, and she’s formed a deep bond with these two special kids.  She’s also a childless widow who is desperately maternal.

If a character’s motivation is strong enough, the reader will want the character to succeed and will continue reading.  The strongest motivation is personal and emotional because it speaks from the character’s heart to the reader’s.  That’s a very strong reader hook, indeed.

The Emotional Content of Story

If you aren't happy with the emotional content of your story, you may want to look at the central story idea. Do your character/characters have a real emotional reason to be doing what they are doing?

Their hunt for the lost treasure should be as much about their emotional reason for needing the treasure as it is about simple greed. That emotional reason should be important enough to make the reader want them to succeed as much as they do.

Maybe the main character is after a magical sword which is the only weapon that will kill the dragon currently ravaging his homeland, and he doesn't really care about other treasure and the life of drunken decadence and dancing girls it promises the other characters.

Maybe the other characters have laughed at him, but they've admired him and gradually they have been drawn into his quest for the sword, and in the end, they'll choose to get the sword with him and lose the other treasure.

Maybe the one who laughed the hardest and made the main character's life hell along the journey will be the one to sacrifice himself so that the hero can rescue a homeland the scoffer has never had, but now wishes to have with his whole heart.

Now that's a story that will grab your reader where a simple quest for gold will not.

The Danger of Too Rich and Too Smart

“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.”--F. Scott Fitzgerald 

“Stupid is as stupid does.” --Forest Gump 

I have a weakness for British science fiction TV shows.  Everything from DOCTOR WHO to PRIMEVAL.  When I saw that Canadian TV had produced a sequel series called PRIMEVAL: NEW WORLD and that the SyFy Channel was showing it, I decided to give it a try.  

The premise is that temporary rips in time called anomalies allow dinosaurs and other creatures from the past and the future to come through and wreak havoc in our present.  These anomalies are only known about by a very few although raptors and an occasional T. Rex running amok in cities should give considerably more than a few a clue that this is happening.  

In the Canadian version of the show, a wealthy brainiac played by Niall Matter (hunky Zane from EUREKA) is the only person to realize this after a T. Rex chowed down on his wife.  Instead of alerting the media and the military, he goes on a one-man campaign to figure out what is going on and protect people from the predators.

To keep from causing a butterfly effect by killing these creatures, he tries to lure them back into the anomaly before it closes up.  

He is worth a serious chunk of change, but he has only a few paid people on his team and that’s it.  They have few weapons, and none are powerful enough to dent a dinosaur, let alone kill it.    

In Saturday's episode, the CEO of his company is telling another character how brilliant he is and how he’s such a strategist that he’s always ten steps ahead of everyone else.

Meanwhile, for no logical reason, the hero walks alone into a sewer where A GIANT SNAKE is lurking.  For protection, he has a small-caliber revolver and a flashlight.  He knows the monster snake is in there and the sewer is part of a closed system with just a few exits, yet he walks into its lair.  

When he pulled out the pistol which wouldn’t stop a pig, I said something extremely rude and started laughing.  The comment was directed at the writers, not the poor character, who survived this stupidity because he’s the hero.  

Unfortunately, I see the same kinds of errors about characters with brains, money, or both in much of my reading.

When you write a rich character, you have to consider what having money really means.  Someone rich can hire bodyguard, private detectives, and a small militia if needed. He can buy real weapons, not a small pistol.  He can have the ear of almost any politician or the military.  

Someone really bright and a talented strategist would post heavily armed people at every exit of that sewer system or block all the other exits so the snake would be forced to go out the exit near the anomaly.  

A writer should give the hero a reason like having his love interest or a small child trapped in the sewer for doing something so foolhardy.  

Giving a character money and brains requires that you really think about what he can do with that money and those smarts in a bad situation, or you’re the one who isn’t that bright to readers who won’t give you any money for that next piece of fiction you write.  

Character Motivation, CRAFT

In one of my first stories, I had the main character in a surly mood in the opening scene without telling the reader why he was acting the way he was. A friend who critiqued the story wrote in the margin, "Who pissed in his oatmeal this morning?" It's a comment I hear in my head every time I discover I need to rewrite an under-motivated character.

Characters should have very good reasons to act as they do. We must give them motivations that the reader can understand. The most common mistake most new writers make is having a character act in a certain way because the writer needs her to act in a certain way.

This is as true for the villain as it is for the main viewpoint character. If your bad guy doesn't act without proper motivation, the whole story falls apart.

Creating Characters from Within

From a writer's point of view of creating a character, I believe that we need to look inward. All the emotions that will drive the average, sane person to do something unexpected are all there inside us. Given the right impetus, a person will do the unexpected.

I don't believe a good person with a strong moral center will deliberately do something evil like cold-blooded murder, for example, but a good person will kill in the right circumstances.

From my own experience, I know I'd kill in the right situation. I was sixteen, my dad was camping with the Scouts, and someone woke me by trying to come through my bedroom window in the middle of the night. I had a loaded pistol, and I'm an excellent shot.

I knew I could shoot through the window, or I could get the gun and run to the phone on the other end of our big house. Either way, I'd be safe. But my mom and my kid sister were asleep in other bedrooms, and I'd be leaving them to the burglar's mercy if I ran.

In that moment of decision, and with cold, certain clarity, I realized I was perfectly capable of shooting the burglar to protect my family. I also realized that he'd have to come through the window before I shot so I would know he was down, or he could come through another window anywhere in the house.

I knew if I told him to stop, he'd keep coming because I'm female and so small he'd probably think I was nine or ten, and I'd have less of a chance of killing a moving target with a small caliber gun. I knelt behind the bed with the gun in my hand and waited for him to come through the window. I planned to put three shots in his heart and save three shots for just in case.

Fortunately, the dogs scared him away before he made it through the window, but I'll never forget that moment of cold certainty, and I know that I would do the same now.

As a writer, I've used that moment to help define my good characters who are driven to the edge with hard choices.

The trick as a writer is to make the reader believe that a character will do something outside of their experience. If I were writing that personal experience as part of a novel, I'd have already shown the reader that this character loves their family, and that they have a gun and the experience to use it.

When that moment of decision comes, the reader wouldn't be completely surprised that the character chooses to stay rather than fleeing like a self-centered bunny.

If a writer doesn't make you believe a character will react in a certain way, she has screwed up badly.