Throwback Thursday: "How To Bring Characters To Life" Part 3: Motivation

Whoo! We’ve arrived at the end of this series! It’s been a long time coming: we started with Backstory and how it contributes to establishing a character’s past, so it doesn’t feel like the character just popped into existence with all the foibles and shortcomings, giving a context from which to understand the character. Next we learned how Dialogue contributes to a character’s present, by communicating their personality, their thoughts, and their unique outlook on things.

In this post, I wanted to demonstrate how Motivation is key to giving the character a sense of future, a sense in which the character’s life doesn’t end with the story, just like if you were to write a memoir about your life, you didn’t just cease living after the world-shaking event happened; nor do people generally accomplish everything they wanted to in life before they die.

There are a lot of myths about character motivation I’ve seen applied to novels, and traps I’ve fallen into, myself, as I write. It never ends well, truth be told, and the story is all the weaker for it. Sometimes, the motivation is clearly stated in the blurb, and for that reason I might specifically avoid that book, because the motivation was too cliché. To that end, I’ve compiled a list of motivation clichés I’ve encountered, and how to combat them.

Myth #1: Proper Motivation Is About Achieving A Goal By The End Of The Story

Okay, this one needs a little explaining: I don’t mean I support those plots that kind of meander around until they arrive at a point where everything sort of grinds to a halt, nor do I condone the use of “open endings” or “cliffhangers” where not only is the audience denied any sort of closure… but also, they are expected to piece together all the myriad details that the writer “provided” to somehow piece together an ending that manufactured the reader’s own definition of closure, because somehow the author couldn’t be bothered to do that himself?

No.

What I mean is, have at least ONE goal, a main thrust, that resolves by the end… but to give your story a sense of “one piece of a larger existence”, or a tangible sense of future for your characters beyond the end of this one adventure… maybe allow some things to hang off. Don’t get caught up in plot holes and fret so much about tying up every loose end that everybody and their mother’s brother’s great-aunt’s best friend are meticulously connected. Just get to the end and stick with that. Not every scenario really has an answer.

--Constructive Theory: Sometimes we don’t get all the closure, but at least the MAIN goal needs resolving; don’t be afraid to leave the others open.

Myth #2: Self-Discovery Is A Sufficient Goal In Itself

Okay, I’ll be honest, this may be my own personal opinion… but when I see buzzwords like “finds herself… “soul-searching”… “deny who he really is”… and the like, I am either leery (if the rest of the premise looks intriguing) or I skip over it altogether. I’m sorry, but I think that real life has enough drama that I don’t want to add some fictional character’s emotional baggage to that! A lot of these “fictional memoirs”, too, tend to be very specific to a reader who has experienced the same thing, and thus may begin with an emotional connection to the character. But for The Rest Of Us who cannot relate, the book is pointless, and worst of all useless. You’ve lost readership when you try and write a novel about characters walking around an exotic or remote location, philosophizing about themselves. If you’re going to write a story and you want to use the introspection to deepen the specific character, well and good! But that should come secondary to another goal beyond oneself, otherwise you’ll leave the reader at the end staring at the book in befuddlement asking, “Why did I read this book?”

--Constructive Theory: Readers don’t want to know about this character if they haven’t related to them in some way; choose a motivation beyond oneself, and let the discovery happen on the way to this other thing.

Myth #3: The Hero Has A Mission Or A Task To Complete; The Villain Only Exists To Stop That Goal

This is by far the laziest sort of writing to exist, giving your hero a task or a mission, then throwing a bad guy in there to try and stop the hero, and have that be the villain’s motivation.
The reason this is so lazy and why it often falls short of reader expectations is that, in such a story, we know the hero is going to succeed anyway… so then what’s the point of the villain beyond just filling an empty archetype?

Once again, the existence of this myth is proof of a poor, or maybe just limited, understanding of what motivates a person. There are many different sources for motivation (as I will discuss later…) and you might find that rarely does that motivation entail “See that person over there? I’m going to make it my mission to stop whatever the heck they try to do!” Because inevitably, some character will need to ask the question “Why?” At which point (now that the writer has sat down and thought about it) the villain will have a new, better, stronger explanation for his antagonism, and voila! There is the true motivation, that goes beyond just “stopping” someone, but actually believing in a motivation that directly conflicts or competes with the motivation driving the hero’s mission, and the story is all the better off for it!

--Constructive Theory: The Villain is the “hero” of his own story; not every hero “has” to stop the bad guy, any more than the villain “has” to stop the “hero”; give both sides competing/conflicting motivations, and let them pursue them equally; therein lies the story.

Myth #4: Romantic Love Is the Highest Motivation There Is

Okay, this needs to be said, because I’ve seen it happen way too many times: For heaven’s sake, not everything has to have a romantic subplot! If you want to write a romance, be honest with yourself and your readers and write a romance, but if you’re going to derail an otherwise decent premise with a whole lot of emotional and sensual angst, and the story isn’t supposed to be a romance, per se, then you’ve got the wrong motivational focus.

Not that romance is bad. It’s just not everything, you know? Just because there are two entirely compatible, strong characters surviving through extreme situations together doesn’t mean they have to wrestle over feelings for one another in addition to whatever external conflict they’re facing. It doesn’t even mean that there has to be a scene where they romantically commit to one another by the end of the book. Don’t feel like you’re locked into this one outcome for your two main characters. Just like in real life, there are other options besides romance. Not everything has to revolve around sexuality. You can pick an ending that doesn’t involve a wedding.

--Constructive Theory: Plenty of lives can exist with no chance of romance at all; just because it’s LOVE doesn’t mean it has to be romantic, or that we have to make a big deal about the main character “following their heart”; choose again.

Myth #5: Everyone Just Has One Motivation In Life

Here’s where I’m going to expound on the types of motivation: a person’s motivation can be internal (like a character flaw, an ideal, etc.) or external (physical need, a mystery that needs solving, a quest for an item, etc.). If you’re writing a story about a man stranded in the jungle, it might seem like his one goal would be “to escape the jungle”… but is that the only goal he can have?

Have you heard of a Bucket List? Have you ever heard of someone who has just one item on their Bucket List? It wouldn’t be called a “List” if it did! A list is many things—humans are complex beings who can have multiple motivations. Our poor jungle man might have an external motivation of “trying to find shelter or find a way out”… but how fascinating would the story be if he also had to battle with an internal motivation, some character flaw that had gotten him stranded in the first place, and now he must answer that flaw and overcome it in order to make his escape!

Don’t settle for just one motivation in your character, or fall into the trope of believing that one goal is all you need, and once the goal is met, the story can end with a “happily ever after.” Sure, the man might escape the jungle—but what happens when he returns to civilization? The ordeal will definitely have an effect on him, and the people who have been missing him for so long would surely treat him differently, particularly if he comes out of the jungle behaving differently than he had before he left.
Sir George might have had a singular purpose in wanting to slay the dragon, but how does his life change, how does the kingdom change after he marries the princess, since now there’s no more dragon? Will he become restless without something to fight? Will another threat arise in the dragon’s place? Does the princess appreciate his efforts, or would she really rather not marry somebody just because he killed a dragon?

The key to understanding multiple motivations is this: our motivation is evidence of an ideal we hold. When our reality doesn’t match our ideal, we are more motivated to make it so. When a person decides that they want to run a marathon, they don’t just run out the door for thirteen miles and head back. The responsible person chooses a deadline, discovers how much their current state lacks the stamina and the strength needed to sustain the long distance, and begins training until the date. They are motivated to keep training because they have a goal in mind.

This same mentality goes for any kind of motivation: if a person has an ideal future in which they are rich and famous, they will be more motivated to do those things that they perceive as getting them more money and more recognition. Uncover your character’s ideals, and those can help you discover many motivations to pursue in the course of your story—and, as we already established in Myth #1, even if you don’t get all the ideals, that is okay.
It gives Sir George something to do after the dragon is slain.

--Constructive Theory: People are complex; we have different needs at different levels, and the greatest ideal in each level can qualify as a motivation, giving us multiple motivations, and which one will win out in the end?

Myth #6: Believe In The “Watch The World Burn” Trope

This one is a little bit trickier, because “Villains Who Villain For Villainy’s Sake” is such a deliciously twisted trope to write—but, as with the idea espoused in Myth #3, it’s insufficient by itself, and usually either works itself into a frothing frenzy of meaningless vengeance that is easily defeated, or it winds itself down into a simpler, more human motivation anyhow, so ease off the “Throttle of Evil” and focus on cultivating the characters with actual motivations that will more effectively strike fear into your readers’ hearts.

Going back to what I just explained in Myth #5, this level of cartoonish psychopathy is ineffective purely because the desire to “destroy the world” is not rooted in a particular “disparity of ideal”, because it has no real result other than continued destruction until there is nothing left to destroy—and so what kind of need is fulfilled with “an empty crater of nothing”? Let your villain try lighting a match, and watching it until it completely shrivels into a tiny knot of ash. There; they just caused the utter destruction of something, even on such a minuscule scale. Did it fulfill the need? Did it result in something other than the fact that where there was once a match, now a match does not exist? Is the villain satisfied? Why not? What more do they want to see? What is their preferred future? Wouldn’t that be more motivating than “I just want to see things die”?

I’ve read a book where the main characters are deities from various pantheons, and one of them just decides that humanity has gotten so bad that it’s not worth it anymore, and he wants to initiate a “cosmic reset” just to get rid of everything that’s there and start fresh—but as the story develops, more complex motivations emerge, and the story moves and changes as truths are exposed.
Bottom line, don’t settle for a point-blank line from “Point A” to “Point B.” Let the story change a little, let it move, and you’ll discover a better result.

--Constructive Theory: A villain’s motivation often exceeds face value; don’t fall for the first one that comes along!

Myth #7: Give Your Hero “Sophie’s Choice” To Really Test Their Mettle

This one might raise a little questioning—and I freely admit that I very well might be guilty of using this very method to "whump-dump" on my more pitiful characters.

As with many of the myths I’m dealing with in this post, I do not say this is a myth because nobody should ever use this method for the sake of character development; I would just caution the adventurous writer not to go lightly into something like this. If you’re going to use this plot device, be sure you know exactly why it needs to exist, and the part it plays in your plot, the specific goal, and not the whole goal in itself.

For those unfamiliar with the actual label, “Sophie’s Choice” refers to a novel about a mother forced to choose which of her two children the authorities will murder in front of her. See? Plenty of complexity available in that; the trouble is when a writer presents a choice like this merely for the sake of showing how tough and how noble the hero is…. Only to “chicken out” after several pages of hemming and hawing, and present their hero with a miraculously-conceived third option. Either that, or the writer provides no way out, the hero makes the choice—and the memory of it haunts him for the rest of his life and poisons his interactions with other characters.

Like, can we not?

“Sophie’s Choice” is not an arbitrary challenge like weight-lifting or arm-wrestling. It has serious implications, but if you rush into it without first building up the story, or if you decide to throw it in there and call it “motivation”, you had better do something motivating with it, and don’t leave your readers with a hero whose soul has been crushed by the decision you had him make! So many superhero films use this device, like making the hero choose between a crowd of innocent people and his love interest… but too often, the story tends to falter and deflate after such an important turning point—so how about you think about it for a bit longer, and come up with another character test for your hero, one that will keep the story going and won’t garner an eye roll from your readers!

--Constructive Theory: “Sophie’s Choice” isn’t for the casual writer, and it isn’t the “best” way to prove or build your hero. It just isn’t. There is always a third choice, and if that’s where your hero is going to go anyway, why all this useless hype and angst?

Myth #8: Everyone Loves A Hero Who “Always Wants To Do The Right Thing”/ Heroes Don’t Face Consequences For Their Choices

This is a very popular myth in fairytales! The hero always has good reasons for what they do, every time the hero performs any kind of virtuous act, it results in the adulation of the masses and the willing support of the commoners—heck, maybe even the recognition of the gentry, while we’re at it!
But the honest truth is, a lot of good goes unnoticed. Some people might even misinterpret a good deed and hate you for it! Couple that with the idea that “the hero can do bad things for good reasons” (I’m looking at you, Robin Hood!) and you have yourself a perfect morass of half-morals and a rather weak foundation for your characters’ motivations to stand on.

That’s the thing, isn’t it? A solid, consistent moral foundation is key for a strong motivation. If certain rules only apply in certain situations, and certain actions are permissible in certain contexts—who’s making the rules, and what happens to the rest of the world when Superman thinks that leveling a skyscraper is “the only way” to stop a villain?

Say what you will, joke all you want, but the honest fact is that actions—all actions—have consequences, and the hero shouldn’t be immune to them… otherwise, that’s bending the “rules of the known universe” to suit his ends—oops! Sounds quite villainous when we phrase it that way, doesn’t it?

--Constructive Theory: There will always be people who don’t agree with the hero’s choices; every action carries consequences; You can’t win them all, so make each success count for something more than “just because it was right”, and let your hero be someone who takes responsibility for the damage his victory causes

Myth #9: Give Your Hero A Flaw That Prevents Them From Achieving Their Goal

All the knights in the kingdom have failed to defeat the dragon—now it’s up to the bumbling braniac with a bad stutter, a gimp leg, and glasses (oh and why not make him gay too? And ethnic!), to somehow manage to get rid of the dragon by a mix of sheer happenstance, dumb luck, and a driving need to “represent” multiple minorities by making them successful where all others failed—by virtue of being politically correct!

That’s an extreme example, I know. But seriously, you may have read those stories before, where the Designated Hero seems to have all the odds “stacked” against him—and not like the circumstances just ended up that way, but like somebody (Read: The Writer) did it on purpose, or just tossed in all these compounding details in the hopes that it would make the story more appealing—but in reality, the result is more like a TV dinner, or that one time Jones Soda came out with “Thanksgiving Dinner In A Bottle”—it tastes funny and nobody would ever take it seriously.

Giving your hero a flaw does not automatically make him more relatable. Designing your character with a certain set of publicly acceptable “defects” and then trying to manufacture drama around said defects (a plain-looking girl entering a beauty pageant and winning; a boy with a bad stutter winds up giving an impassioned speech by the end of the story and is greeted by rousing cheers from the crowd; a wheelchair-bound kid has to climb a cliff to save a bunch of people; a girl who is afraid of water has to swim out to rescue a stranded boat…or something) is not a good way to build a story. Placing your character in situations where nobody heeds him and everybody’s bad-mouthing him just because this character happens to embody some idea that absolutely everybody else in the story hates does not automatically win your readers’ sympathy.

Flaws are natural occurrences and inherent characteristics that make your characters unique, and perhaps certain events in the story will necessitate a confrontation of those flaws and overcoming them—but this is character development, not plot motivation. Harkening back to Myth #5, people are more complex than the set of flaws they have. A person might struggle with dyslexia, but is their whole life consumed with trying to rid themselves of it? If this remains a struggle for them their whole lives, can they not find something else to direct their attention toward, because this flaw has simply become an intrinsic part of themselves that they can deal with while they pursue an actual, viable motivation?

--Constructive Theory: A flaw does not make good motivation; “overcoming a flaw” is not sufficient motivation; and dealing out flaws merely for the sake of making the challenge even more so is rather sadistic. Flaws are best utilized for development’s sake, not for dramatic purposes!

Myth #10: A Truly Motivated Hero Deserves To Lose A Loved One Or Be Constantly Frustrated In His Pursuit Of Wealth

Want to motivate a hero? Kill his parents. Being an orphan is a good motivator! Or how about this hard-working fellow who is willing to go to the ends of the earth to hit upon a venture that nets him a fortune? By all means, build his character by making everybody hate him for being poor, throw every kind of obstacle in his way, and when he finally achieves his riches, everybody loves him and he finds the acceptance he’s been looking for all along!

Every. Story. Ever, am I right?

Here’s the thing about these two scenarios: the first guy that did it was brilliant. A riddle is always cleverest the first time it’s told. It’s every freaking story that came after that first one, where the same thing is just rehashed in much the same way, over and over again, that drove this into a list of “Motivation Myths.”

The truth is, losing a parent just doesn’t have the same impact it did, because everybody went and put it in their stories. Just because you want your hero to experience trauma early on doesn’t mean his parents have to be dead by chapter 2. Just because somebody poor wants to put in the work to try and change his social status doesn’t mean that they have to be spit upon before those very same characters will be fawning at his feet once he’s rich. Just because somebody has a lot of money doesn’t mean everybody automatically likes him, either! (See Myth #8!)

The best thing you can do if you’re tempted or driven to write a story with one of these options is to find ways of “getting around” the common elements of it: don’t isolate your character when the last relative dies; what friends come around to assist them and care for them? Or what if only one relative dies, and they’re living with another one? What if, instead of pursuing this mind-blowing amount of wealth, the character simply wanted to get to a place of comfort? Would he be a more likeable person if he did that? Or what other paths can he take in his pursuit of wealth?

Once you decide not to do what everybody else has been doing, and start listing all the ways to achieve the same goal, you’ll find a stronger, more unique story that doesn’t leave your character lost, wandering, or ultimately discontent with the one goal he’s spent so long pursuing.

--Constructive Theory: The death of one’s parents and the pursuit of wealth and fame are indeed among the more common motivations—but they also tend to be overused; if you must use a common trope, find ways of tweaking it, and avoid the traditional, well-worn routes to the end goal.

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So there you have it: Ten Myths of Character Motivation, and a Constructive Theory to consider when tempted to fall into each one. Apply these theories, and watch your character’s future unfold around the story that you’re making. What about you? Have you noticed these or other tropes in books that you read? Do you agree with my assessment of them? Let me know in the comments!