Drives

Driving Forces: 

What drives your character?  I watched a well-written tv show this week that made me wonder if my characters' voices are as distinct as those in the show.  Then I saw a post on FaceBook that reminded me what that meant specifically.  What drives a person?  Their purpose or goal, their fears, their loves, and their losses.  I could talk about the differences between what they THINK their goal is vs. what their actual goal is.  These could be different.  A character could tell himself he's here to help another character when he's actually here because he wants to be loved.  The same is true for fears, loves, etc.  But that's a subject for another day.  What is their true goal?  If their motives are clear to the reader--even if they're not always clear to the character--the author, and therefore the reader, understands the character, and the character becomes more compelling.

Purpose: 

A real person is complicated and can have any number of goals.  However, most often, in their heart of hearts, a character wants one main thing, a dream, a hope, an aspiration.  A writer can look to the Enneagram for the goal as given in that character theory or that same writer can figure it out based on his or her origin or story.  

Why does the character get up in the morning or do what she does in the day?  What is the thing she wants MOST in the entire world?  Now, there could be an overriding goal for the character in general that is different than the goal of the moment.  Let's look at the song "I've Got a Dream" from "Tangled."  The current occupation of the entire bar full of warriors and villains is to maim and kill for money.  At first, the main characters assume that is their ultimate purpose, their greatest desire, in life.  But as the warriors and villains sing this song, they make it clear this isn't what they truly want to be doing.  This isn't their real purpose, just what they're doing now.  One of them wants to be a concert pianist, one a mime, one a sculptor, one a husband, and so on.  The circumstances of the moment are such that they can't fulfill their dreams.  So what is your character's goal of the moment and what is their ultimate dream or purpose?  Do they relate or clash?

I went through and figured out the ultimate goals of my main characters.  Connor is a lawyer whose real purpose in life is to avoid pain through having fun.  So when he has to sit and do law-related things, he does it, but the whole time, he's fantasizing about playing video games to avoid thinking about what's really going on beneath the surface.  His real purpose, then, is to avoid pain.  He will do ANYTHING to avoid pain.  So at the base of everything he says, there should be an element of pain avoidance.  Robin is a pilot and a dental assistant, but her real purpose in life is to protect others.  So everything she does should center on that goal in life or interact with it in some way.

Fears: 

Fears can also drive a character in a scene.  What keeps your character from living as he wants to live?  What stops him from achieving his dream or getting the girl?  Many times, the answer is fear.  This is his internal roadblock and another possible motivator for a scene.  Let's look again at that "Tangled" with the scene in which Rapunzel has finally escaped from the witch's tower.  Her stated goal is to see the glowing lights that float up to the sky every year on her birthday.  Her underlying longing is to find the joy the witch denies her.  Her fear nearly overcomes her and takes her back to the tower.

What internal conflict or fear bars your character from forward momentum?  Once again, I looked at my characters.  Connor's greatest fear is obviously pain.  He has experienced a lot of pain in relationships and will do anything to avoid them.  He dates but will run at any sign of a commitment.  Women aren't scary to him.  But women who want more than the thrill of the moment are. This prevents him from really growing up since relationships are part of adulthood.  Meanwhile, Robin's fear is men.  They have hurt her repeatedly, and she fully expects every man she meets to cause pain to herself and those around her.  Both of these fears are paralyzing when it comes to forward momentum in a romance.  So what keeps your character from doing what he or she wants to do?  It could be a physical barricade like Harry Potter's buddy Ron Weasley faces in scenes with giant spiders or it could be internal like Ron faces when he discovers he's interested in Hermione but doesn't know what to do about it.  The first section of this blog post is about what drives your character forward.  Now, figure out what holds her back.

Love and Loss: 

Either  a character's goal or fear may relate to love and loss.  Most characters love or have loved someone or something.  Otherwise, how can we love them?  How does love of the present or the past play into your character's goals or fears?  In the early Disney movies, future love is the title character's primary goal.  But this isn't the case in later Disney movies.  "Someday, my Prince Will Come," a song about how a girl's dream centers on romance, has given way to "Let it Go," a song about a character who doesn't think she needs anyone.  Cinderella lives for dreams of future love while Elsa is stuck in pain and loss of the past.  How does love from either the past or present complicate either goals or fears?  Maybe the character doesn't want love, will reject any love offered.  Do goals, loss, or fear drive the character the most in this case?  It depends on the character.  Why does the character have this relationship with love?  Or maybe the character is in love with being in love like Shakespeare's Romeo.  He would love anything that steps in his path.  How does this complicate his dreams and fears?  Maybe, like Snape, your character feels he can't love again because he's already found and lost the love of his life, and that love will ever affect his interactions with others.  

As mentioned, loss can also be a powerful storytelling device for enlightening a character's soul and motivation.  Maybe there's a character who wants no one's love or sympathy.  Look at Flynn Rider in "Tangled."  In the song "I've Got a Dream," he comes out sounding worse than the criminals around him because his dream is "much less touchy-feely."  He says he wants money.  But later, in a heart to heart discussion with Rapunzel, he confesses he really wants to escape being the hurt little boy he once was.  She sees his heart, feels his fear and pain of the past, and calls him Eugene, the name that describes that hurt little boy.

Love and loss are often tied together in ways that may or may not relate to romance.  Say you're writing about a hard-bitten character who thinks he neither wants nor needs people. But yet he has a dog for which he would die.  This is still love.  This character becomes sympathetic because he loves that dog.  Then the dog is murdered, and the character goes on a vendetta against those who did it.  We understand this character because he has loved and lost.  His love is in the past, but it still drives him.  We see his heart and understand pain and anger drive his character.  Though his actions are inhuman, love and loss drive him to those actions, so he is humanized.  This is very like Spider-Man's origin.  He loved his uncle.  Because of his own carelessness, his uncle was murdered.  He will forever after be driven to protect because he failed and, therefore, lost.  His drive will always be to protect.  His fear will always be more loss if he fails.  Romances are complicated by his fear of losing again.

Your Turn:

So what drives your character?  Most likely, desires or goals [her life's purpose], complicated or enhanced by love and/or the paired emotion of hate, loss, and fear.  So what are your specific character's drives?  If the audience can feel these drives in villains and heroes, your characters start to become real to the reader.  The characters start to jump off the page and carry the reader through book after book.  Characters that lack this kind of clarity of motivation become mushy, uninteresting, confusing.  Even if you're well advanced in writing a book, make sure you know these factors that limit and define each major character.  Is there a scene wherein your character defies what defines them?  Is there a real reason for it?  If not, you may want to rethink and rewrite.  No scene should be there simply for a writer's convenience.  Everything should be there to drive the character or the story.  Since characters should drive story, if your story is getting muddled, go back to the characters.  Chances are, that's where the muddle begins.