Wants and Needs

I've been blogging about how to write more literarily, but this is more of a basic concept.  It's that every character, large or small, that enters the stage of your narrative needs a motivation, especially the important ones.  How many people do you know who do things for no reason?  In reality, it may happen.  However, generally, people in real life do everything they do for some reason.  If you have a man standing on the street corner, but he doesn't seem to go anywhere or do anything, what's the purpose of even mentioning him?  A character's motivation may be selfish or selfless or anything in between.  These desires and drives shape the story as characters act on them.

It helps to heighten the drama of a story if those wants are at odds, and even more so if what drives the character is different then what others or even they, themselves, think..  Let's look at Jane Austen's Emma, for example.  Emma pushes Harriet into a fake relationship with Elton.  Why?  Because she wants to feel pride in a match well made.  The relationship doesn't work because Elton's motivation for all he does (spoiler alert) is to impress Emma, and Harriet's motivation is eagerness to please.  No one in this situation is motivated by love in this "love match," so drama ensues.  If Emma's desire had been true concern and love for a friend, Elton's had been love for Harriet, and Harriet's had been love for Elton, as in the fiction Emma paints for herself in her imagination, there would have been no drama.

Shakespeare's Hamlet is all about characters trying to read each other's opposing motivations.  The spirit of Hamlet's late father pushes him to take revenge on his murderous uncle.  His uncle watches Hamlet to read his motivation, even while Hamlet returns the favor.  Hamlet plays the fool while searching his soul and those around him for a motivation and drive to obey his father's will.  Ophelia gives up the fight toward trying to read Hamlet and takes herself out of the narrative.  The tension of the story is in the reading and misreading of others as they all struggle toward a resolution.

Sometimes, a motivation can be short-term, as in for just one scene.  Harry Potter's need to solve the riddle of the golden egg in the fourth book drives just one section of the book.  That drive conflicts with his desire to deal with other issues around him, so this motivation gets put off until others spell out how to solve the mystery.  The motivation of his seeming-ally, though at first appears altruistic, ends up bringing on the true danger and climax of the book.  Although Harry's motivation is temporary and not even that strong, that of his unseen enemy carries him through to the end in a way that is critical to the story arc of not just the book but the entire series. Motivations can vary in strength and conflict with each other, even in the same story and character, but all of them need to be believable to the reader.

What are your characters' most basic motivations?  What do they want?  Look at both the broad plot and individual scenes to figure out if the motivations are clear to the reader, even if they aren't to the characters.  Are there places that characters confusing each others'--or even their own--motivations could heighten the drama?