Last night, a writer client (let's call her Bee) was talking about her work in progress, and we spoke about how she had a tendency to place her protagonist in 1-to-1s with another character but rarely to introduce extra characters into the mix, adding much-needed CONFLICT. And so I prompted her. "What's the central dilemma of your protagonist? What is always front and centre, and at the back, of her mind?' And then Bee stated it quite plainly: "She wants to make sure this baby is safe. That takes over everything for her." So that's Bee's character's MOTIVATION.
I also observed a tendency on Bee's part to be obstructively ambiguous. By talking it through, Bee understood that ambiguity is a tool that must be used sensibly and wisely. When Bee finished talking though, I also understood that the ambiguity she was looking to establish was over whether her protagonist was right or misguided in her actions and that was Bee's motivating GOAL.
Now Bee understood her character's motivation and her own goal more solidly, she knew exactly which buttons to push and how to escalate the conflict for her protagonist by raising the baby's jeopardy. Everything else was peripheral.
What about you? In your present fiction, what is your character's motivation? what is their dilemma? and what is your goal in all this?
Also, off the back of Amanda Carter's recent blog, I was inspired to go on a little internet search. here's what I found:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Grow-Novel-Sol-Stein/dp/0312267495/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1
http://www.fictionfactor.com/articles/conflict.html
http://menwithpens.ca/fiction-writing-conflicts-and-characters/
If you have more recommendations though revolving around these themes, please do share.
(Editorial Manager)
Dilemmas are essential to a character's construction. More than the own novel's conflicts, a book must show the internal conflicts of all your members.
nice post it helped me with my characters :)
Good post: it certainly got me re-thinking about my own characters. One's motivation is to keep both his illicit affair and scandalised best friend. The other's is to keep the affair secret in case it reflects badly on him as he tries to consolidate his position in military society and that's the one I'd lost sight of. Thanks for the dig in the ribs!