Digging Deeper - Part 3

WRITING WEDNESDAYS

Because characters are the most important thing in a story, we want to make them the best they can be.  We also want them to be unique, without cookie-cutter characteristics or goals.

Characters and what motivates them

No matter what, this is the most important thing to work on and learn.  Each character's goal should invoke intense, passionate feelings in the character.  And, as mentioned before, it's the characters' backstories that gives them the motivation for their goal...and also sets up the conflict.

Know what it is that brings the character to the point of the beginning of the story.  Each main character should have what Naomi (Susan) Horton calls the PRIME MOTIVATING FORCE (PMF).  Sounds like a police term, doesn't it? 

"For the sake of your story," Horton says, "this PMF will have stemmed from a single, dramatic event in the character's past, the prime motivating event (PME)." - Writing Romance by Vanessa Grant

This is what drives the character to want (GOAL) and the reason why (MOTIVATION) the character wants it.

There are levels of PMF, from the simple to the complicated.  The more complicated ones are usually the more emotional ones, so dig deep into your character's past to find out what has happened and how it affects the character.  Look for the character's emotional investment in something that happened in the past.

PMF can be positive or negative, but whichever it is, it must be emotional.  The more emotional, the stronger the character's conflict will be and the harder to reach the goal.

With PMF comes PMI (PRIME MOTIVATING INCIDENTS).  This is where conflict is built.  An example would be a hero forcing the heroine into a marriage of convenience to get her inheritance when her ailing father dies.  That's just one of many popular hooks used as a basic of conflict in romance.  But what makes each story different is who the characters are and why they want  and what they do.  Motivation and backstory make a character unique.

Do you feel the example above shows a detestable hero?  What if the heroine's father had cheated the hero's family out of their fortune?  Or what if he needs that money from her inheritance to pay for a family member's life-saving surgery?  Is he so bad now?

CHARACTERS CAN DO ANYTHING IF THE MOTIVATION IS STRONG ENOUGH.

The PMI should give the character a personal emotional investment.  Note the strong needs the (believed) detestable hero has.  But what about his conflict?  What can make this strongly emotional need (GOAL) impossible to have?  What can make him try harder OR change his mind?

THE DEEPER THE MOTIVATION--THE MORE EMOTIONAL--THE STRONGER THE CONFLICT.  FIND THE CONFLICT IN THE CHARACTER'S MOTIVATION THROUGH HIS/HER BACK STORY.

Yes, characters can be complicated to create, but once you understand and learn who they are and why, the job of making them real becomes much easier.

“Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.” - Mel Brooks