Character Motivation List
As a writer you don t get to.
Character motivation list. Anger a desire to find love find food and so on. Of course a character doesn t necessarily have only one goal one of each motivation and one of each conflict in fact complexity is often better but it s a good starting point. Motivations are intrinsic needs.
They might be external needs and relate to survival but they might also be psychological or existential needs such as love or professional achievement. Build a powerful story foundation using our list of popular fictional goals that explore character motivation story conflict and how a protagonist can achieve internal growth through the character arc to overcome challenges and reach their goal. They might be external needs and relate to survival but they might also be psychological or existential needs such as love or professional achievement.
A character s main motivation through life. Character motivation is the reason behind a character s behaviours and actions in a given scene or throughout a story. The more villainous counterpart a character who wants to be remembered and will commit atrocities in order to achieve that.
Weave character motivation into your story by. A character wants other people to consider him her to be a badass. Character arc the before mentioned conflicts and motivations should lead to a character arc as well which means the character is different at the beginning of a story and at the end.
Keep in mind that these levels aren t self contained. One of the most common mistakes i see in novels is a villain who acts nasty but we never learn why. Motivations are the why behind a goal so say the goal is to find love the motivation would answer why do they want to find love and the answer to that would be the motivation like to not feel lonely or to make somebody happy and.
So creating your character s why means more than just choosing from a list of motivations. I was thinking for the character i have created for my story that as the character is essentially a massive fantasy novel and dungeons and dragons nerd who happens to also be a sorcerer his motivation for helping people could be that he wants to have a real life adventure such as the ones he has been reading about his whole life. A quick writing rule.
Be subtle about your characters motivations or at least more subtle than a disney character literally shouting their goals from the mountain tops. 1 not neglecting your villain. Character goals are what drives a character to do something and it can be a whole range of things.
Motivations are intrinsic needs. They can interact and overlap at times any number of character motivations can be filed into one of the five levels of maslow s hierarchy of needs but to apply those needs on a more literary level let s take a look at the two main types of motivations found in stories. A character wants to pursue a collection.
