When you�ve finished your timeline, write what your character wants. Knowing what your character wants and what motivates her is the key to developing three-dimensional characters, the characters your reader will care about. Want can also be expressed as a need, wish, or hope. It can take the form of a strong emotion, such as a mother being overprotective of her son. What makes the mother protective is the motive. The want should be the main conflict and should be easily defined in one or two sentences. In her book, Writing Fiction, Janet Burroway writes: �It is true in fiction in order to engage our attention and sympathy, the central character must want and want intensely. The thing the character wants need not be violent or spectacular. It is the intensity of wanting that counts. She may only want to survive, but if so she must want enormously to survive, and there must be distinct cause to doubt she will succeed.� For example, Isabel wants to detach from her family and past. She thinks in doing so she won�t go hungry, either physically or psychologically. The reasons she wants to detach are her motives.
What motivates Isabel? Her mother abandoned her when she was twelve, and her father was both emotionally and physically absent, and she often went hungry because he didn�t provide food for the family. Isabel moves away from home and eventually buys a diner where daily she is surrounded by food and people who love her.
Let�s look at Cinderella. What does she want? She wants to marry the prince. What motivates her? She spends all day cooking and cleaning and getting abused by her step-family, so she wants to escape.
To understand more about motives, probe your own life. Start with the most basic of human needs�love. We want (or need) love. What does needing love feel to you? How does it manifest in your actions and feelings? As you create your characters, ask the same questions.
Spend five or ten minutes freewriting about your character�s wants. Begin with the line, �(insert name of character) wants�� and write without stopping. Don�t worry about grammar or spelling. Don�t edit along the way. If you get stuck, repeat the beginning line or repeat the last line you wrote. As always, don�t resist.
Copyright 2002-2007 Rita Marie Keller |
