On Character Motivation

Photo credit: Lord Mariser on Flickr
It has occurred to me that while writing, one of the best things a writer can do is question every action from every character. Why did your protagonist say that? Why did your secondary react to that snide remark so violently? Why did your antagonist plant a bomb in a toy factory? Why won't that random taxi driver stop talking?

What I mean to say is that every action any character in your novel takes must have a motivation (and P.S: speaking is an action).

Think about your everyday life for a moment—from waking up in the morning to climbing into bed at the end of the day—and I think you'll find that there is very little (if anything at all) that you do without any motivation or reasoning at all. Even something as simple as eating lunch (motivation: you were hungry) or playing video games (motivation: you were bored, or didn't want to do something else, or really just wanted to reach that achievement, etc.) has some form of reasoning behind it.

What's my point? We don't do anything without motivation and neither should our characters.

This tends to be an obstacle when certain plot points need to be met, so our characters must do stupid or evil things in order to accomplish our goals for the manuscript. Without enough planning, when looking back at the WIP, writers often stumble across scenes where characters do something without a clearly defined motivation.

This happens most often with antagonists. In most novels, the antagonist must do some pretty terrible things to the main character in order for the plot to progress—whether it's stealing his lover or trying to kill him or embarrassing him in school (or at work)—antagonists must set our characters back and create conflict.

But antagonists are characters too, and they need to be well developed with believable motivations or their actions will fall flat.

Because I love the Harry Potter series and one of the best ways to learn how to improve your writing is by taking a look at the expertise of the greats, I'm going to use the most evil and yet still believable bad guy I have yet encountered in a book.

That's right: I'm talking about Voldemort.

As most of you know (regardless of whether or not you've read the series), Voldemort does many a terrible thing to our main character Harry. Without spoiling anything for those of you few readers who have yet to read the series, Voldemort kills Harry's parents when he's a baby, tries to kill him a dozen or so times throughout his lifetime, frees the most evil of wizards from Azkaban (wizard prison), murders many of Harry's friends and loved ones as well as tortures and kills others, goes through a very painful process of fragmenting his soul and murders his loyal followers when their usefulness expires.

And yet, Voldemort doesn't do things only because he's evil—he has a goal, a motivation: to be the greatest wizard who ever lived—greater even than the famous Albus Dumbledore. Above all else, he wants power and immortality.

Unfortunately for Voldemort, there's this pesky orphaned teenager who keeps getting in his way.

Despite all the evil, horrendous things Voldemort does, never once did J.K. Rowling fall into the trap of making him do things just to be evil—everything he did led back to his number one goal, every horrible action he took had a motivation.

Can you say the same for your characters?

Take a look at your WIP. Can you justify your characters' actions with motivations--or are they simply acting for the sake of the plot?

29 comments:

Jayrod Garrett said...

This blog came at just the right time for me.  I just started into adding another two characters to my WIP and I need to add their plotline into everything, but I am not quite sure where to begin.  And as you talk about their motivations it got me thinking that I need to think about what they want ultimately at the moment and in the future also.  Thank you for the great example of Voldemort in this too.

Laurapauling said...

Terrific! It is so important to do this. When I get stuck, that's what I do. Ask Questions.

Tasha Seegmiller said...

This is a great post.  I have recently been trying to get more motivation in my characters - realized some of them were just existing. 

Candace Chatman said...

That has been the question of my weekend! I  keep trying to wrap my head around why everyone does what they are doing.  its slowed me down a little bit but its also helped me to make a few tweaks to my outline.  great post. 

Ava Jae said...

So glad this post was able to help! Motivations are really important to pin down while developing characters, and what better antagonist to use as an example than Voldemort. :D

Ava Jae said...

Thank you, Laura! Asking questions is one of the quickest ways to get going again whenever you get stuck in your writing--and a fantastic brainstorming method. :)

Ava Jae said...

I'll admit I have in the past been guilty of that as well. Motivations are something I have to usually develop more during the revision stage. 

Ava Jae said...

Sometimes slowing down to analyze our writing and make those tweaks is the best thing you can do for the WIP. Glad you enjoyed the post! 

rapture22 said...

That's a very good question, Ava. I'll keep that in mind when my edits come back on my second novel. I'll ask myself those tough questions then. I will endevour to ask them a little sooner on this third novel that I just began writing last month.
Hope things are well with you.

-Jimmy

Stevenschierman said...

That's crazy! I'm in the outlining stages of one of my 5 WIPS (all in outlining process actually...) and I realized I didn't really know my antagonists motivation. I knew his history fairly well and I knew what he was trying to do but I realized just yesterday that I didn't know why. So I basically took a blank sheet of computer paper and drew out a timeline starting at 1940 when he was born and ending in 2018 when he died and labeled major events in his life which altered his mission, goal, and motivation. I found that it helped as did this article. Thanks so much for writing this block. It does give my stories a much better "Writability" which is irreplaceable so thank you again. :)

IndianaRonaldo said...

I love how you take Harry Potter for explaining things. The thing about Harry Potter is, regardless of reiterative reading there are still new things to discover about the characters. 

 

Susan Sipal said...

Love Voldy's picture, Ava. And, of course, I love your example. I can't remember the exact quote, but at one point Voldemort mentions that he almost killed two trick-or-treaters on his way to the Potters' home, but didn't because it was quite unnecessary.  A good example of your point.

Ava Jae said...

Thanks, Jimmy. Good luck with your writing and editing!

Ava Jae said...

Creating a timeline for your antagonists life is a fantastic idea--I haven't done that before, but I imagine it certainly helped pinpoint his motivations as well as nuances that deepen him as a character. And I'm glad my blog helped! :)

Ava Jae said...

I don't know if you follow Susan Sipal's blog (@HP4Writers on Twitter), but if you like my occasional Harry Potter references, you'll probably love her blog. She focuses solely on what writers can learn from Harry Potter. 

That being said, I have to agree--the depth of the world J.K. Rowling created is so deep and intricate that even upon a second or third reading there's still more to learn. 

Ava Jae said...

Now that you mention it, that trick-or-treaters thing sounds vaguely familiar (although I can't remember the exact quote or which book it came from, either). Regardless, thanks for bringing it up! I'd forgotten about that but you're right--further proves that he doesn't do evil just for the sake of being evil. 

Susan Kaye Quinn said...

Motivating the bad guys is one of the most fun parts. It's easy to imagine that someone might want to do good things, but WHY would someone want to do bad things? (Or maybe it's just me that's evil. :))

Ava Jae said...

Nope! You're totally right--once you get past the challenge of accepting that you need to really develop your antagonist just as much (if not more) than your protagonist, it can be fun to figure out what makes them tick. 

Daniel Swensen said...

 Because they don't think they're doing bad things. That's why my favorite villain is Ozymandias from Watchmen. His motives aren't even ostensibly selfish -- he does monstrous evil while totally believes he's working toward the greater good, and tries to save the world by becoming a mass murderer.

Vicki Orians said...

This is a good post! Evil characters are just that - evil. But they also need to have something inside of them that makes them human. So I like that you used Voldemort as your example, because he has many of those qualities: Selfish, power hungry, and a tormented past.

Thanks for this post! :)

Ava Jae said...

I haven't read Watchmen however, that does sound like a very complex and interesting antagonist. I find that usually the most realistic and fascinating antagonists are indeed those who truly believe their actions are justified. They don't see themselves as the bad guys--they believe that they are right in doing whatever evil they're committing (and, not surprisingly, their justifications often fall under the "greater good.")

Ava Jae said...

I don't like to think of antagonists as evil per say, if only because we're then often tempted to justify their atrocious actions because of their "evilness." However, I like the point you made nonetheless--every antagonist should have at least one quality that humanizes them.

Daniel Swensen said...

 Totally agree. One of the reasons I like Watchmen is that it challenges so many ideas of what heroism actually means.

J. A. Bennett said...

great post once again, and something I am really working on in my editing process!

Stevenschierman said...

Thanks. :) Ya I like doing timelines and things...helps me to write/draw out my notes and stuff by hand, then I can sketch things also. Then it's a matter of deciphering my handwriting and converting it to my "Notes" file on my computer. Haha.

Ava Jae said...

I take a lot of notes by hand, but I have a bad habit of forgetting to create a digital version of them, which is a problem when I can't find the notebook or the page I wrote the notes on...

Ava Jae said...

Thanks so much! It's something I'm keeping an eye out for when I dive into edits again--which is why I decided to write a post about it. ^_^

JFeijten said...

Another great post! The motivation for our actions is not always that strong, but it's always there. The lovely thing about characters and their motivation, is that even two characters with the same motivation can act differently. 
For example, the very first chapter of Harry Potter. Hagrid, Dumbledore and McGonagall all have the motivation to make sure Harry Potter is safe. McGonagall acts worried and stricte, while Dumbledore tries to lighten it up with his lemon drops (or what was it?) and Hagrid is very emotional. I really like that chapter :-) 

Ava Jae said...

That's a great example! It's certainly true that how characters will act on their motivations is just as distinctive and telling (if not more so) than the motivations themselves. After you've figured out your character's motivation, the next step is certainly to determine how they would act on it, depending on their personality.

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...