Motivation

I wrote my first short novel when I was a junior in high school. I never finished it to my satisfaction, but I do have a teacher who sometimes asks me what happened to the characters.  It's pretty funny because I know exactly what happened to the characters. It's not a very happy thing.

They died.

The teacher's name is Mrs. C and she has always supported me in my writing endeavors. She's always been nice about it and encouraged my creative side even when I'm writing an incredibly convoluted story about two best friends who, through the manipulations of those outside their friendships, end up killing each other and the current ruler of the vampires. They just wanted to go about their own lives. Everyone else wanted to use the girls for their own purposes.

I'll always be thankful to Mrs. C for her support, but the teacher I had the next year really went a long way towards helping me in a number of ways.

See, Mrs. C is like my writing mom. She's all soft and tender and encourages me to read and write what I want, when I want, so long as I'm having fun and being imaginative. I needed that. God knows, before she taught me, I basically wrote fanfiction without calling it fanfiction or admitting that I was basically pulling characters and stories out of other places. So, I was a glorified plagiarist... like Christopher Paolini. I needed her to help me and she did try to teach me things about tone and other things, but she was really nice about it and I was a stubborn idiot.

Senior year, I had Mrs. WS as an English teacher. Like the previous year, I handed her a short story I had written about a character that sort of invaded the story I wrote more Mrs. C. His name was Azrael and the story was basically about how he came to be... Azrael. Mrs. WS immediately realized something... interesting about my stories.

The motivations of the characters were hardly clear and the main character usually had no motivation other than "Let's do this!" and "I just want out of this!"

I was a teenager and I spent most of my life reacting to the actions of the older, smarter adults who essentially had control over my life. So, my stories were about people who, like me, had no control over their lives and simply reacted to those who did have power. 

Mrs. WS did not like this. Well, it seemed she disliked a number of things about my writing. She wanted me to read more nonfiction to understand better how to write. Unfortunately, the only nonfiction books I like are books written in a similar tone to the way I write. I write how I talk, I like nonfiction written the way the author talks. If I can hear the author's voice in my head, reading the book to me and it sounds like a real person, I'll like it. Even love it. That's why H.G. Wells is awesome!

Mrs. WS settled for trying to fix my... motivation problem. See, I didn't really know how people thought at the time and if you can't see how a person's train of thought might go, figuring out character motivations or writing motivated characters is really a problem. I still have characters that sort of... just do what they do with no visible motivation.

You try writing a person who may be the personification of the barrier between worlds and is definitely the proprietor of an extra-dimensional cafe which is the only safe way to travel between worlds. It's like trying to find the motivation for God without any religious connotations whatsoever!

So, my motivated characters didn't have strong enough motivations and the rest of the characters didn't seem to have any driving force behind them at all. It took me a long time to figure out just what drives people to do the things they do. Finally, I remembered that humans are essentially animals with higher brain functions. This makes it easier because what are the basic animal motivations?

1. Food
2. Water
3. Shelter
4. Procreation
5. Death Avoidance

Humans being creatures with higher brain functions have some additional motivations that animals don't have. Vague things like "happiness", "love", "acceptance", "fairness", "God", etc...

This makes the whole idea of motivating any character relatively easy because all you have to do is get a handle on what kind of a character this person is.

A god-like being wouldn't be bothered one bit by Death Avoidance, but Acceptance and Happiness would be pretty powerful motivators, in my humble opinion.

A vampire would probably be driven by the needs to avoid death, acquire food (blood), and shelter (from the sun), but their relationship with God may be a pretty interesting motivator given their "damned" status. A vampire with the motivation to procreate would also be interesting to read about. Would they procreate by converting others, like in most movies, or would they try to find a way to make more vampires through sex like in Van Helsing?

A shape-shifter's animal motivations might force themselves to the forefront due to their animal forms, but a lot of movies and books these days feature shape-shifters who are more motivated by their need for acceptance, like Remus Lupin.

There are other ways of going about it, but just by mixing and matching motivations can actually help you create new and more interesting characters.

One exercise I've done in the past that was pretty fun was what I liked to call the "Hat Game". You get multiple hats or containers. I have an overabundance of hats so this isn't two hard. Then you get a bunch of scraps of paper that are roughly the same size with the same appearance. Into one hat, you put in traits of characters in a story. So, if you're messing with supernatural creatures, you write a different kind of supernatural creature on each scrap, and toss it in the first hat. You could also put in powers or jobs or whatever you feel defines a person in the stories you commonly write. In the other hats you put in motivations. The same motivations in all the other hats. I suggest no less than two motivation hats and no more than four. Then, you start drawing the papers out of the hats. If you get repeat motivations, you get to pick a new one from the same hat or you consider that motivation the strongest.

This is where the fun part comes in, you get to be creative based on what you pull out. So, say you draw: "Pixie", "Food", ""God", "Happiness". Now, you have to imagine the kind of pixie that would be most motivated by food, God, and being happy. So, maybe you have a little fat, jolly, Buddha pixie. Or maybe you have a pixie who likes to play practical jokes that tend to get a little vicious on those who either aren't religious or hate God while stealing food whenever it looks tasty? Or maybe you have a trickster pixie concerned with making people happy who thinks he IS God and insists on people offering food to him? It's a fun exercise and it leads to some fun characters sometimes.

It also makes you think of different ways to motivate people you never thought of. You could also add personality traits in another hat and really have a good time.

If you think this sounds weird, you've obviously never been bored in your house and wanting to write.

Mrs. WS suggested that whenever I write a story, I should do one simple exercise to keep characters and their motivations straight (which I've never had a problem with), however, it is helpful for plotting and thinking through my characters and the story they're in. It goes like this.

1. Who is doing what to whom?
2. Why?
3. How?
4. To what purpose?

I'm pretty sure she meant for me to use it mostly for short stories, but I find doing it every chapter or so and answering in my head as the character really helps me make sure that I'm doing things the right way. However, sometimes I forget to do it and that's when I start to stop writing a story because it no longer makes sense.

Remembering characters and their motivations is a pretty basic thing, but doing it correctly can be a difficult thing to master. It requires the author to keep in mind everything they know about the character to make sure that their actions are realistic so the motivation is clear to all authors. A good example of a written work where the characters and the motivations are perfectly spun in a realistic way is A Song of Ice and Fire and the accompanying TV Series A Game of Thrones. A good anime where this is portrayed in a fun way is Baccano! In fact, characters and their motivations is pretty much the clearest thing to determine watching the series... mostly. A good example where this is done terribly is Heroes... especially the second and third season.