The Plot-Device Machine – Motive

A story is its people. We all know that, and that’s why Motive is different from the other Plot Device points. We’ve seen how Movement and especially Knowledge can organize the plot around the Strengths that will determine just who gets what they want… but Motive is what they want. And it doesn’t matter if the rest of the story is about fighting Dracula or diabetes; it’s plotting from the characters’ Motive that really brings it to life.

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

What counts as Motive? I’d say,

[bctt tweet=”Motive is what characters want or don’t, or some belief that ‘filters’ their choice.”]

In its simplest, it’s what goal someone could go after in the story. Fight or flight. The patriot’s war, the money-grubber’s deal, or the mother’s child. Family, love and friends, work, and coping with other problems are the common starting points (I’ve got a post on those options). And it isn’t only action stories that tend to make it “negative” rather than “positive,” on the grounds that saving a planet or a relationship (or at least rebuilding one) can make a more intense story than building it the first time. That’s just how we humans are wired, to react to threats faster than we notice opportunities.

Or Motive could shade into attitudes, expectations, or patterns that aren’t strictly “get this/ stop that” goals. This could be filters over charactrers’ actual goals, but one that’s just as key to what the people are and how we can use them: the company man who just won’t see what his firm is really doing, or the giver who’ll stick her neck out for anyone. Anything that affects the choices they make.

Why is Motive juicier than the other pieces of the story? I like to think it’s so fundamental it really is the part that the reader’s own life can share in. We just don’t connect a tale’s spotting a murder weapon lying in the corner (or even a time-saving accounting trick) to our own struggles, not the way we watch Peter “Bannon” in Hook missing his son’s proverbial baseball game and think of the choices we make every day. And it isn’t about kids, or any match between story subject and reader (though we all know it doesn’t hurt!), since so much of our lives are always dealing with other people. We don’t need to meet an alcoholic—or a vampire—to let a character with a secret remind us everyone has their private demons.

[bctt tweet=”Human nature: in the end we’re all fighting the same battles. I think that’s why stories work.”]

But… every writer talks about character and motive. Don’t I already have enough of that in my story?

Moments for Motive

One way to make full use of Motive is to check scenes, character layers and their conflict (for all characters), and larger contrasts. For instance:

Which scenes really hinge on Motive rather than Strength, Knowledge, or Movement? Star Wars might be crammed with shootouts and chases, but the loudest cheer in the theater always comes when Han and the Falcon drop in to clear out the Death Star’s trench after all.
How many Motives does a character have? “Depth” is a word we like to throw around, but can you count how many goals and beliefs each of your cast has that make a difference? We can tell a minor character by only having two or three… but if a side character has more Motive issues than the hero does it just might mean you’re telling the wrong person’s story.
How much do those Motives clash? Indiana Jones doesn’t slow down often to show off his issues, but he lets the Nazis (the frickin’ Nazis!) get a chance at the Ark’s ultimate power because he’s too much of a scholar to blow it up.
- Still, build-up beats bigger stakes. For every story worth remembering, we’ve all seen way too many that announced everything was life or death, but didn’t take the time to establish why we should care. Has Michael Bay ever seen The Blair Witch Project, let alone read A Christmas Carol?
How many characters have layered Motives, complete with all the above? Even building the story around a multilayered hero shouldn’t hide the chance to make other characters the key to some some scenes, and to build up just how hard a choice they have to make. In fact…
What patterns do characters’ Motives form? This might be as simple as giving hero and villain opposite drives—or as careful as making the villain all too similar (the famous “Shadow Self”) to spotlight that one defining difference. It at least ought to mean sheer variety in the cast; what’s the point in giving the hero two friends if they’re both driven by revenge?
- Answer: to show how two very different people can have that Motive in common. Or how two “similar” folks can become different.

Some of the best-designed stories out there can come from combinations of which characters seem similar but have a different Motive, or seem different but turn out to have something in common. Lord of the Rings gives us Boromir’s desire to save his people, that opens him to the Ring’s influence… and his brother facing the same choice and resisting. Meanwhile Frodo sees Gollum is actually another hobbit driven by the same hunger for the Ring that he’s coping with himself, until he can pity his enemy and make him an ally—and all the back-and-forth twists that that leads to, to make us wonder how far either of them can be trusted with this kind of power around. Or how much poor Sam will put up with.

[bctt tweet=”If you want a theme, compare two characters with their #motives. Or six, and their changes. “]

To me, that’s what writing is. It’s a chance to explore what kind of character has what in common with who else, or how different they can be—and then how the story can change those to show more truths underneath those. My Paul Schuman thought if he could stay away from his family he might have some kind of normal life again; Lorraine will fight for a complete life beside Paul’s brother, but still not tell Greg what she’s become part of. Mark Petrie wants to keep Angie Dennard and her father safe, but by getting them away from danger, not using the magic Angie wants to master, while Joe Dennard has his own reasons for avoiding it. Contrast, of Motives.

Well, the story’s that and pinning those Motives to the Strengths those people need to work for (and against) them, and spreading the storylines out with the evolving Knowledge of how they and the reader can only see so far, and the Movement that some of their “steps” to it mean they never know what might happen when they pass the next dark alley.

But it’s all there.

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The Plot-Device Machine – Strength

Welcome to the whole story… or at least a chance to step back from looking at single aspects of writing, like the last two Plot-Device posts did. Now that we’ve explored how characters’ movement and knowledge keep changing how the story works—and the ways each ends up reshaping the tale—it’s time to look at a third aspect and see how they all fit together to build a story. I call this third quarter of the Plot Device, Strength.

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

(“Strength? What if my story only has a bit of fighting in it?” comes the voice from the back row.)

I’ll admit it, I’ve never had a perfect name for this one. That’s because it takes in every component in the story world that doesn’t fall into the other three groups.

“Strength” could be any tool or resource characters use to make a change in the story, and whatever’s in the story that gives them that opening. A hammer can break down a door, or nails can put it back up—or it could be someone having the muscle to smash that door, or how fast someone’s tiring from the room being on fire, or the fact that there’s a door there to smash and not just another stretch of wall. It does usually means physical “things,” but there’s also room for some abstract power in the grouping; if our hero’s goal is to write an unforgettable song, “strength” might be inspiration, time to work on it, and probably years of study or experience so he’s ready to write.

But the reason I group all these together is to tease out the other Plot Device aspects separate from them, and let them work in the ways we covered in the other posts. Our musician may test out and “learn” which chords work for his song, but that still works better as working through the songwriting’s Strength on its own terms. Meanwhile if part of the process is hearing one musical style and remembering it’s the way he always wanted to sing, that might open up things like:

Since he only has to hear that sound again once, it’s Knowledge—and like we’ve seen, it can have a whole investigation to track it down, or a theme-friendly depth of learning what kind of musician he’d rather be.
If he has to go to a hundred clubs before he hears it, that’s Movement’s way of spreading the story out, and giving him a chance to stumble into friends and enemies on the way.

Or there’s Motive—but that’s for the next post. Combining these two with Strengths is fun enough.

Finding Strength factors can be trickier than it looks, with so much weighing into it. My rule of thumb is:

[bctt tweet=”Everything characters deal with is a lock; some just have keys that are harder to get. http://bit.ly/DevicesStr”]

The “locks”: look on all sides for what makes anything a weak link, or ready to change. Small-scale example: look left and right and all through the building for where there might be a door someone can try to open. (Are there windows? Or are the doors so reinforced it’s easier to smash the wall?)
1. Don’t forget, what’s changing on its own: from tides coming in and batteries dimming, to politics changing as whole generations fade away. Or, what times are they just not there (or some rare thing is) and that changes the mix?

The “keys”: what tools, resources, skills, possible allies, and so on are out there that can change one of those—enable it, fix it, whatever you need?
1. Yes, those keys might need components to build them, or bargaining chips to get someone involved, that break a simple process down into more scenes. We’ve all seen stories plotted like that, but they make sense if you don’t take them for granted.

Plan B, C… You’ll always come up with a few locks and keys that might work, and some that would have worked if the conditions weren’t forbidding them, and probably a few that sound beyond crazy. Any of those are good for that moment when our hero shows he’s trying to think of everything—or of course if you have any time for Things To Go Wrong.
The other guys, and forces. Remember to check all the above for how every other character (like the villain) is busy looking for their own shot at their own goals, and how all characters have changes around them even if nobody’s taking advantage of them. The hero has to sleep too, and if our villain knows where…
Strong enough? Once those Strengths start to come together, you can write two ways: You can run a fight, surgery, or any other scene with the classic suspense of whether they’ll actually win. Or you can keep all the tension on the plot twists just before that, on just who’ll get the right tool or enemy attack there in time. (But then, I like to have the outcome hanging on skill and then keep changing the rules…)

Again, this the purely Strength side of it. You might have the perfect “key” that our hero just doesn’t Know about, or can’t Move out to get. Because it’s that combination, taking those Strength points and pacing them out with Knowledge and Movement (and all the smaller cycles within those) that really starts to look like a story. In fact it starts to look like a treasure map, but one that does justice to the complications you’d have trying to follow it.

The Treasure Map of Oz

Time to see how these work together. In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy’s goal is simple: getting home. The Strength to do that turns out to be in her magic shoes (silver or ruby, depending on your choice of media) and her love of family to make them work. But that’s the Plan B, since there’s also the Wizard—

(There’s that back-row voice again: “Her goal is getting home? Doesn’t that make all of this Movement?” Well yes, it could be called that, but that’s a move she doesn’t start until the story’s end. The tale’s Movement parts aren’t the flight to Kansas and whatever happens on the way, they’re her journey to find Strengths that could let her go.)

So Dorothy’s quest is to discover the depth of love (Strength) to work those shoes… after she stops relying on the Strength of the Wizard. In fact the Wizard’s offering two ways out: a perfectly good balloon ride (that turns out to be too time-sensitive for a girl with a dog-shaped Deus Ex Machina), and before that his “magic” that’s a red herring—a bit of Knowledge plotting. But first, just to learn about that “Strength” she has to go and claim another Strength, by beating the Witch.

And those several Strengths are scattered over Oz—imagine how much shorter the tale would be if the Wizard and Witch were right there when she landed with the Munchkins, ready to fight out their differences with her in one busy scene! Instead it’s that Movement (and the missing Knowledge about the Wizard) that spreads the story out on the way to those Strengths; it’s what gives her time to meet her three friends, dodge the Witch’s attacks (our villain doesn’t miss her chances to use own Strength), and of course build up the Strength she’ll really need. And all those journeys, discoveries, and fights are made up of their own combinations of these—the Tin Woodsman even gets to break down a door.

Other stories are their own mix of the same elements. A thriller might turn on getting hold of a bloody shirt for evidence, layered over with the trail of Knowledge to find it, the Movement to get to each clue, and the Strength to reach them and come out alive. A business story could be gathering the resources to launch that billion-dollar idea; a monster hunt needs get hold of its silver bullets and then track down and shoot the werewolf.

(“But that isn’t ALL the story! Why is Dorothy even chased by the Witch, why’d the Wizard send her after her, why are her friends and her home so important—”)

I know. That’s the last piece of the Plot Device puzzle. Strength may give us pieces that Knowledge and Movement lay out, but we all know the thing that really aligns them all, and makes the story mean something. So next week: Motive.

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The Plot-Device Machine – Knowledge

“You can run but you can’t hide.” It’s simple truth, that getting distance from a problem may be no match for how “Knowledge is power.” And that’s only one side to how “who knows what” defines the story; my first Plot Device post showed how you might move your characters around to control how the plot unfolds, but knowledge almost is the plot.

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

Think about this:

[bctt tweet=”Knowledge is the only side of the story that matches how the reader’s experiencing it. #secrets #writing”]

Unless you’re writing a travel guide, they aren’t following those movements; unless it’s a how-to they won’t be assembling the strengths the characters gain.

But knowledge means something, if the story can make us wonder “what’s really going on there” and let us share in the answer… because that answer or how to search for it always says at least a bit about our own lives. It could be

Specific: Bilbo solving each of Gollum’s riddles. Each time we figure one out ourselves, we cheer; each time we don’t, we sweat just a little for him.
Game-changing: the Green Goblin learning Spider-Man’s identity. (It’s not just what the hero knows!)
Layered: how much of a romance comes down to pacing what moments the couple are “getting to know” the chemistry they have, matched against thos False Impressions?
Or, bedrock: under all their twisting clues, mysteries can get their ultimate power from revealing just how vicious a killer was right next to us all along.

So the more of your story is tied to the revelations in it, the harder it can hit.

Knowing when to Know

It may be because information’s about blind spots, but I’ve seen (and written, sigh) so many moments where a plot misses one side of holding its mysteries together. A story can’t lose track of:

What’s someone know, right now? And so, what does that make him think he needs to look into next—or not care about at all, so far?
1. And, how do his assumptions play into it? There’s no better tool for a character arc than to find the facts he just won’t accept, then show how wrong he is.
Then, how many ways could he follow that up? Talk to people, bring up Google, or track down a Dusty Tome? Run a test in a lab?
1. One trick is to consider all five senses (or more, if you’ve got a cast like mine!) for what signs each fact might leave, including from looking back at its history. Detectives look for everything from footprints to strange sounds to glimpses in ATM cameras, and all the associates and back-story a suspect has. Can someone really run away from an enemy without coming back all sweaty? When you know what to look for, you know what ways someone might look for it.
Also, which of those signs can he use best, to follow up? A hacker might dig through a dozen servers before he knocks on a witness’s door, but Sherlock Holmes will spot everything from calloused fingers to unscrupulous accounting at a glance—and he’ll know what the combination means, and how to shift to using a disguise to get the next piece.
Check what all characters know, not just the main ones. Look at each step your central characters take (in investigating and everything else), and then ask who else is going to get a hint of what happened and start nosing around themselves—or just jump in and act. There’s just no comparison between Lois Lane being fooled by Clark Kent’s glasses and the thrill of Indy hauling up the Ark only to discover that the Nazis were watching him digging…
1. Then ask what that tells the hero to look into, and keep things escalating!
And, what are all those players doing for “information control”? Can they keep from leaving those traces (tiptoe past those guards), or erase them later or explain them away?
1. Better yet, who can trick who with all of that? There’s the “moment of distraction” someone could use to tweak any moment in the story… and then there’s Holmes’s defining trick of pretending to set fire to a house, to make the blackmailer herself reveal her hiding place.
2. On top of THAT, some of the best plot twists come when the villain (or hero) realize they’ve been tricked, and the tables start turning!

You can lay most parts of the story out in terms of how each scrap of knowledge lets the hero—and everyone else—move the plot forward, or else move off-track with your red herrings.

In fact, speaking of moving, it’s often literal! In many styles of writing, most of the pages are simply the combination of searching and moving. Whether it’s a grand investigation, sneaking past an enemy, or just describing scenery (whether or not real clues are hidden in it), they form the same pattern:

[bctt tweet=”Basic scene: everyone moves toward the expected next clue, sees what’s there, rinse & repeat. http://bit.ly/DevicesKnow”]

Think about it: how many ways are there that really vary from that? Yes, there’s when someone settles in to search in one place (through a process like reading or talking), or into a flat-out race or chase where speed matters more than scenery (but even then, things can come up in the environment to help them maneuver). There are Strength moments, from fights to change-the-tires scenes, that I’ll get to in the next Plot Device post. And you have other conversations, that can be their own mix of Knowledge and Motive, and maybe some Movement (or Strength) too. But mixing Movement and Knowledge might be the bread and butter of getting most sequences written.

In fact, part of the balance is how much you’ll let Knowledge obsolete Movement. Do characters need to go out to look at a site, or can they just run tests in their lab—or even skip gathering the lab samples if they can just talk to someone who’s seen it happen? (“Where’s my flying car? It’s called the Internet.”) Which means you can choose what clues call for legwork after all, and which dead ends the map won’t warn them about, to pick which discoveries get more emphasis… or just get more chances for complications.

And of course, the more amazing a character’s control of knowledge is, the more it reshapes the whole story from the start. (If you’ve ever played a video game with a secondary “radar display” to keep track of your enemies, you know how different it feels to see a bit further!) Many a story’s been built just around why the protagonist knows at least a little that the rest of us don’t: the psychic, the spy, or just the witness nobody believes. Or it could be the same advantage in reverse, being the invisible man or inside source that can hide in plain sight. Then you have the challenge of building the story around just how much more they can find, and what limits they still have.

(No, Superman, the missile control doesn’t have to be inside the lead box, that’s only the first thing where you can’t see what’s inside… oops.)

Knowledge, and Movement, can be the major tools for organizing a story. But then the other two Plot Device tools… Strength and Motive are the story pieces themselves.

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The Plot-Device Machine – Movement

I’m about to share with you my all-purpose tool for the all-purpose question that my characters (and I’d bet yours) are constantly asking. That question is, “How do I get out of this one?”

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

Or, it can be how the hero will find a new way into a dilemma that holds the key he needs, or of course how enemies and good old Murphy’s Law can get at him. From escaping traps to staying on the good side of a tempestuous ally, in a hero’s eyes his life is a multilayered challenge that almost seems to be conspiring to push him to his limits.

And readers never stop asking the same questions, because they know his life is!

So much of the nuts and bolts of writing is building the dramatic out of the practical. Would that escape be more intense if he bargained rather than fought his way through? Does the plot touch all the bases of tracking a killer?

When I’m looking for problems or solutions for my characters, I’ve found I have four main options. As a writer you won’t see any of these as new, but I think the key is in seeing the combination of choices, and the ways they can steer a scene or story. (Plus, me being me, they all have their own implications for picking someone’s paranormal or other suspense resources.)

So my plot devices are either about:

Movement
Knowledge
Strength
Motive

Movement

Yes, I listed movement first, and it’s not because I have a weakness for chase scenes. Stop a moment and think:

[bctt tweet=”How many pages are the hero working his way through a place? #Movement matters. #writing”]

On a small scale, mobility can mean chase speeds and barriers, or whether hero or villain can find an unprotected approach to get where he wants. (Try the back door, crawl up the sewers, whatever way’s the weakest link.) On a larger scale, running a business or just getting through the day have their own logistics issues, and a problem anywhere on all those roads—or getting a new and better way around—may well be the most changeable part of the story. Or, you can force the heroine’s boyfriend or mentor to move across the country, even if it’s just to make phone contact less comfortable.

As often as not, part of making a whole scene or more story work is physically placing everything it needs. That can mean having a sense of:

Pacing—of the story, not the people on the move. Do you want to stretch a scene out with escape maneuvers, or sum up a month of military campaigning with a paragraph that explains thinning supply routes? Giving a section more space usually means finding more complications for it, and a longer or rougher ride is an easy way to provide that.

Or else, just taking movement out of a scene focuses it on everything else. The more you’re trapped with your enemy, for better or worse, the more you know something’s about to change… though even then something might come between you…

Who wants to bring which things together, and who doesn’t? Is that bystander who sees the approaching figure a cop who thinks standing and shooting at a monster will do any good, or is it Carrie Coed who’s perfectly happy to RUN AWAY?
Speeds, and also distance, to which goals. Letting Carrie run to just “get away” may not be as intense as having her run to her car. So how far from the parking lot is she? How near was the beastie to catching her—and if it moves at a nice suspenseful shamble, the only way to let it gain on her may be to say poor Carrie’s already limping from a previous chase.

But then, movement isn’t only raw speed. If Carrie had one of my own books’ flying belts to float up out of reach (assuming the monster didn’t too!), or she had to run around a chain fence while the monster oozed right through it, the chase may take a very different turn.

The big one: check everything for how it can change. Cliché or not, it’s only human for Carrie to stop and stare when the monster pours through the parking lot fence, or maybe even drop the car keys she needed. (Yes, this can be more a chance for “shock,” mixed in with more straight suspense of just following the movement.)

Especially, focus on how those characters try to control those. The creature might be smart enough to see that Carrie needs to run to the lot exit now, and try to head her off. But if Carrie had actually dropped her backup keys, and then doubled back to her car with her real ones, she can get to drive straight through the thing—SPLAT.

(Good for you, Carrie!)

All in all, movement ought to be a natural part of working out any writing. Wherever the story physically is, distance and barriers are a big part of stretching it out (distance metaphors—we can’t get away from them). And you’ll always find a few aspects of it that can be perfect for twisting the plot.

Especially, it can be part of defining the characters, and the story as a whole. A mobile hero might be the perfect match for a stronger but slower enemy (no wonder Peter Pan can laugh at all those pirates), or a faster, elusive villain can make him the one frustrated. At the same time it can set the scale for the story: Carrie only has to drive across campus to find out why her friends aren’t answering their phones, but the further Clark Kent realized he could fly, the more of the planet Superman patrolled.

[bctt tweet=”If you don’t think #movement can reimagine a whole story, two words: Road trip!”]

With all the different pieces of your plot, movement can be just the way to control who gets to act on what.

That is, if they know about it. Which brings us to next week: Knowledge.

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Worth Fighting For – choosing stakes for characters

When I’m first putting my sense of a story together, there’s one question that can turn the different pieces into a whole, sometimes faster than any other choice I make. And that is: what does a character want?

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

I don’t mean the deep study of how the world looks through his eyes, not yet. (And not the “What’s my motivation?” acting jokes—although any cliché like that was usually washed downstream from a good idea up somewhere.) No, I mean a simple decision about what part of the story keeps that person in the action, in terms of his own history.

Think about how you come up with a concept, and what ideas come to you first. You might start with a protagonist and build the world as you start to understand her; “What kind of person would try to hide her psychic powers to live an ordinary life?” Or you might begin with a sense of the conflict (“wizards at war!”) or the cause at the root of it, or just a setting you want to draw a story out of. So many ways we can go.

But to keep those pieces from pulling apart, we want at least a basic sense of which of them got our people involved. In some stories this may be less important than how the plot escalates (such as trying to stay alive), but even as a starting point it’s a good one. So I like to look for whether the character’s here for:

Family: The earliest, maybe deepest motive we all have. When Inigo Montoya says “You killed my father, prepare to die!” or a troubled teenager tries to keep her sister from following in her footsteps, we all know how much is going on. It’s especially good for bringing in the weight of the character’s past; half the story’s subtext may be her fighting for these few people to not see her as who she used to be.

Love and Friends: If family’s bound up with the past, these can start as casual and in-the-moment as Watson’s initial curiosity about Holmes—or as life-changing as Romeo catching a glimpse of his enemies’ daughter. It might be the most versatile motive of all because that other person could be anyone, with whatever bond to the character you want to build up, and they have all their own ways of changing and pulling people in deeper.

Work: The classic, if you want the story tied to how police work or ranching operates, or at least how Certain Events are complicating those. Harry Potter starts his adventure wanting to earn his place as a wizard, and the sheer weirdness of Hogwarts fills half the pages of the books. And like Harry shows, this choice can be all about the structure that job brings, but it can also be an easy string for pulling in characters you don’t want to give a separate supporting cast to—or to show off how someone like Harry doesn’t have any good people in his life, at first.

Accident and Entropy: Sometimes a killer just thinks your hairstyle is more fascinating than the others on the street—or you win a lottery, or wake up with a disease. The other stakes usually come with their own baggage, but here we can say “It had to happen to someone”… and then build the story from how that plays off the rest of the character. That random target becomes all about whether her ordinariness (and all the unique bits it came from) will help her survive; the lottery winner finds out what he really wants in life. If you want this kind of setup, you’ll usually know it.

Whatever else the story does, the better I know a character wants the right thing, the more the whole story hangs together. The High Road starts with a family secret, but making my viewpoint character Mark a friend of the Dennards keeps him a step back from their legacy to appreciate it a bit more. It spotlights his relationship to them but told me I had to show how specific his reasons for being there were, from his suspicion of the magic he’d glimpsed to his lack of a stable family himself.

Besides choosing a type of stake, here are three other things that choice can lead to:

Often the way the character sees that goal can be as distinctive as the thing itself. If you look at the Marvel movies, Thor and Iron Man both start their arcs as superstars who think they know everything about changing the world, while the future Captain America is a weakling who dreams of making a difference any way he can. One person might have lost someone and be driven by revenge or just stumbling around with a grudge against the world, but a different spin on the same concept can give you a character trying to make amends—either to the people he’s failed or to the different ones that are all he has left.

Or, the most impressive thing about stakes may be the combination of them, and how many you cover or contrast. Harry Potter comes to Hogwarts to train, but he also has his lost family to discover, and the friends he soon makes… and even touching all those bases makes any character more complete. Or look at the symmetry between Harry and the picture we form of young Voldemort: both Hogwarts students, both from nightmarish homes, but Harry’s honest friendships (and how easily he makes them) make it easy to see how different their lives will be. Just think of a classic mystery: half the story might come out of “the real killer did it for simple greed, while the red herrings have these flashy love and cover-up-the-accident motives.” Or how many stories are about changing a character from career-chasing to love or family.

Most of all, choosing someone’s goal ought to be a signpost to what to flesh out next. “For his father” is pure cliché if it just lies there pretending to be a complete answer, without detailing what that father’s like. Other characters may never mention their parents at all, but that only works for the ones that have whole different forces driving them. And the better you are at picking which of those basics each character depends on, the sooner you can fill in what they’ll mean for the story.

Besides, the heroine’s father might turn out to be the hero’s too, if you find you’re creating the next Darth Vader…