What's Your Motivation?

Spring brings daffodils and new hopes for better times ahead. Did you know the daffodil also symbolizes inspiration, creativity and reflection? It’s often the time when, after finishing our winter revisions, we now start a new project. We anticipate new characters with the same enthusiasm of a new relationship. We wake up early, eager to see how they are doing. We spend the day with them, meeting their family and friends, going on fancy adventures, and otherwise worrying about them.

And at night, we dream about them.

We fall in love with our characters. And we want our readers to feel the same affection. For a reader to bond with your story, s/he must fall in love with your character. James Scott Bell (The Art of War for Writers, 2009) identifies three lead character types:

 The positive lead character is your traditional hero. S/he represents the values of the community. The hero gives the reader a window into the story. Readers love traditional heroes because if the hero wins, everyone wins. Including the reader.

A negative lead character does things that most wouldn’t approve of. In fact, readers don’t always like the negative lead. As such, this character type becomes the hardest to create. Hannibal Lecter is the serial killing antagonist in Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs. But he becomes the primary character in the third book and movie, Hannibal. We don’t like him, but we certainly are fascinated with him!

The third lead character, the antihero lead is a specialized kind of hero. Society may see her as an outlaw or a villain. But the reader sympathizes with the anti-hero. She is the individualist, the one who goes it alone. Readers fall in love with these types of characters.


The key to creating memorable characters is understanding their motivation. Her motivation helps establish the vital bond between herself and the reader. After all, readers can empathize with a character’s motivation, especially if it’s similar to her own. Readers want to know why these characters are in the mess they are in.


In fact, psychologists distinguish two kinds of motivation: social and physiological. Your character has basic biological needs. Our bodies are hardwired to fear and avoid pain and death. Your character may also find motivation in social situations, from familial to cultural to national situations. The social motivation reflects behavior, and determines how behavior influences personality. These also include unconscious response to early conditioning, and ingrained beliefs on gender, race and religion.

If the plot is what happens to your character, then her motivation is the force that sets it into motion and keeps it going. It’s why she goes after her goal in the first place.

Story is driven by motivation. Gregory Martin (New Writer’s Handbook, 2007) points out that this ‘desire’ is driven not only by the character’s desire but by the reader’s desire as well. The reader wants to see the character succeed, or at least wants to see what happens next. And, more importantly, it’s the writer’s desire to “thwart both the character and the reader,” for that is the essence of story.

But motive and motivation can be complicated.

Just as there are times when we don’t fully understand why we do the things we do, you’ll discover that your character does not always understand her behavior. This confusion, however, makes your character real to the reader. Her confusion reinforces her struggle.

As Rust Hill explains, motivation may lead to conflict, but if the story reflects only two characters who motives are each clear and distinct, and who eventually come to a face to face confrontation, this is just external conflict. Far more effective “…is the internal conflict that occurs when motivations are in conflict within the same character. With some exceptions, all the intriguing characters in literature have very unclear motivation.” (Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular, 2000)


Your character’s history relates to her inner struggle. As Dr Phil tells us, our past affects our present. Understanding this psychological make-up of your character adds depth to your story. Daughters who grew up neglected by their fathers often look to their lovers to fill some fundamental sense of emptiness. They may be too needy, always wanting to be told how special they are, always too eager to please. Sons who mothers abandoned them at an early age often have a hard time trusting women. Are monsters created or are they born? Remember the lead character in Monster (2003), in which Charlize Theron plays lead character Aileen Wuornos, a serial killer who – we discover through backstory -- had been brutally victimized as a child.

 “Whatever your characters do and say will be born out of who they are, so you need to set out to get to know each one as well as possible." -- Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird, 1994)

By the way, read about the backstory and motivation for April's wonderful brand new book, More Than Enough! And enter the giveaway!

Meanwhile, take a walk with your character, and fall in love again!

Bobbi Miller 

(PS. All photos by morguefile.com)

My (NON) Writing Ritual: For Times When I'm Lost

So,

I’m here to report:
there are those times when even though I’ve ritualistically readied myself to write, I am unable to move forward with my story.

I lose my way somehow.

My fingers freeze.
My North Star is elsewhere playing Hide-and-Seek.

The Good News, however?

Like that wondrous woman who lives inside our cars’ or devices’ GPS,
the one who expertly and melodically repositions our course when we turn left instead of right or bypass our designated Exit or come to a grinding halt at the wrong destination,
I know how to RECALCULATE!

Here’s my 3-Step Easy Ritual for finding my way back.

#1

I take myself away from my writing space, sit still and quietly re-read the encouraging hope-filled greeting cards I’ve mailed myself the past 37 years (!) while out-and-about on my Writer’s Journey.

#2

Next I re-read and think on the inspirational quotes I’ve tucked away inside my treasured Hansel and Gretl box.

#3Finally I empty my beautiful one-of-a-kind carpet bag of its contents - the notes, letters and Thank You’s I’ve received, and read my way through, savoring the words,

especially and always those penned long-ago by my fellow TeachingAuthor Carmela Martino when I sold, at long last, my very first picture book.

Before I know it,

I’ve recalibrated my compass, refueled my heart and found my way home to my keyboard and story.

Happy Writing – and – Recalculating (if and when needed)!

Esther Hershenhorn

P.S.
The above Rx is a true-blue twofer; the 3-step ritual helps me REBOOT too!

P.P.S.
Let’s hear it for that hard-working second-chance prefix RE! Where would we be without it?

Gold Stars Revisited

    As we bid a fond sabbatical to TA Jeanne Marie, we are taking another look at our favorite JM posts. Mine is from June  2011, "Gold Stars."  In this one, JM discusses the pros and cons of rewards for summer reading programs. Shouldn't the act of reading be reward in itself?  This made m think of the larger issue, "Who gives gold stars to writers?"

    There are plenty of rewards out there for published authors.   Not just gold stars, but fancy embossed stickers on book jackets proclaiming this book was the among the best of whatever genre that particular year.  Some are more prestigious than others but still those stickers, and medals and plexiglass trophies are nice to have . They are a tangible "atta-girl" in a field that doesn't provide a lot of them.  

    But there are a lot of books, and comparatively few awards. Even fewer awards mean anything in the way of prestige or, let's face it, book sales. That is if you have first been rewarded by being  published. Some of us, (most of us?) toil year after year, page after page, with nothing more than a bunch of rejection letter/emails to show for our efforts. In the ultimate downer, many publishers, in the interest of saving time and paper, don't even send out rejections any more. If you don't hear anything after a certain amount of time,"we (the publisher) aren't interested." Ouch. We, (the writer) no longer have the satisfaction of weeping and wailing and torching a rejection letter in the fireplace. (I can't be the only one who has done this.)

    Sometimes writing becomes just another thankless task, like housework or driving carpool.  Ralph Waldo Emerson said  "A thing done well is it's own reward." Mr. Emerson never vacuumed or was trapped in a minivan of eye rolling seventh graders, to whom your mere presence was a necessary embarrassment , since thirteen-year-olds don't have drivers' licenses.  There are days when I am either staring at a blank computer screen or playing Candy Crunch Saga. Either way, I am accomplishing the same thing. Nothing. And wondering why I chose to be a writer.

   Even being a published writer doesn't necessarily provide satisfaction. Soon you learn that royalty statements often arrive without royalty checks....because your books hasn't earned enough.   Money isn't everything, but it's hard to tell yourself that you spent years of your life writing something that is earning you only the advance money and not a nickel more. For most of this, that advance can be counted in five figures. I could make more moolah at my local fast food establishment.

   So why do we keep doing this? Where are the gold stars? For me,  they aren't movie options, or Newbery awards or a book going into a 55th printing because it is on the required reading list in all fifty states.

   I have to have hunt for those gold stars. Sorry Mr. Emerson, but a job done well is not it's own reward for me, because I never feel that I have done a job well. I am a terrible judge of my own work, by which I mean, I think nearly everything I write is terrible. 

   Every now and then, I do find those sparkly rewards. A student saying, "I loved your book."  A critique group member saying "Wow, I never would have thought of writing  this story from that point of view." External rewards.

   My most consistent gold star is this: writing is a compulsion. If I never sold another story, I would still write.  Letters, eulogies (I am the official family eulogy writer), this blog. Although a Newbery award would be great (so would a movie option) my real gold star is the knowledge that somewhere, sometime, my writing has connected with someone. Maybe someone like you.

Posted by Mary Ann Rodman