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,
Motive is what characters want or don't, or some belief that "filters" their choice....
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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.
Human nature; in the end we’re all fighting the same battles. I think that’s why stories work....
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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.
If you want a theme, compare two characters with their motives. Or six, and their changes....
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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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