I Wish...

Last Monday, we examined your character’s motivation throughout the story.  Today, we’ll look at his goals.

The importance of character goals

The goal is the “what” of your character’s journey through the story.  It’s a need, an object or desired outcome.  Goals can be anything, no matter how unbelievable to the reader, as long as the reader buys into the concept that the character believes in it.  The reader must be convinced the protagonist and antagonist will lose everything if they don’t obtain it.

External goals are concrete and simple

• Kill the six-fingered man
• Rescue Buttercup from Vizzini, Fezzik and Inigo

Internal goals are needed for emotional satisfaction

• Inigo is blindly loyal to Vizzini because the hunchback saved him from giving up.  If he could not avenge his father, he would stay loyal to Vizzini
• Humperdinck is a noted hunter and kills without remorse, yet he elaborately plans the war with Guilder so he does not appear as a heartless invader but as a mourning husband seeking revenge

Goals can change.  The character might not be aware of what he needs at the beginning of the story.  As an author, it’s your job to peel back the different layers until his true goal is revealed.  Is Inigo’s goal to revenge his father’s death or to make up for not defending him?

Goals must be strong enough to motivate your character to withstand unrelenting conflict.

We’ll talk about Conflict next Monday.  On Wednesday, I’ll have a thought provoking video for you, and Mary has some exciting things on tap after that.

Take care,

Cheryl

In honor of the 21st day of the month, I have a 21 minute writing exercise for you:

Take seven minutes and write a fast profile of three characters – two unrelated good-guy characters and an antagonistic figure.  Make them as random as you can.  For instance, a cowboy, an obstetrician, and a drug dealer.  Include their main trait (like a musician), their big struggle (he’s going blind), and their big goal (wants to play all nine Beethoven Symphonies with his local symphony before he has to retire), and what ever else you can fit into seven minutes.

Now, take all three of these characters and use the next seven minutes to come up with an outrageous plot for them.  If you have any time left when you are done, come up with one more idea to notch up the craziness.  (The obstetrician is the long lost love of the cowboy who is the hated half brother of the drug dealer, and the cowboy must save his beloved doc before the drug dealer shoots her for a blowing the whistle on his drug ring.  — Added craziness:  it’s all happening in a posh NYC hotel during a political convention.  [Gosh, I might actually try to turn this one into a real story.])

Finally, take seven minutes to write your two opening paragraphs of the story.

If you do this right, this will be the fastest 21 minutes of your week.  Go!

All the best,

Mary

While I love to write fiction, I haven’t made a dime at it.  On the other hand, non-fiction has been fairly good to me, and it just got better thanks to my not-so-big-mouth.  I’ll tell you how, but first I’ll have to explain a little about myself.

I was raised in a hard working family of business minded folk.  Both of my parents love great books, but neither of them were too encouraging when I majored in English/Creative Writing.  “Well, maybe you can be a teacher,” my mother said, “It’s a noble profession, and a lot of people are very happy as teachers.”  It was like she was comforting me for coming in second place in a race.  My father tried to be upbeat as well.  “Good writing skills are essential in business,” he confirmed.  “You can be a good businessman (our family never got into political correctness in gender references) with just about any kind of degree.  In fact, a lot of great businessmen never finished or even went to college.”  So, with these great words of encouragement, I went on and got that Creative Writing degree.

After college, I tried several businesses, but none of them felt right for me.  Like a woman who insists on wearing shoes that are a size too small for her, I could find no comfort in any of them.  Years passed. Then one day, on a whim, I searched for writers groups in my area.  I found one, attended, fell in love with a zany group of writers, and began typing.  My husband knew, my kids knew, buy my parents were clueless.

After two years of writing and completing my first novel (I still haven’t pitched it to anyone), my mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  After watching her lay in a coma for two weeks, I finally told her that I had become a writer.  It took at least six more months before I told my dad.  After he knew, I told the rest of my family.  After they knew, I didn’t tell another soul until a year and a half ago. 

For years, no one knew that I liked to write.  And for a few years after that, no one knew that I could actually turn out an article worth reading.  So no one ever hired me.  But it happened one day that someone did.  And I got paid.  To write.  Yes, I got paid to write.  Since then, I’ve done more articles, newsletters, brochures, and even a grant proposal.  All this work came to me by the recommendations of other people, but when people asked me what I do, I always said, “I’m a mom.”  (A true statement, but not very helpful to my career.)   

Now here’s where the big mouth part comes in.   After months of working as a volunteer, a man I work with asked me what I do.  “I’m a writer,” I said, and my heart thumped a little crazily in my chest.  “A writer!  You’re a writer!  I can’t believe it.”  He was yelling it  loud enough for the whole office to hear and I forced myself to nod politely despite the urge to crawl under my desk.   Then he suddenly sobered, looked me in the eye, and asked when he could talk to me about some work he needed done.  No kidding.  Just like that, I had a client consultation all because I finally opened my mouth and billed myself as a writer.

I hope you have a good weekend.  I hope you get some writing done.  And I hope you’ll be much braver than I have been when it comes to promoting yourself.  I know I intend to be. 

And by the way, I’ll be pitching that novel in April.

All the best,

Mary