What drives your character? What is his or her motivation for pursuing their goals, whether it’s defusing an atomic bomb and saving the world or decorating cookies for a bridal shower?
There are lots of books and articles and blog posts about how to make character sketches and how to know your characters. Some writers advocate filling out spreadsheets with lots of details, including physical descriptions and where they lived in the fourth grade. Others journal in their character’s voices for pages and pages, getting to know them. Some take their characters for a metaphorical cup of coffee and chat with them.
I use a system that asks a series of “Whys” to drill down to a dark moment in their past that’s shaped who they are now.
For example, we’d start with: Who are you? The answer starts with a noun plus an adjective. For this example, “I’m a prodigal fisherman.”
Why? “Commercial fishing was a job I could get. Prodigal because I can’t go home.”
Why can’t you go home? “I messed up.”
How did you mess up? “I got into a fight at my sister’s wedding.”
Why did you fight someone at your sister’s wedding?
And so on.
We’d continue until we learn he felt rejected by his family as a teenager when they allowed him to leave home to play ice hockey at an elite boarding school.
This system of noun plus adjective and “Why?” questions is from The Story Equation by Susan May Warren and this character profile is Owen Christiansen from You’re the One I Want also by Ms. Warren.
There are often two sets of goals, internal and external, but the motivation is the same for both. The internal want drives the external goal.
Owen Christiansen wants to go home and feel welcomed by his family. That’s his internal desire. The internal meets the external when his brother finds him and brings him home. Of course, there’s a lot more to the story.
This next example is from my own work in progress. The heroine is Chloe:
Who are you? “I’m a driven widow.”
Why? “I have to open my bakery next month to honor my dead husband on the second anniversary of his death.”
Why? “He died in his sleep of an undiagnosed heart condition.”
Why? “I drove him to his death, nagging and pushing him to work harder.”
Chloe is determined to not fall in love again. Because her father also died at a fairly young age, after working extra hours to pay for a family vacation, she feels she’s toxic to men. (Of course, since this is a romance, she’s going to fail at her plan to not fall in love and will finally get her happily ever after.)
In The Story Equation, Susan May Warren outlines a method for diving into your character’s motivation. It involves digging deep and getting to what she calls their Dark Moment Story or DMS. This is a moment in their past that shaped them into the person they are at the beginning of the novel. For Chloe, it’s her husband’s death. The DMS also contributes to the Flaw, a Lie they believe, and several other factors. I highly recommend The Story Equation if this method of getting to know your characters appeals to you.
Carrie Padgett lives in Central California, close to Yosemite, but far from Hollywood, the beach, and the Golden Gate Bridge. She believes in faith, families, fun, and happily ever afters. She writes contemporary fiction with romance. She recently signed a contract with Sunrise Publishing to co-write a romance novel with New York Times bestselling author Rachel Hauck that will be published in 2022. Carrie and her husband live in the country with their high-maintenance cat and laid-back dog, within driving distance of their six grandchildren.
You can find her online at:
- Twitter: CarriePadgett
- Instagram: carpadwriter
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- Amazon Author Page: Carrie Padgett
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