Continuing our discussion on Characterization, cost and reward, motivation and desire, let’s do a little exercise with our current WIPs.

I’m going to work from a single gender view point, but take the liberty to apply to hero heroine, or any POV character. Remember, all point of view characters must have some kind of journey and story arc.

What does your hero want? How is is going to get it? What is it going to cost him? What are the oppositions?

What does he want? I see this answer a lot in the manuscripts I read: Love. He wants to find love.

Well, that’s noble and very Christ like. 

But why? Finding true love is a noble journey, but will not make for a very interesting book. How much does he want true love? Why is true love important.

Let’s say our hero, lets call him, Dragon Slayer the Third, wakes up one morning, sees a beautiful day and says to his Man In Waiting, “Alfred, today I want to find true love.”

Well, off we go. He spies his first Beautiful Damsel. He approaches. “You, there, gorgeous woman so fair. Hark, and come with me. I want to love you and make you my Queen.”

“What? Fergettabout it. You’re too pretty for me.” 

Dragon turns to Alfred, “She turned me down, how rude.”

“My Lord, she must be a twit.”

“Certainly, well, it’s lunch? Shall we dine? And what fun shall I have for tomorrow?” 

Dragon Slayer has no reason to pursue true love the moment he faced his first obstacle. Give him a reason for true love besides, 1, True love is grand or 2. His mother abandoned him as a baby.

What motivates him to go forward? What’s his desire? What will it cost him to pursue true love? Ask questions until you build a world of cost and reward around your protagonist.

In the movie Titanic, Rose wants true love but she also wants freedom from her mother, from societal expectations. When she meets Jack, she discovers the courage to chance her dreams, not her mother’s.

What about Lucy in While You Were Sleeping? She falls in love with Jack, the other brother. But the family she’s fallen in love with wants her to marry Peter. If she confesses her feelings, the cost is almost too great. She’ll lose this wonderful family because she lied. She’ll lose the man she loves.

But she takes a chance and confesses. Her desire to love Jack, but to be true to herself and her father’s memory causes her to do the right thing. To pay the price. 

The reward is Jack. But even if she didn’t get Jack, the reward is she stayed true to her heart.

Take a look at your manuscripts. Can you take it a layer deeper?

In