Thursday Thirteen #25

Published on May 2, 2007 in Thursday Thirteen. 42 Comments

I’m doing a presentation this weekend for our writers retreat on Debra Dixon’s Goal, Motivation & Conflict. If you haven’t read her book, or had a chance to see Debra speak, I highly recommend it. She not only is a lovely woman, but she’s able to help get to the heart of a lot of characterization problems.

For my list today, I thought I’d pull out thirteen important points I’ve learned from Debra’s book.

Thirteen Things About Goal, Motivation & Conflict.

1. Goals must be important and urgent. This is something I think that gets missed by some writers. They set the goal up to be important, but there is no urgency. No urgency means we don’t really care about it.

2. All characters in your book should have a GMC. I found this hard to believe at first, but it makes sense. Your subplots should feed into your main plot. For that to happen and for your secondary characters to seem real, they need their own GMC.

3. Character decisions drive the plot. Of course, Christine. But how often do we see (or write) scenes where this isn’t the care. They choose road A instead of B, but there are no consequences.

4. There is no right or wrong GMC. As long as it works with point #5, then it’s all good.

5. Goals and motivations should match the character’s background. There is nothing worse than seeing a character do or say something that is completely…wrong. Check to make sure it is in line with your character’s backstory.

6. All characters decisions should be driven by motivation. Leave nothing to chance, no random choices. They know what they want and their decisions should reflect it.

7. Characters can be both ally and enemy. This is something used in romance novels quite a bit. The hero and heroine play off each other, sometimes causing more problems for each other than they’d like to admit.

8. Misunderstanding is not conflict. I hate bickering. It’s not conflict, but it can become annoying.

9. Internal conflict is emotional conflict. Again, something that I knew, but couldn’t quite make work. I thought this was a great way of looking at internal conflict.

10. The strength of your book is your conflict. Tension keeps people turning the pages. That’s what every writer aspires to have!

11. Conflict is the obstacle your character must face. Don’t throw up a road block that your characters can avoid. What’s the fun in that! Make them suffer. :)

12. A scene is action and immediate. If you can keep this in mind, you’ll know when you need to cut backstory. If it isn’t necessary at that particular moment to know something, then chances are you can cut it.

13. GMC can be a guide for revisions. Whenever I think I have a problem with one of my stories, I’ll draw a quick GMC chart and go through the plot. I usually find my issues.

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