Hey o/
I’m Gigi and this workshop is character motivations. Your character’s motivation is what drives them and what they aim to achieve. Every character has one, no matter how big or small. It helps round them out and is the driving course of their actions, helping them remain consistent throughout your story.

An example of a characters motive would be in Hunger Games (Spoiler Warning!) Throughout all the book’s Katniss’ main motivation is to keep Prim alive. This is what drives her to survive her first game and keeps her in the capitol’s line in book 2.
When Prim dies, Katniss stops caring about the future of Panem due to grief and belief that there is nothing else she can/needs to do.

So? How do you give a character a motivation that suits them?

There are 3 types of character motivation:
• Basic needs: These are motivations you need to survive such as food, water and security. Characters motivated by basic needs may be in a life or death situation or in the wild.
• Psychological Needs: These are motivations you may search for if you already have your basic needs. These motivations include characters motivated by love, or praise. Characters motivated by Psychological needs may be surviving but not living. These characters may suffering from a health condition etc…
• Self-fulfilment Needs: These are motivations that include achieving their full potential. Characters motivated by Self-fulfilment may be bored, greedy or in a slice of life book. They already have their Psychological and Basic Needs covered.

Your main character motivation should be whichever of the needs their lacking at the beginning of your story. In School for Good and Evil, Sophie is lacking a romantic partner (love) and she does terrible things in order to gain it and keep it. This is her motivation. However throughout the series, we see Sophie act in ways which go against this. Including working with Agatha to go home when her security (a basic need) is at risk.

Characters motivations aren’t linear. They’re wavy and flexible deciding on what you as the author decide to do. As stakes are raised and surroundings change, your characters may do things they hadn’t previously considered before because they’re aim has changed.
Not to sound like a broken record, but mentioning Hunger Games. When Katniss exits district 12, her motivation is no longer keeping Prim alive but is instead to keep herself alive.

So, what about Villains/Antagonists?

So far, we’ve looked closely at what your protagonist may do. What about the Draco Malfoys and Voldemorts of your story? How do you give them a motivation? It’s harder to put yourself into their shoes because we all like to see ourselves as the good guys. No one can imagine anyone doing anything that goes against their morals for any justifiable reason.
How do you give them a motive that doesn’t feel shallow?

To no surprise, your villains are motivated by exactly the same things your protagonist is. Their basic needs, psychological needs and Self-fulfilment needs. Voldemort wants to be the greatest wizard of all time (Self-fulfilment) and Draco wants to make his family proud (psychological needs)

Villains are oftentimes people who take their morals which don’t align with the protagonists a little too far. Some antagonists always hold true to their promises, some believe in the greater good. They oppose the protagonist and thus so their motivations.

If you know you’re heroes motive and you’re struggling with your villains, invert your heroes. Inverting =/= opposites in this context.
If only one person can survive, your protaginst’s motive is to keep the protagonist alive. Your antagonist’s aim is to keep the antagonist alive.
If your protagonist aims to achieve peace does your antagonist see an issue with what their definition of peace equals?

And sometimes, they don’t have to have a sympathetic character motive. Some people are mean because they can be. Because they have that power. Villains and antagonists are fun because they don’t have to relatable. They can just be overdramatic meanies <3.

Count Olaf from a series of unfortunate events is greedy and slimy because he doesn’t need that Baudelaire fortune. He’s motivated by his self-fulfilment and desires of being a millionaire. Does this make him a good person? No. Does it make him a good villain? Yes.
Does he apply to the basic guideline I set out earlier? Yep! The Baudelaire want security. Olaf doesn’t care about their basic needs. His motivation of getting their money is a threat to their need for security.

Wow, this is so helpful! I love how you laid out the different categories of needs and continued to use those throughout the rest of the post.

Awesome! So helpful <3
Oh no- Count Olaf- I just finished the series in Netflix and- brr

This is really interesting! Also, when I read the paragraph ‘And sometimes, they don’t have to have a sympathetic character motive. Some people are mean because they can be. Because they have that power. Villains and antagonists are fun because they don’t have to relatable. They can just be overdramatic meanies <3.’ I thought of Count Olaf, and then you literally mentioned Count Olaf right after that! XD

I don't understand….

-eIephant wrote:

I don't understand….

If you could mention what you’re confused about, I may be able to help ^^ if you’re wondering what this is, it’s a workshop to help you out with part of the week’s weekly. If you don’t understand what the workshop is talking about, in summary, every character has a motivation, and there are three different types of motivations you could give to your characters! Basically, in the weekly, you have to develop a motivation for a character to change, or something around those lines. I hope I could have been of some help…?

whelp this workshop was a compilation of references from all my favourite books, well done -not just on that i learnt alot and found this really usefull-

Telianar wrote:

This is really interesting! Also, when I read the paragraph ‘And sometimes, they don’t have to have a sympathetic character motive. Some people are mean because they can be. Because they have that power. Villains and antagonists are fun because they don’t have to relatable. They can just be overdramatic meanies <3.’ I thought of Count Olaf, and then you literally mentioned Count Olaf right after that! XD

Oh my gosh, finding a post of mine from two years ago lol. I'd totally forgotten I'd read this before. So funny xD.