I have a weak motivation for a god character! How Do I Make It a Stronger Motivation?
Okay, so I have a weak motivation for a god character whose son (whom he tried to prevent his birth) seems like he is an apt tool to be used for a plot that will only be brought into fruition about ten thousand years in the future.
The god is Apollo, by the way. And since he is the god of many things, including prophecy (which he stole from the earth Goddess Gaea), he realised that he was going to get in trouble for this with Zeus/Jupiter. So he wanted to stop the child from growing up and being used by Gaea/Terra and her lover Saturn...
My issue is that with so many gods involved, I don't know how to make all their motivations believable. They are gods... they do have rules to follow, but its hard to make them struggle when they are so powerful. So I had originally set the gods in teams against one another, so it seemed more balanced.
However, again, their motivations for fighting seem very petty. For example, I have a mischief god named Hypnos (god of sleep) partnering with Apollo (because I thought it would be funny how Apollo is god of morning an Hypnos is very much annoyed at the concept of 'morning' because he is a primordial deity who likes to sleep) to stop the child from getting into contact with Gaea, or to kill it. And the only motivation I have for Hypnos is that he is 'bored' and or 'wants to mess around with some mortals'. Apollo is just afraid of getting into trouble...
I understand that as the plot builds, as the story follows the boy as Apollo and Hypnos/Somnus' failed to stop him from getting involved. What do I do to make the reasons for them forming a team believable?
In fact, how do I make a god's motivation, believable?!
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/28712. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
Although the Olympians had some super-powers, and were immortal, the Greeks considered them to be just like people in their emotional make-up. They fell in love (with humans), got horny, made mistakes, felt grief, etc.
Effectively they treated the "immortality" aspect as just "they don't ever die" and ignored the psychology of that. They didn't make million year plans or anything, they lived (like humans) day-to-day.
This means you can motivate them just like other humans: Hypnos wants some human girl to love him, and Apollo (for some reason) can make that happen. Hypnos is pissed at Zeus and has a plan to avenge himself (non-lethal, of course) but he needs a co-conspirator: Apollo finds that out and volunteers. What Hypnos wants can be very human like. It could even be an object of some sort he covets that belongs to another god; he wants a lock of Athena's hair. Forget they are gods that live forever. Make them like brothers that compete, but one of them needs to bribe the other into allying with him against their older brother. Not to kill him, just to prank him and get away with it.
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