Does it really serve a main character to give them one driving want?
I often feel that we fall into a trap of believing that we must provide a driving goal for a main character at the outset. And yet, as I look at compelling fiction, main characters do not have the same simplicity of a single defining characteristic as does the supporting cast. Main characters are main characters. They are complex. There is room to explore their inner conflict. We are often in their point of view, and everything--the entire world--is seen through them.
At the end of the day none of us 'real people' have single goal--life is messy. And so, distilling a main character to one goal seems like a bad idea.
A few examples:
The main from How to Stop Time. He purportedly wants to 'find his daughter.' Well, he's doing nothing about that. He's lived for 500 years without taking out a single want ad or filing a single missing person's report.
Frodo. Does he want to carry the ring? I don't think so. If anything he wants the ring. The ring 'wants' more than Frodo does.
Harry Potter wants his parents. That's stupid--they're dead. On the other hand Dobbie, a rather two dimensional character, wants to keep Harry safe and also wants to be free.
Luke Skywalker wants a bunch of stuff, in just the first movie. To save the princess. To kiss the princess. To join the rebellion. To master the force. To blow up the death star. Etc.
The protagonist in A Fault in our Stars either wants the boy, or wants the boy to live, or wants to meet the guy that wrote the book she likes (and the boy likes too), or wants to live herself. I'm not sure. Love the story, though. What is the girl's initial want? I could not tell you.
What does Rose want in Titanic? Jack? To rebel? To get away from the man she is engaged to? If the answer to this example is that her want changes through the story, then what is her initial want?
The Martian may be the clearest example of a main character 'want' and driving need. He wants to get back to Earth. Funnily enough, all he can do is survive. (And he does a fantastic job at this.) Getting back to Earth requires everyone else.
I understand that 'character' has room to develop (and wants have room to change), but the idea that we must shoehorn stories into a main character that has one driving want (or even one starting want) seems counterproductive to good fiction.
Question: Does it really serve a main character to give them one driving want? Please explain why, or why not.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/43530. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Maybe one way to think about it is like thinking about your resume & cover letter: you are a vastly more complex person than what can fit on a few pieces of paper, but you re-arrange the order of things (education or work first? which duties/achievements to stress in the bullet points?).
Your past is still the same no matter how it's presented. But you are targeting the presentation of that experience to fulfill the needs of the potential employer.
Inigo Montoya may have also wanted to taste a really good curry and to find the love of his life and become a father himself, but in The Princess Bride - he wants revenge on the 6-fingered man, and as a subgoal of that, he wanted to become the best swordsman ever. That's the main thing we know about him, and that's ok. (In the book, there's more room for the love he had of his father and his friendship with Fezzik, but still no space for other wants.) Vizzini didn't care about Inigo's revenge-desire, just saw how it led him to become the swordsman HE wanted for his own quest.
My employer doesn't care that I want to do several podcasts, what my favorite ongoing webserial is, my love of my husband and cats, my cooking goals: they want someone who can learn new tech and write about it in the way this specific set of end-users needs it. So for THEM, I also want to learn how to use our agency's specific applications while using a keyboard&screenreader, and also write up that process. In my cover letter, I called that desire something like "refine my technical writing skills with the challenges of AT, so my work truly benefit a user community." (something like that, anyway.)
So your characters may have a bundle of needs and wants, some of which may conflict with one another, but for now, for the story, only certain ones really matter.
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For me, my main characters want a dozen things; but the story is about them pursuing one thing that is important to them for one reason or another. Often this is a semi-existential reason.
By "semi-" I mean she likely won't be risking her life (but maybe), but what is at risk is her normal life, at least as she thinks of it.
Just making this up on the fly, let's say one of her best friends is her brother, and he gets arrested for something and may go to jail. She has a quest, to find a way to keep her brother out of jail.
In the story, this is not the only thing she wants forever. She wants to finish her PhD in chemistry, become a medical research scientist, cure diseases. She wants to fall in love and have children.
She hopes that keeping her brother out of jail is something she can do and forget. For her, the ideal outcome is only to return her to her normal world.
But in this story for this moment in her life, keeping her brother out of jail is the only thing she really wants to do, while juggling her other somewhat demanding responsibilities.
The mechanical necessity is to give the reader a novel-length thread for the story, so the novel doesn't dissolve into just a series of short stories that themselves are not quite complete stories. In any story, there is a beginning, middle, and end, and these are defined by the introduction of a problem: It starts, it evolves, and it is solved.
I think you are taking the "wants more than anything else" too literally, as if the MC wants something more than anything else for all time. I would say the MC needs something she "wants more than anything else at this moment". My girl above is not going to intentionally risk her life, or her university position, to keep her brother out of jail. But she is going to put aside her idle entertainments, school friends, and spend all the time she can possibly afford saving her brother. She may alienate a boyfriend, or piss off her advisor by missing a paper submission deadline, etc.
The quest to free her brother may actually change her life, so she lands in a "new normal". Maybe she abandons her quest, because her brother is revealed to be guilty as hell, and not somebody she thinks should be free after all. Maybe on this quest she meets the love of her life.
She doesn't want just one thing for all time. But a story is about a singular crisis, that (for her) has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
You should certainly be showing, in the opening chapters of the book where we get to see her normal world, all the other things she wants, before the crisis rears its ugly head.
Because her normal world defines the stakes for her: If her "normal" is good, fun, and fulfilling, the crisis threatens to take that all away from her. If her "normal" is miserable and heart-breaking, then the crisis (even if it seems like it will make it even worse) is likely going to trigger an escape from that miserable normal that lets her find a new one.
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Yes, Main Character may (and probably does) want more than one thing in her life.
What Is A Story?
However, what you're really banging up against here is the ultimate question of, what is a story?
Is Story Everything That Happens To A Character?
You are telling a story that is a portion of a character's entire life. You are doing this so you don't bore your readers into a coma.
It's A Snapshot
Instead, story is a snapshot of the thing that is very important to the character at the time of the story. Otherwise you are simply journaling everything that happens to the character and that is boring.
Of course, there are nuances of character and interesting things that the writer adds to the story in measured ways and that is what makes the story compelling and interesting.
Who's To Say The Novel Should Only Be About One Particular Thing?
Take this idea and stretch it a bit. You are asking if limiting elements about the character really serve the character.
However, what if you did that with your novel and said, "Well, should this novel really be about the captain of a ship that is bent on killing a white whale?*"
Maybe the story should include the captain hunting down a huge shark that is terrorizing the town of Amity+?
And while we're at it maybe we should make it about a young boy who is recruited into a fight with the Galactic Empire by an old Jedi knight++.
Plus, it could include a mystery on a train that is bound for the Orient+++.
Limits Are Good
Limiting the character and what we tell about the character is for the reader.
It is the same with the story. We tell one story about a moment in the main character's life.
+ Jaws
++ Star Wars
+++ Murder on the Orient Express
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43576. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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I think it's like this: a normal person wants a lot of things: a new car, a raise, sex, some peace and quiet...
When something dramatic happens, a person suddenly realises what's really important in their life. It sort of crystallises, and everything else becomes less important. For example, if there are rockets falling on my house, getting that new dress is not a priority.
The higher the stakes of your story, the more one goal is going to be important, while more everyday wants - not a priority. For example, Frodo is stuck with the Ring, his goal is now "saving the world". There are things he wants, like coming home alive after saving the world, but those are not a priority compared to the magnitude of the goal. (And Frodo slowly realises that his is a one-way journey. He still wants to come home, but doesn't believe it's going to happen.)
If the stakes of your story are lower, it would make sense for the protagonist to want more things - he doesn't need to be so single-minded. For example, it would have made sense for Harry Potter in the first books to want to learn magic. I mean, magic is awesome and new to him, he's just discovered this whole world, as far as he knows Voldemort is gone (so no grand goal). Or he might have wanted to succeed in Quidditch. Instead he's busy wanting only his parents. (Not saying he can't also want them, but he should have wanted more things besides.)
Or you can look at it differently. You're not really recounting events as they are - you're telling a story. That is, you're taking the events, and stringing them in a way that makes narrative sense. You're putting themes that are important in the spotlight, you are omitting things that are unimportant to the narrative. (See The Law of Conservation of Detail tvtrope.)
So wants that lead to nothing are omitted. On the other hand, wants that are important to the story are strung together in a way that makes some thematic sense. For example, as @Wetcircuit points out, Luke Skywalker wants adventure. Everything that follows fits into the overarching desire for adventure.)
If we accept this premise, it's not that the character has no wants, it's that we choose to tell the story focusing on one overarching desire, because it creates a more focused narrative.
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