Lately, I’ve been running across a lot of “goals” writing advice – the sort that wants me to decide on my characters’ goals for the story, chapter, or scene before I sit down to write it. Preferably all three, and of course, the scene/chapter goal should get the character closer to the story goal.
What got me particularly interested in this were several posts by different advisors. The first stated firmly that “From the very start, Harry Potter’s main goal is always to defeat Voldemort.” The second stated equally firmly that “Harry’s initial goal is to survive his family (the Dursleys) until he is old enough to leave them.” The third claimed that “Harry’s real goal is to gain a loving family.” All three authors (and most of the other advisors who write about characters’ goals) go on to talk about why the main character (Harry, in this case) wants these things and how each scene moves Harry toward achieving his goal.
In reading these posts, I realized that I don’t believe any of them, and yet from a different angle, they’re all correct.
“From the very start, Harry’s main goal is always to defeat Voldemort.” At the very start, Harry is all of eighteen months old or thereabouts. I don’t believe an eighteen-month-old has a personal goal of defeating an evil wizard, even if that wizard murdered his mother right in front of him. Heck, for most of the first four books the characters think Voldemort is dead and gone. Of course, the author makes sure the readers don’t think so … but that’s my point. “Harry must defeat Voldemort” is the author’s goal for the story from the very start, but it’s not Harry’s goal.
“Harry’s initial goal is to survive his family until he is old enough to leave them” is a lot more plausible, to me, as a main character’s goal. My problem here is that I don’t really seen any sign that this is anything Harry himself sees as a goal to achieve – it’s more something that will inevitably happen in another seven or eight years (if we start his “initial goal” when he’s eleven). Harry’s life doesn’t seem to be in peril from the Dursleys, and he isn’t even daydreaming about what he’ll do when he turns eighteen and can go off on his own. Again, as a reader, I can see this as a possible direction for the story to progress, but it’s not Harry’s goal.
Similarly, “Harry’s real goal is to gain a loving family” is a want that I can see from outside the story, something Harry clearly longs for … but it isn’t something he sets out to achieve. Combined with the previous “initial goal” of surviving his current family, it’s something the author might want to know in advance – the author’s goal for the character’s personal development – but once again, it isn’t Harry’s goal.
On a scene-by-scene level, Harry’s goals seem to me to be things like “to have fun on a rare outing at the zoo,” “to keep a low profile when the Dursleys are going nuts on account of all the Hogwarts letters,” “to find out more about this fascinating new world and to get his school supplies,” “to get on the Hogwarts Express,” and so on. They’re one-foot-in-front-of-the-other goals, and they don’t appear to connect directly to either “Harry must defeat Voldemort” or “Harry wants a loving family.”
To put it another way: the goals the author has for the story and for the character aren’t necessarily the characters’ goals for themselves or their lives. For a lot of authors, it is useful to know the ultimate story goal – Harry must defeat Voldemort; Luke must destroy the Death Star; Hamlet must revenge his father; young Arthur must become king and unite all of England. But it is also necessary to recognize that many characters do not know until quite a long way into the story what their ultimate goal is. Until then, they have other, more short-term goals: rescuing Hermione from a troll, figuring out who Nicolas Flamel is; finding the missing droids, rescuing Princess Leia; figuring out whether the ghost told the truth; being allowed to come to the tourney, finding a sword stuck in a rock.
A character’s short-term, scene-by-scene goals often have little to do with the long-term story goal, especially early in the story, when the protagonist is a long way from figuring out what their ultimate story-goal is. (Note that this is different from the reader figuring it out – the readers are pretty sure right from the start of the series that Harry is going to have to defeat Voldemort, but Harry doesn’t fully recognize it until the end of Book 5, when Dumbledore finally tells him there’s a prophecy.)
Consequently, I don’t find scene-by-scene goals based on what my characters are trying to do at the moment terribly useful. Knowing that my characters’ scene goal is to walk four miles to get to the edge of the forest is obvious; the important conversation they have along the way is my goal for the scene, but as far as they are concerned, it wasn’t anything they were trying to accomplish. Usually, they don’t even know the conversation was important until a chapter or two later.
Knowing the story-level goal, on the other hand, is something I find very useful. It acts as a compass – if my characters seem to be drifting off-course, I can spot it and either try to find them another route to the goal I want them to achieve, or else figure out what new/different achievement they’re going to get to in time to make it look as if I did that on purpose.
And then there are the cases when the story goals and the characters’ goals are in direct conflict. I’m 40k words into my first novel and I need my main character to have a full-on nervous breakdown before the novel’s two-thirds mark. Needless to say, this is not my character’s goal!
So far I’ve found it relatively easy to keep an eye on the story goals and keep the plot moving along, but at the expense of characterisation (especially everyone except the main character). Hopefully I can fix it in revisions.
I agree completely on knowing the story goal ahead of time; knowing where you’re going helps you get there – even if you decide on a detour or changed goal partway through. At least you have a direction.
As far as character goals go, they don’t hurt that I can see. But knowing characters’ motivation strikes me as more useful. And it’s not the same thing as a goal.
Perfect timing. My current WIP has a setting and characters and they’re going about their day-to-day lives, but I’m completely blocked on a long-term story goal. If I gave the particulars, would people be interested in offering suggestions? Or should I wait until the next open mic? (Don’t want to derail the comment thread.)
It’s up to Pat, this is her blog, but I would like to see your particulars and find out if I (or others) have any ideas.
I miss rec.arts.sf.composition, where at any time of day someone would post, e.g, “My protagonist is a bodyguard for a rich, elderly SOB who’s traveling overland on horseback. SOB’s horse has just run away with him. How does protagonist stop the horse and rescue the SOB without getting him killed?”
Any other time of day, some one would toss out an idea and someone else would say, “Hey, that’s neat, may I use it?” and the original poster would say, “Sure; if I use it myself it’ll be an entirely different story anyway.”
At which point I misquoted Heinlein: “The value of yet one more idea among a group of writers is roughly that of one more kitten on a Missouri farm.”
I miss rec.arts.sf.composition
So do I. At least we can wave occasionally. (Also, I missed writerly discussions enough to marry another rasfc member, so I now have them on tap.)
Do you need one? I’m a pantser and only know what’s going on when I’m doing the second draft. In the meantime, consider
– how much you need to know to write well. This differs from ‘having the plot mapped out in detail’ to ‘who cares, I’ll know it when I see it’
– what a realistic goal is from your characters’ current position. That goal may change when they realise they were duped, or a bigger threat appears, or the short-term goal is unsatisfactory but here’s something worth fighting for. They work hard for that promotion, super-focused on their goal and the dragon/pandemic hits and… Or equally, they’re just drifting through life until they stumble across a mystery/someone needing their help/something that lights them on fire and NOW they know.
– whether you’re spinning your wheels because you took a wrong turn. I get stuck when I try to make my characters say and do something that matches my goals. At some point they’ll fold their arms, sit down, and say ‘this never happened, we’re not here’. Only at that point I’ve written 2-5K of perfectly decent story and finding the point of divergence where I’ve forced plot on characters who would react differently is hard, so I’ve learnt not to force words but listen to them.
I do need a story-level goal. Otherwise the characters will continue to mill around, doing day-to-day things. Once I have a goal, it gives them a direction to start moving.
I’d love to hear specifics either now or in the next open mic, whichever is more appropriate?
In the meantime, my possibly-useless advice (as a pantser/organic writer/person who has no idea what my story’s overall shape is until it’s written) is to throw entertainingly massive and/or complicated and/or dangerous problems at your characters relatively early in the story, so that their day-to-day goals will often be strongly influenced by the same overall problem(s). (That definitely isn’t the only way to write a story, but, at the least, throwing giant problems at your characters to find out what they’ll do can be a fun writing exercise.)
What I do then is throw something at them that is the opposite of what they would expect and see what it knocks loose.
Send a man through the door with a gun in his hand. (Genre appropriate man, door, gun, and hand.)
rec.arts.sf.composition — I never got deeply involved in the newsgroups; but I do belong to Critique Circle, where we have forums for exactly the kind of question Ms. Heydt is talking about. Not only can you get some needed answers that way — simply reading the discussions is entertaining in itself. (And a fine way to procrastinate when you should be writing, of course.) 🙂
Rick
It does depend on whether you can give a story unity of theme without the character working toward the final goal.
I have heard writers say that a character can have a subconscious goal — that Harry does want a loving family and place where he belongs, but this translates into his consciousness only as smaller stages.
I think there are three types of goals: internal goals (I want to be a good friend and stand by them whatever happens), concrete goals (I want to become an Auror, so these are the skills I need to work at), and life goals (I want to have a loving family). The first is something a character will work on (and sometimes fail) all of the time because there are many opportunities to put it into practice; it’s not a goal that’s reachable or failable in its entirety, you can just succeed or fail today. The second can be reached or failed, but it might be that it’s a hollow victory (I have become an Auror and hate my job) and sometimes failure is the better option (I wanted to become an Auror when I was eleven. I’ve learnt about the job and myself and found a better option). The last, finally, is not a standalone goal, and you can’t make it happen – you can just put yourself into a place where it’s likely if other people happen to align with it, and your best chance to reaching it involves being the kind of person other people want to befriend.
Of the three mentioned above, ‘defeating Voldemort’ comes, I think, closest: not as in ‘defeat actual Voldemort’ but as in ‘ensure people like Voldemort cannot take hold and terrorise the world’ because THAT seems what Harry tries to be doing right from the start: stand up for people who need his help, whatever the cost.
I think I’m going to find this distinction very useful! I think some of my problem with plot, and asking for plot advice, is that people usually want to talk about plot as it pertains to story-level goals, and what I get stuck on is plot as it pertains to scene-level goals. This may be a better way to explain what I’m looking for.