Writing fundamentals: External and internal character motivations
What do your characters want? What do they really need? (And a bit about Die Hard, John Wick, and The Last of Us.)
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Today I’m writing about character motivations. What they are, why they matter, and how they make your writing better.
Character motivations
Understanding motivation is fundamental to impactful writing.
They come in two forms:
External motivations (also called extrinsic, usually directly linked to the story's inciting incident)
Internal motivations (also called intrinsic, pre-dates the story)
When these are clear in our heads, they breathe life into our characters and make every plot more satisfying.
I’ve been teaching writing for around a decade, and I’ve seen a lot of writing that isn’t actually a story, it’s ‘a sequence of events’. By this I mean they have described something happening, then something else happens, and eventually something bigger happens. While that sequence has a beginning and an end, there often wasn’t a logical progression for the characters involved. It’s not a story.
When I read these, I find myself repeatedly asking ‘why would the character do that?’ These stories lacked emotional and intellectual consistency to the characters’ actions.
In my own writing, I ask myself the question ‘why would my character do that now?’ It always makes my writing process harder, but the resulting story much, much better.
What is a story, and how does that link to motivation?
Motivations are driven by a need for change. Stories are change engines. Characters go in one end and come out transformed at the other. If that doesn’t happen, we’ve written ‘a sequence of events’, not a story.
In her book Story Genius (affiliate link) Lisa Cron puts it very succinctly:
A story is about how the things that happen affect someone in pursuit of a difficult goal, and how the person changes as a result.
Motivations are reasons that characters do (i.e. change) things:
They take the job they don’t like because a really hot guy that works in that team
They investigate a murder because they want find the killer
They return to a childhood home because their parents need help.
Without motivations, characters pinball through the world, randomly striking events and passively responding to them. While this might work for experimental fiction (arguably Worst. Person. Ever. did this to some extent - aff. link), it’s typically dull and unfulfilling to read.
Compelling protagonists are active, not reactive. They want things, and will take action to achieve their goals: when there is a haunted chapel, they run in to investigate (The Nun II); when there is a slasher on the loose and a mysterious sound in their house, they grab a frying pan and walk into the dark living-room alone (every slasher); and so on. Protagonists always take action.
Through defining what our characters want, we define the types of actions they take. Do they want justice? They will call the police, or stage an investigation. Do they want revenge? They will take the law into their own hands. Do they want romance? They will seek a suitor.
With strong goals, our characters speak to us as we write, guiding us to create dialogue and action that is consistent, compelling, and often surprising. This happens when we shift from asking:
What would a person do in this situation?
to
What would my specific character, with their specific priorities, do in this situation?
Many authors have a moment where, mid-writing, characters rebel against the path we set for them. There’s huge delight when this happens (alongside a little dread).
External motivations
In the most popular genres of fiction, the heroes have goals that change their position or status in the world, typically because they need to fix something that's gone wrong in the story's inciting incident.
If you look at that bullet point list above, you might notice a pattern. Every one of the ‘because’ reasons was connected to an external event or situation: wanting to be close to a hot guy, finding a killer, or parents needing help—these are all new external situations.
External motivations are easy to see in stories, usually set up by the inciting incident, and the easiest to write about.
Murders in Bon Temp? Sookie Stackhouse, the telepathic waitress, will find the killer! (True Blood)
Sharks eating the swimmers? Chief Brody will assemble the team to catch it! (Jaws)
The killer is fleeing into the night? Only Detective Tibbles The Mystery Cat can keep up in the darkness! (I made that up)
In every circumstance, the external motivation addresses what the protagonist consciously wants to achieve. In Shawn Coyne’s The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know (aff. link), he calls this the ‘external object of desire’, but it doesn’t have to be an object.
Often, the desire is urgent, but it can also be a long-term plan. Revenge is a dish best served cold, and deep-seated hatred can provide an external motivation for years of a character’s life (see: Old Boy). Likewise, a memory of happiness could fuel a life’s journey (see: Citizen Kane).
Let’s look at some classic examples:
In each of the examples, the protagonist wants to achieve a change in the outside world. The change they desire is embodied with a powerful verb (fix, live, horde, take revenge, transport) and each has implications for how it will be challenging in their social context. Only ‘horde’ is somewhat passive—we’ll return to that later.
In Die Hard, John is a working class New York cop, visiting his wife who moved across America for a corporate job. He meets her colleagues for the first time at the office Christmas party. That’s already a tense and drama-filled situation, without ‘terrorists’ taking over the building. Fixing a broken marriage is much more complicated when one of the couple is a hostage!
In The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, the young lovers want to live together in peace, which sounds simple enough, except that their two families are “both alike in dignity,” and share an “ancient grudge”. The deep resentment between these families forces the story to end in tragedy, but nonetheless their desire—to be together—will drive every choice they make.
Common external motivations:
Identify a thing (killer, object, person, curse, plague)
Date a person (or people)
Possess a thing (money, object, award, MacGuffin)
Gain recognition from a person/organisation (partner, family member, club, society)
Travel to a location (alone or escorting someone/thing, to a place of safety, away from danger, to explore, to get lost)
Bond with others
These are very generically phrased, so you shouldn’t use them literally in your work, but hopefully they give a bit of inspiration for your characters’ external motivations.
Something to note: the underpinning external motivation usually remains relatively consistent from inciting incident to crisis, but shorter-term external goals often pop into stories wherever needed.
However, none of these external goals automatically result in character growth—they will change their external circumstances, but not necessarily address underlying issues. For that, we need…
Internal motivations
Internal motivations are driven by a pain or flaw that the protagonist needs to heal through either learning or overcoming an emotional block.
Let’s look at those same example stories and see how the internal motivations pair up with the external ones:
You can see how the internal ‘need’ provides the emotional underpinning for the ‘want’ of the character, but doesn’t necessarily align. For example: once John Wick has taken revenge on the killers of his dog (given to him by his dying wife), will that truly help him overcome grief for the loss of his wife?
No… But…
The audience understands that his violence is an expression of his grief, and so part of processing it. It’s not a healthy way of dealing with emotions, and yet seeing broken people pursue the wrong choices on their way to finding healthy choices makes for compelling stories! Revenge is a simple plot device when the writer needs to justify extreme acts, but it also keeps the hero somewhat broken, leaving franchise opportunities.
In Jessica Brody’s Save The Cat Writes A Novel (affiliate link) she splits the internal motivation into two parts:
a problem (a flaw that needs fixing, their ‘shard of glass’)
a need (the life lesson which is your story’s theme)
There’s a bit of naming confusion here: Brody uses ‘need’ for the theme of the story, whereas more commonly ‘need’ is used for the internal motivation (what she calls ‘the problem’), but nonetheless there’s broad agreement that these elements are essential in powerful storytelling.
The reason I mention Brody’s work is that I love the ‘shard of glass’ simile for emotional wounds: it is something almost invisible but that can be embedded deep under the skin, which can only be extracted and healed with effort.
In The Last of Us (both the original video game and the TV series), Joel loses his beloved daughter very early on. His inability to save her festers as an invisible wound on his psyche. He never says ‘Ellie is a surrogate daughter’, but it’s clear to audiences this is what’s happening beneath the surface.
Brody’s splitting of the internal motivation into a problem (internal motivation) and a need (theme) makes a lot of sense, but it won’t always be useful for writers: we often don’t understand the theme we are writing about until we’ve finished the first draft—if ever!
While I think it’s great to have an idea of what themes you are dealing with, and I’m a dedicated fan of meticulous plotting before writing long fiction, I also prefer to let the deeper themes shape up as the narrative comes to life. I usually have a general idea of the theme, but it comes into focus while writing. In comparison to the theme, I’m always very certain about what the protagonist’s internal problem is. Different things work for different writers.
One important feature of the internal motivation: it is not directly stated by the protagonist and they typically aren’t even aware of it within themselves. There might be a side-character who states the internal motivation or theme (or even the full answer to the hero’s problem) early in the story, but it will take effort and endurance for the hero to learn that lesson and extract their own ‘shard of glass’.
Does every protagonist need external and internal motivations?
Yes.
But…
You can tell a cracking adventure yarn with very little internal development. Look at Agatha Christie’s brilliant detectives: they are rarely dealing with grief or processing trauma in their stories, they’re simply dedicated and curious people who investigate crimes.
However, it should be noted that those stories were published up to a century ago. Publishing trends have changed. If you’re writing a cosy mystery then you can certainly lower the stakes of the internal needs, but it’s still going to be a better story (and more appealing for readers) if your characters have additional emotional depth. In a serious drama, the internal need might be to overcome a traumatic event, in a cosy drama it’s more likely to be a lower-stakes rift in friendship or family ties. Either way, it makes a more interesting ‘B story’ that enriches the tale.
There’s a reason that seemingly no detective in a modern drama can exist without their borderline alcohol addiction, troubled relationship, estranged children, dating worries, or quirky personality that drives away most people. Solving a mystery is interesting, but growing as a person while doing it makes it feel much more meaningful to readers.
Do characters have to succeed in both their external and internal goals by the end of the story?
No.
But…
They must succeed in at least one of them. Remember Lisa Cron’s definition of a story:
A story is about how the things that happen affect someone in pursuit of a difficult goal, and how the person changes as a result.
Succeeding in one or both of the motivations (their external and/or internal goals) is ‘how the person changes’. If the character fails at both their motivational goals then the story simply doesn’t work. Readers and audiences wonder why they spent their time on your story.
“But I’m a non-conformist and want to surprise the audience! I don’t have to follow these rules.”
I’ve read a bunch of stories trying this. Try it if you like, but you’ll almost certainly only please a very niche audience. Learn the rules first, then break them based on experience and insight—some great writers manage it, but it’s rare.
You can absolutely have the hero succeed at only one goal. This can deliver brilliant stories!
Romeo and Juliet don’t live happily ever after (too soon for spoilers?), and yet their story is somewhat popular (I’m British, I like understatement). They learned about love and themselves—that’s what the audience and story demanded. They failed at the external goal but succeeded at the internal goal.
I mentioned earlier that Scrooge’s ‘horde’ motivation was odd—it’s quite passive, it doesn’t require change. This is a clue that it will be cast aside by the end. Scrooge grows into a better person by (literally) facing up to his ghosts. External failure, internal success, and a brilliant story. You’ll also notice that the external goal shifts—from hording in the first scenes to charity in the last. This embodies character growth for the audience.
At the end of Die Hard, John still can’t talk about his emotions with his wife, but he’s demonstrated he loves her so much he’ll run bare-foot across broken glass to save her. He remains a man of actions and not words, but for the moment it’s an external and internal success, and Die Hard remains one of the most perfectly crafted movies ever made.
Do antagonists need external and internal motivations?
Yes.
The antagonist of your story needs to have an external goal that you, the writer, are very clear about. You should also be aware of their internal motivations: what has driven them to act in the ways they do?
But…
How much of this you tell the audience is up to you. Particularly the antagonist’s internal motivation can often remain a mystery, but knowing their motives will make your antagonist’s scenes more consistent and fun to write because you know what’s powering their choices.
This is because…
The antagonist is a dark mirror of your protagonist
Imagine what would happen if your protagonist didn’t heal, didn’t take action, didn’t change—who would they become? What is the most despicable version of themselves?
If Marty McFly in Back To The Future gave up on following his heart and supporting his friends and family, he could become Biff. Marty is smart, funny, understands others, physically competent, creative… All characteristics that are useful to a bully.
John McClane (honest cop) faces off against Hans Gruber (lying thief) in Die Hard. Both are smart, resourceful, capable of leadership and adaptation. John is always his truest self, while Gruber can use his charm to slip out of trouble.
Joel in The Last of Us values family, friendship, and loyalty, but his weakness is a distrust of others. He faces zombie hordes (yes, I called them zombies) which have no human warmth—this reflects the consuming darkness of grief that festers inside him—but his most dangerous foes are humans who twist loyalty and distrust to create their own rules for survival. They are dark-side Joel.
See also: Sherlock and Moriarty, Dr. Frankenstein and the monster, Brad & Janet and Frank-N-Furter.
Great antagonists reflect the darkest flaws of the hero and so, by opposing those values, the hero learns to overcome their own flaws and heal themselves.
… Mostly
Like all things, there will be exceptions, but we need to learn the rules before we break them!
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Until next time, be kind to yourselves and others,
Mata <3
That was interesting...