Basics: Characters (Needs)

This section continues our discussion of how to build characters.

As mentioned in the previous post, this post will being covering characters’ needs, fears, wants and goals, in other words their motivation. A character’s needs, wants, fears and goals push the story and create conflict. They drive the story into action.

1. Needs: A great place to build ideas for your characters’ needs is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Is the character homeless? Then they might need shelter. Is the character abused? Safety. Often times the lower down on the pyramid the need is, the more dramatic and the stronger desire the character has. Also note that characters can have more then one need and that some needs can be met with relative ease and others cannot. Those that cannot often, and probably should, drive the story on an obvious or underlying level. Needs can also manifest themselves in fears.

2. Fears: Not fears like being afraid of spiders, but fears like being afraid to disappoint a parent. Maybe the main characters refusal to leave her horrible job is because she is afraid to disappoint her father. Perhaps she’s afraid to let anyone see her without makeup because if she does she thinks no one will ever love her.

3. Wants and Goals: Needs can be unconscious, but wants and especially goals rarely are. However, passionate goals and wants commonly (but not always) reflect an inner a need or fear. Maybe Sally really wants to win the gymnastic tournament because her self esteem is derived from it.

These are the issues that drive the story. You don’t need to know your character's every need and desire before starting, but at least thinking about it can help you bring real emotional depth and meaning to your story.

So how do you find conflict using your character's needs, wants and fears? As you write and explore your characters examine their areas to see if they can be exploited for plot and drama. That can mean keeping them unsuccessful at reaching a goal, but it could also mean giving the character what they think they need/want. Remember that what a character thinks they need/want might not actually be what will make them happy. As such you can make reaching their goal not what they expect or exactly what they expected, but they find themselves disappointed. Think of the movie Megamind, where the titular character gets exactly want he thinks he wants and he ends up hating it. If you do this in your story examine how your the characters feels about reaching their goal. What are their reactions? Was it what they expected and hoped for?

In reverse use the characters fear of something to drive a plot point, wreck a relationship or any number of awful things. Though for a twist, maybe the worse happens, but it turns out to not be so bad. Or even better in the long run.

As for reaching their goals in general there are a few things to keep in mind. From a story standpoint, the after effect of reaching their goal really depends on how easy the goal was obtained. A major goal/need/want gained easily should rarely be what they expected or make them happy (a la Megamind). However even reaching a hard earned goal can also be subverted, like Jack Kelley in Newsies, who despite wanting to move to Santa Fa the whole movie turns down the chance to go in the end. This is often because as characters develop and change throughout the story their wants and needs change too as do their life situations. These changes should reflect in their reaction to reaching their goal. Jack didn't end up leaving because during the course of the movie he had found the family that had truly wanted and needed. It wasn't that he didn't want to go to Santa Fa anymore, it was that staying allowed him to fulfill a greater need.

There is also another way to use needs to create conflict. Want to know the way to get good conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist? Have their needs, wants and/or goals be incompatible. Their needs could be completely unrelated (i.e. one needs acceptance from friends, the other needs higher self esteem), they could be exactly the same (i.e. both want to get the best part in a ballet), related to each other (i.e. one needs to feel in control and thus tries to become immortal, the other needs to stop the antagonist from threatening their lives and the lives of the people they care about) or in direct opposition (one needs to ensure that a building survives, the other needs to ensure it gets torn down).