It is important to me that my characters be both believable and exciting. I want them to feel human, to be real – but I want other players to sympathize with them and be interested in their stories. With this goal in mind I have been researching character development techniques and I would like to share with you my findings.
The three primary elements for developing a character are goals, motivations and conflicts. Though not covered as much in this guide, but also very important are the critical events from your character’s past, and their significant relationships with other characters.
Goals: These are the things your characters must have or do.
Motivation: Why these things are so important.
Conflict: Internal and external obstacles preventing the character from reaching his or her goals.
Critical events: events that have changed the character's life. The details probably don't matter, only the event and how it affected the character.
Significant Relationships: Family, friends, colleagues, associates, and minions; people who can be kidnapped or betray them, because these are the things that make for interesting plots.
GOALS
Goals give you character something to fight for – they give your character momentum. Without goals your characters will wander aimlessly, not really knowing what they want or how to get it. Goals establish personality, sympathy, and appeal in a character. Your character needs something to strive for, which he must prove himself worthy of. This goal should not be easily attained, but rather earned through choices made under pressure or possibly through change on the part of the character. The goal your character starts out with may change as your character grows.
Both long-term and short-term goals are important. Long-term goals focus on dreams, aspirations, and ultimate purpose in life. They are the carrot dangling on the end of the stick that the character is always pursuing. They are omnipresent, regardless of what else happens in the story.
Short-term goals are the immediate needs that must be met on the way to accomplishing the long-term goal. Short-term goals can be used to create inner conflict or frustration and may also be used to cause changes in long term goals.
MOTIVATION
What are motivations?
Motivation is the reason achieving his or her goals are so important to your character. For example some of your character’s goals might be: the desire to regain control of the family business, or a need earn find a cure for a disease. Motivations for that could be: Your character wants to regain control of the family business because he made a deathbed promise to her father or he needs to discover a cure for because brother is dying from the disease.
Why are motivations important?
Motivation drives action and creates a conflict that moves the story. For example if your character is motivated by greed, then pulling him into a story by offering him money is an easy option.
The best motivations are both internal and external and create strong emotional responses. They generate conflict within the character, and also generate conflict with other characters.
Every action, every decision, every choice made by characters should be motivated and those motivations should be consistent with the character's personality and goals.
Strong motivating factors:
1. Guilt: his/her carelessness/neglect/absence/ presence/mistake/etc. caused something bad to happen that the character carries around with them (emotional baggage)
2. Need: his/her survival, or the survival of someone they love or are responsible for depends on character acting in certain ways
3. Protection: someone else will be affected by their actions
4. Defense: they must hide behind an exterior persona, act in certain ways, to keep from being hurt
5. Danger: consequences of action may be disastrous if the character makes the slightest mistake
6. Revenge: character must get even for wrongs done in the past (revenge is good against either primary or secondary characters)
7. Any other emotionally strong factor that can be used dramatically
Another key thing here is that motivations that have only recently come to the fore can be a real advantage in an arc because they can provide an ideal way of drawing a disparate group together.
It should also be noted that motivations can be broken down further to the values behind them which can make for interesting internal conflict when two of your character’s values are in opposition.
CONFLICT :
Conflict is a seemingly insurmountable "something", which will hinder your character from attaining his or her goal; "something" which will force them to earn that goal; "something" which will force difficult choices. You can develop your character’s background pretty well with just goals and motivations – but to get great role-play out of them you need to set them up against a conflict.
Conflict exists on two levels: internal and external. Internal conflict is the battle between what the character wants to do and what the character must do or as mentioned above – his or her values. Because it is human nature to avoid difficult or unpleasant situations characters should have a strong reason (motivation) to stay in a situation they would rather avoid.
External conflict is the external problem that is standing in the way of the character and his or her goals. Goals must be so strong they cannot be abandoned in the face of this situation. Some of the greatest role playing often happens when two characters or groups of characters goals are in direct confrontation with each other.
To be effective, external situations must affect the goals, motivations, and emotions of the characters. Otherwise, if the characters are merely inconvenienced by them, but go on about their business without the situations having a severe, emotional impact on their lives, they are events, not conflicts. And remember, if your characters aren't in a situation they want to avoid, there is no conflict, and no story.
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Topic: Goals, Motivation & conflict: Giving life to characters (Read 5157 times)