Weekly Writing Exercise 2: Give Your Characters Better Motives

Hey Everyone!

For this weeks exercise, let's try working through some character motives. If you haven't read Habits & Traits 30, go do that first.

Now for some practice. Write a list of actions a character might do. This could be from your current work or you could just make it up on the spot. Now point out which actions have holes in motivation and explain how to fix them. Here's an example from me.

Jerald is a car salesman. He decides to rob a bank. He and his brother Rob come up with an elaborate plan and the two of them make off with 2.5 million dollars.

Problems: Jerald needs a reason to rob the bank. Rob needs a reason to do it too. Normal people don't break the law for no reason. Might need to explain how a car salesman and his brother can establish an elaborate plan to rob the bank.

Solutions: Jerald gets fired from his job and he's paying his mothers medical bills. As the bills stack up and the late notices start coming in, Jerald gets desperate. Maybe Rob did some jail time and met some shady folks who knew a thing about safe cracking or how a bank works. oh... or maybe Rob got fired from the same bank and went to jail over something he didn't do, and he wants to get back at them. He learned some skills in jail and also worked at the bank so he knows the layout and safety protocol well.

Now you give it a shot, and do the same in your novels!