A Series Of Posts On Motivation

A SERIES OF POSTS ON MOTIVATION I’ve been toying with this concept for a long time now, gathering up notes and so forth, and decided to take the plunge this morning and at last get into it. Though I even have been writing a bit these days on motivation by way of motivating ourselves to take a seat down and write, this sequence is about motivating our characters. A sturdy character has a robust motivation. People do things for reasons. Those causes could also be easy, clear, forthright. Those motivations may be subconscious, egocentric, even evil. But we are allâ€"all realpeopleâ€"pushed by certain things and people drives affect our conduct, our outlook on the world, our personal connections and relationshipsâ€"everything, really. And as a result of we want our characters, even in fantasy and science fiction, to really feel real, properly motivated characters are important to a profitable work of fiction. Octavia Butler, an author I admire greatly, made this notice for herself: We ought to all have this observe s ubsequent to our desks. This is the goal, in the end, of any writer of fictionâ€"and any author of non-fiction, for that matter. But how will we make individuals (our readers) FEEL! FEEL! FEEL! This is the place motivation comes inâ€"at least as a starting point. What readers want out of every work of fiction is a shared expertise. And not, alas, an expertise shared with you, but an expertise shared with your characters. J.K. Rowling seems like a nice girl, but her readers love Harry. They didn’t go on J.K.’s journey of writing the e-book, they went on Harry’s journey of going to wizard school. Fanny Ellsworth, editor of Ranch Romances,wrote in her 1941 article “Magazine Chief Warns Against Loss of Originality”: The author’s job is to create people who reside and moveâ€"actual folks in whose existence the reader can believe. Therefore the characters in a good western story gained’t be so very different from those in any other kind except outwardly. They might do variou s things however they will be moved by the same motives, react to the identical stimuli. Cowboys and prospectors and ranchers’ daughters absolutely love and hate and concern and dare a lot as another individuals. You might, since you are writing of frontier country, heighten their daring, accent their braveness, however these traits will be aroused in them by the same springs of action that activate another group of people. Motivationâ€"what drives your characters into and through the storyâ€"isn't all you have to make your readers FEEL! FEEL! FEEL! however it's a major element. In this series, we’ll take a look at some basic ideas round motivation, what motivates us, what we respond to as people, and speak about how we will prolong these concepts into the imagined lives of our characters. Starting with some fundamentals, a dictionary definition of motivation: “the explanation or reasons one has for performing or behaving in a particular method.” Pretty easy on the floor, bu t this works in two ways, often simultaneously. In his e-book Unstoppable Confidence, Kent Sayre asks: “Are you transferring towards your goals or are you shifting away out of your problems?” Aaron Sorkin, in a Hollywood Reporter Writer Roundtable, boiled it down to 2 issues: “Intention and obstacle: Cling to that like a lifeboat. Somebody wants one thing, something’s standing in their means. Intention and impediment. Once you have that, that’s the drive shaft of the car.” Motivation is the beginning of intent: I intend to write this blog publish motivated by a need to help people write better. I’m pleased to report that there’s no explicit obstacle in my method, which is why the main points of me sitting down to put in writing this wouldn’t make a great story. Again, motivationstarts your characters, drives them ahead or prevents them from driving ahead, and plotis the collection of obstacles positioned of their means. Okay, so then what motivates people? Is it st uff we are likely to fixate on in fantasy and other style writing? Revenge, energy, etc.? Or is there no less than a barely deeper stage to this? Bear with me whereas I invoke Tony Robbins simply after he got in some hot water by publicly misunderstanding the intentâ€"dare I say it: the motivations of the #MeToo movement. As with anyone, myself included, advice can and will come from quite a lot of sources and none of us all the time will get it right. Tony Robbins obtained it incorrect about #MeToo and has fallen behind on a number of other subjects in the past. Though I’ve listened to a few of his CDs and skim a couple of of his books I’ve all the time discovered myself editing out some of his adviceâ€"ignoring his pitch for food regimen drinks and different sales add-ons, figuring out some incorrect data like a Yale study on goal setting that doesn’t actually exist. Let’s not give attention to what he obtained incorrect, though, when there are some useful things he receiv ed proper. In his program Personal PowerTony Robbins stated: “The differences in individuals are not their wants, all of us have the identical needs, the difference in persons are merely the vehicles we’ve learned to attempt to fulfill them.” Translate that as “wants” equals “motivation,” and “automobiles to try to fulfill them” equals what Sorkin referred to as “intent.” We all need meals and water, all of us must really feel safe (which he ought to have saved in mind re: #MeToo), we all have to breathe, all of us have to sleep… easy fundamentals like that. But beyond these physical needs, we have a standard sample of emotional needs, and these emotional wants, for good or ill, motivate us to do almost every little thing we do beyond caring for our fundamental physical survival. Here, based on the work of others earlier than him, are Tony Robbins’s six human wants: Certainty Uncertainty Significance Connection Growth Contribution In this series, we’ll br eak down every one and discuss how that would motivate a personality in a narrative. See you next week. â€"Philip Athans About Philip Athans