Character Motivations That Don't Work
And how to fix them
Last week, we talked about improving a story’s logic by strengthening character motivations. Today, we’ll look at ways this process might go wrong, including over-motivating characters, defaulting to unkind motivations, and misusing hidden motivations.
Don’t Over-Motivate Your Characters
It’s tempting to come up with lots of justifications for a character’s actions in order to shore up leaky logic. But the more motivations you give a character, the less believable each motivation becomes.
Let’s return to the Netflix rom-com Nobody Wants This and imagine that Noah is hesitant to commit to Joanna not only because his community disapproves of his dating a non-Jewish woman but also because Noah worries that Joanna is still hung up on her ex. Let’s say that Joanna’s ex keeps showing up at her place and driving her around and hanging out with her family, and Noah thinks this means there isn’t room for a himself in Joanna’s life.
This second motivation doesn’t do much to add to the first motivation. It has nothing to do with Noah’s Jewish community or Joanna’s status as non-Jewish. Any scene in which Noah asks Joanna to stop spending so much time with her ex would make us feel that he thinks this would solve their romantic problems—which negates the pressures from his faith community. And any scene in which he contemplates whether to marry a Jewish woman would make us feel that he doesn’t think Joanna’s ex is really a problem.
I suppose if Noah resolves the first issue—if, for example, Joanna converts to Judaism—the story could move on to a new issue in Season 2. But to have both motivations competing against each other at the same time makes each motivation feel weak.
Instead, Go Deeper With Character Motivation
Instead of expanding Noah’s motivation for not committing to Joanna, the show deepens his motivation: it provides a couple of moments where Noah discusses why he wants to be head rabbi, and how much this role has meant to him since childhood.
Another Netflix comedy, Envious, also finds a way to explore the main character’s motivation on a deep level. Victoria is desperate to get married. Her motivation is simple: she has recently broken up with her boyfriend of ten years and worries she has left marrying too late. Now that she’s forty, she fears she will soon find it difficult to start a family.
This motivation can carry us through a couple of episodes because we see that Victoria is a flawed, insecure character who has taken a logical idea to desperate lengths. But it’s when the show digs deeper into Victoria’s motivation that we really buy in.
While on a date, she tells her crush that when she was a kid, she used to gaze at the perfect family pictured on her cereal box and wish she could be part of their happy scene. Her own father had abandoned her family, and her mother worked long hours and was never home to care for her. Victoria isn’t just desperate to be married—she yearns to have the perfect family that she feels she missed out on. An impossible goal—but a poignant one.
Don’t Force Unkind Motivations
In manuscripts I critique, it’s common for writers to use animosity to give characters a reason to interact. Coworkers snark at each other in the elevator, love interests scoff at each other’s coffee orders, classmates sabotage each other’s science projects. This is, of course, completely reasonable and even enjoyable—
But it’s also great to explore other motivations! Positive drivers can be just as effective at getting characters from one plot point to the next.
Let’s talk about the romantic leads in Emily Henry’s upcoming novel Great Big Beautiful Life (I read an early copy but I promise only to reveal very very minor spoilers here). Alice and Hayden are competing for an interview with the same reclusive woman, which obviously puts them at odds—and yet, we need them to spend time together if we want romance to ensue.
This is easily solved by the fact that Alice is a genuinely nice person. When she sees Hayden at a diner in town, she stops by his table to say hi. When she realizes they’ve booked rooms in the same hotel (their interviewee lives on an island where lodging options are limited), she brings him a treat from the coffee shop. And when a fire alarm sends them from their rooms early in the morning, Hayden kindly invites Alice to breakfast.
But there’s still plenty of tension in the story! Although Hayden tries to have a friendship (and maybe more) with Alice, he keeps letting it slip that he feels he’ll win the competition for the interview. He isn’t trying to insult her or show off—he just has reason to believe he has an edge. Alice doesn’t know his reason, so she takes his confidence for arrogance and bristles at his seeming dismissal of her.
Even when Hayden reluctantly admits the truth to Alice about why he thinks he’ll win the interview (reluctant because he doesn’t want to disappoint her), the tension doesn’t let up. They still have to contend with the fact that any romance between them will be complicated by the fact that one of them is going to win out over the other.
Another version of this rom-com would be an enemies-to-lovers story, which would also be fun. But sometimes it’s enough to let characters be reasonably nice to each other, even if they have competing interests. Plenty of conflict will still ensue, as long as you use other story elements to keep tensions high.
Unkindness As A Form Of Over-Motivation
Contrast the gentle tension of Great Big Beautiful Life with the pervasive negativity in the first episode of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew on Disney+. The episode’s main character is a young boy named Wim whose life is hemmed in by the demands of adults. Wim is so downtrodden that he seeks escape by exploring a mysterious structure that turns out to be a starship.
Why is Wim so hard-pressed? Honestly… his dad is an asshole.
Every time the dad came onto the screen, I couldn’t help laughing. The guy is the most loveless parent with the most cliched dialog imaginable. His introduction to the story is an almost breathless monologue:
“You’re going to be late for school. Don’t forget your jacket. I can’t find my passcard—were you playing with it again? I told you, don’t touch my work stuff. Hey could you please not leave your toys out all over the house. I keep stepping on them.”
He caps off this tirade by slapping some lunch money on the counter and telling Wim he won’t see him much this week because he has a lot to do at work. Nice guy!
Later, when he comes home from work, all he says to this adorable, sweet child is, “Hey look at that, studying for a change.” And when Wim asks for a bedtime story, his father says, “Aren’t you getting a bit old for that?”
I can guess why the writers of the show made the dad so cartoonishly awful in this first episode: they probably want to a) make the audience sympathize with Wim by showing a child’s perspective of a parent’s authority, and b) create a situation in which the dad will regret his awful parenting when his son accidentally flies off in a starship. I’m sure the end of the season will see the two tearfully reunited.
But wouldn’t the dynamic between father and son be so much more interesting (and believable) if it were more reasonable? What if the writers picked one specific source of conflict between Wim and his dad and showed how the two aren’t able to reconcile their differing viewpoints?
For example, Wim might want to be involved in some kind of activity that his dad feels is just too dangerous for his young son, who he’s protective of ever since they’ve lost Wim’s mother. Or Wim might be a naturally adventurous kid who gets into serious jeopardy but whose dad is unable to help him because he’s so busy at work providing for his son as a single father. Either scenario might show that both Wim and his father are well-meaning but flawed characters who will need to appreciate each other in order to reconcile their differences.
In contrast, a barrage of general negativity tells us nothing about either character and provides a motivation that is actually quite flimsy in its implausibility.
Now, if they wanted the dad to be a true villain who Wim needs to escape from, that would be a very different character (one which wouldn’t fit the tone of this show). And if you want your characters to be deeply flawed or villainous, you can certainly make them so. Larger than life villains are great—but they still need plausible motivations.
Reasonable, justified motivations tend to add more complexity to characters and themes. It’s easy to write about a competition between characters who are selfish and awful. It’s often more interesting to pit characters against each other and then give them perfectly understandable reasons to cross each other.
Use Caution With Hidden Motivations
Another issue that comes up in manuscripts I critique (and TV shows I watch!) is the hidden motivation. I’ll read thirty pages of a story and feel confused by the way the characters are acting, and the response I’ll get is, It’ll all make sense by Chapter 26!
There’s a tendency to keep characters’ motivations hidden in order to add mystery to the story. But when, say, the mother yells at her son for petting the dog, I’m not thinking, I wonder what tragic thing occurred in the mother’s past that led to this moment? I can’t wait to find out! Instead, I’m thinking, What a strange thing to yell at a kid about. This story doesn’t quite make sense. That’s when I tend to put down the book or turn off the show.
But there is definitely a way to make hidden motivations work. Let’s return to strange nature of Mark’s work in Severance (the show about office workers who have undergone brain surgery so that they don’t remember their work life while they’re at home).
Mark’s only job is to click on mysterious numbers whose significance he doesn’t understand, so it’s hard to guess why his company (Lumon) went to the trouble to sever his consciousness to prevent him from remembering his work outside of their building. I watched the first season of the show twice, and I saw no hint of an explanation for Lumon’s use of severance. The finale of the second season reveals the nature of the numbers, but it’s still not clear (to me, anyway) why Lumon needs to sever employees and keep their work secret.
A show like Severance relies on this mysteriousness to keep watchers engaged. Honestly, I really, really want to know what Lumon is up to! So in this case, you might say that the hidden motivation is working. I’m skeptical that Lumon’s motivations are logical, and I’m a little frustrated that it’s all so secretive—and yet, I’ve also been eager for each new episode!
But the reason I’ve been willing to wait to understand the societal motivations in this story is that I’ve been engaged in the other aspects of the show. I feel connected to the characters and understand their personal motivations. More than that, their bizarre situation is a satisfying parody for modern office work. I gleefully snicker at the corporate speak Lumon foists upon its workers. I revel in my umbrage when their hard work is rewarded with cubed melon and Lumon-branded finger traps.
And the use of severance itself does have an air of legitimacy. Whatever Lumon’s exact reason for using it, severance represents the idea that corporations would prefer employees to be drones without needs or desires, working with a single purpose: to increase company profits. Lumon’s treatment of its employees might be extreme, but it’s also eerily familiar. (The show clearly resonates—it’s Apple TV’s most-watched show.)
If you want to play with hidden motivations in your own work, here are a few ways to pull off this kind of suspense:
Make it clear that the motivation is indeed hidden and not just missing.
Hint that the hidden motivation will eventually be revealed.
Give readers other ways to connect with the character whose motivation is hidden so that his/her secret doesn’t alienate us.
Give readers a glimpse at the hidden motivation without fully revealing it.
Using Hidden Motivations To Surprise Readers
The ideas I listed above work well if you’re trying to create suspense. But if instead you’re simply trying to surprise your readers, it works better to suggest a false motivation for a character and then later reveal the true, hidden motivation.
Let me illustrate this with a small but lovely sequence toward the end of the movie adaptation of Bridget Jones’ Diary. Bridget’s love interest, Mark, finds her diary and discovers the terrible things she had written about him before she fell in love with him. He puts down the diary and leaves her apartment—seemingly because he’s hurt or offended.
When Bridget realizes what has happened, she runs after him—only to find that he has simply left to buy a new diary for her. “Time to make a new start,” he says. The audience didn’t realize he had a hidden motivation to leave Bridget’s apartment so suddenly, so it’s a delight to find that he has accepted their rocky past and is ready to turn a new page.
Whether you want to surprise readers or keep them in suspense, the most important thing to keep in mind is that the longer you wait to reveal a hidden motivation, the bigger the payoff needs to be. A show like Severance writes a big check with its tantalizing mysteries, but only if it can cash that check with satisfying reveals will it be remembered as a great show.
Your Turn
If you’re hoping to make your characters’ motivations more effective and convincing, ask yourself these questions:
What’s the most reasonable version of my character’s motivation?
What is something from my character’s past that contributes to her motivation? From my character’s present?
What does my reader understand about my character before I reveal his hidden motivation? And after? How can I help my reader understand the character better both before and after his motivation is revealed?
