Anyone still have their New Year resolution in place to lose weight, or has the joy of fat, sugar, and salt won the year, yet again? One of the basic conflicting wants – eat healthy & be healthy vs joy of eating and joy in life.
Your characters have these conflicts too. Two mutually exclusive, yet base level things. Defining these wants can really help bring a character to life.
Edmund Schubert made an amazing Magical Word post on May 28, 2011, “What Else Does Your Character Want?”
We are going to do his challenge as a writing exercise, so be sure to read the whole thing. Don’t look at the comments yet, but after the exercise, go over them to help you think about this. Again, the URL is:
WRITING EXERCISE: Take a major character from one of your present WIP (work-in-progress) and define two conflicting “wants” the character has, and tell us in the comments below how those wants impact your story.
My Attempt: I’m presently working on expanding the Quest for True Love. The unnamed main character loves gaming and wants to win the game, especially having defined the goal “To find my true love.” BUT they also want to escape the game and get back to the real world.