Lesson One: Character Motivation - Why they do what they do

Character motivation describes why a character within your story behaves the way he/she does. A particularly strong character motivation allows the audience to understand and empathize/sympathize with the character as to why the behave the way they do.

This refers to their personality and how they process things mentally. This refers to their action and reactions in regards to various situations that are presented to them. If your character is bubbly, carefree, and idealistic, what happened or didn't happen in his/her life that made him/her that way? If your character is sarcastic, walled-off emotionally, and stubborn, what events in this character's life shaped him/her to be that way?

Not all characters are the same, just like not all real life humans are the same. Not all characters will react the same way to the same situation, just like we don't in real life.

Character motivation will create actions, reactions, and differentiate them from others. They have their own set of experiences in life, and so, they will live life accordingly to those emotions, events, and such. Without character motivation, you will have flat characters that all react the same way and that would, frankly, be a boring story.

So, where do character motivations stem from?

Environment, culture and ethnicity, upbringing as a child, aspirations, mistakes, thought processes, habits, and other people.

As a writer, how do we utilize character motivation?

Let's use fanfiction as an example. First, if you are pulling a character from a preexisting work, you may already know why the character does the things he does because you're aware of his backstory. But what if you're creating another character, all your own? Well, you will have to come up with a backstory for this original character (OC) that will coincide with the story that has already been created. (Unless it's AU, but that's another matter entirely).

Even if you do create this long-winded backstory for your character, it does not mean you have to include it within your story, necessarily, but you as a writer need to know why she does what she does.

Pro Tip: Even if you do include the backstory of your character, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT write it giant paragraph in the beginning of your story about the main character (assuming that's who we are talking about). The joy and art of great story telling is discovering reasons and things about the characters within the book.

If you have a few, well-chosen details throughout the story, your audience will understand and empathize. You do not have to divulge every reasoning to your readers.

Furthermore, you don't even have to explicitly explain why the characters do what they do. What I mean is, show your readers why "so and so" hates his mom by showing them that his mom hits him for no reason, or whatever. Or reveal it within character dialogue long after the story began.

Character motivation is revealed through his/her actions, reactions, and dialogue. Don't subject your readers to large chunks of backstory and flashbacks, unless that type of thing is absolutely detrimental to your storyline.

So there you have it, your very first lesson. When creating your characters, or pulling from another work for fanfiction, always keep your character motivation in the back of your mind as you write. That way you always keep a consistent action and reaction for various situations for your characters. Be sure to jot things down if you need to!