Your main character should be driving your story. Your main character IS your story's compass. If you do what I'm going to tell you about below, you can be sure that you're story is always heading forwards.

If you've read other books and articles on writing then you've probably read this a hundred times. Your main character must want something. As soon as the inciting incident throws your character in a new direction, they need to have a goal. And the more they want to achieve this goal, the bigger the engine that drives your story, because the greater the risks your character will be prepared to take. Whatever it is your character wants - to escape a planet, to be Miss Popular, to save a friendship - their struggle to attain it needs to last the whole story and at the end, either they get it, or they don't.

This is extremely simple. But at the same time it isn't. Because characters aren't one dimensional. They can want two opposite things at the same time. (This makes great conflict!) They can want more than one thing. They can think that they want something more than anything else in the world... to be rich, popular, beautiful... but once they've got it, realise it wasn't what they wanted, after all.

An idea I like to work with is this: I give my main character one solid desire/ goal that's going to last the length of the story and be resolved in the climax. And then I give them an Itch That Can't be Scratched." The Itch that Can't be Scratched is either something your character wants but can't have; something they need deep down but don't realise is missing; or a nebulous (hard to pin down) desire that drives them and can never really be fully attained. It's more of a state of mind than an object or physical thing.

An example of a character who wants something they can't have:

The Sky is Everywhere: Lennie wants her dead sister to be alive.

Example of something your character needs but hasn't realised is missing, (taken from Wattpad's 'The Heartbreakers')

The Heartbreakers: Stella Walter needs to live her own life again rather than slowly dying with her sick sister

Example of something your character wants that is hard to pin down

Looking for Alaska by John Green: Miles wants to seek a Great Perhaps.

Now you have to be careful with The Itch That Can't Be Scratched. You can't just give your character an Itch that isn't intricately tied in with your story climax and the character's driving need/goal. And you may not need an Itch, at all. The next chapter I post up will go into more detail on this. For now, let's focus on the engine of your story - what your character desperately wants, (or what they think they want.) To put this another way, what is your character's goal and why?

I'm going to pull some examples from Wattpad's Hot Teen Fiction Stories:

Project Popularity: From the blurb we can tell there are two main characters - Luke Archer, who wants to make invisible girl Jamie Vanderviere into the most popular girl in school. And Jamie, who wants to be popular. Luke's motivations are clear right from the outset: He wants to make Jamie popular to take down his Queen Bee ex-girl friend. However, Jamie, at first, is reluctantly drawn into the situation. Why does she agree to have Luke make her popular? Because she's tired of being invisible and because Luke's ex-girlfriend has made Jamie's best friend's life hell, and her best friend wants revenge. Jamie's motivation isn't as solid as Luke's and she has far more to risk. Now this is what starts to make a story really interesting. Your character wants something - but what are they prepared to risk to attain it? The more they have to lose, the greater their internal and external conflict will be, and the more hooked your reader will be to your story.

I haven't read this far yet, but I would guess Jamie is going to need more motivation to stop her from backing out of the arrangement. Perhaps she'll discover she loves being popular, or she desperately wants to spend time with Luke and the only way to do that is to continue with the plan, or the Queen Bee humiliates her to a point where she wants revenge for herself. The more your character risks losing - friends, pride, constant humiliation, sense of self-worth etc. the more motivation you need to give them to keep them struggling towards their goal. If it's easy for Luke to make Jamie popular and Jamie has no problem putting the Queen Bee in her place, well, this is going to be a short story. And for another thing, the reader's going to lose interest.

So think about your character's motivation for what they're trying to accomplish. If you have a reluctant MC (main character), you may need to build their motivation as it gets harder and harder for them to achieve their goal. (We'll talk about rising stakes i.e. it getting harder for your character to get what they want, in a future chapter.)

EXAMPLE 2:

Baby Doll by Wonderwall 123 (another Wattpad story in Teen fiction; check it out!)

This is the blurb/ summary:

In a corrupt community, young girls are sold to men as mere objects of pleasure and they are kept for as long as the men desire. But things take a turn when the spoilt son of a wealthy businessman crosses paths with an unfortunate girl forced into the twisted world of Baby Dolls

The unfortunate girl is the main character: Seventeen-year-old Lia

What does she want? After she is snatched by her landlord and sold to a rich man for his son, Lia wants to escape her terrifying situation and go home. But it's not as simple as running away. Escaping would put her family in danger. Once she's in the rich man's house her goal changes from scene to scene - she wants to persuade the maid to help her leave, she wants to avoid the dominant, unpredictable son etc. But the underlying goal to go home to her mother and brother is always there, beneath the surface, implicit and occasionally explicitly stated.

After the inciting incident which propels your character in a new direction (e.g. getting kidnapped or running over the hot guy) your reader needs to understand what your character wants and why. The more tangible and concrete the desire e.g. to find a secret treasure, to kiss a boy, to return home, the easier it is for you as a writer to know when you're heading north and when you're getting lost.

In the next chapter I'll talk about the ITCH THAT CAN'T BE SCRATCHED and how you can deepen your main character.

Hope you've found this helpful! (All VOTES and COMMENTS appreciated!)

(This chapter is dedicated to Gytha Lodge whose awesome wattpad story THE FRAGILE TOWER i'm currently reading. If you like fantasy you should read it too!