In a brilliant talk called 'The Clues to a Great Story', filmmaker Andrew Stanton (Toy Story, WALL-E) outlines what he believes are the principles of a great story. He mentions, in passing, "the itch that a character can't scratch" and defines it as a dominant unconscious goal that directs everything a character does.

I've taken his definition and expanded it a bit. As I outlined in Chapter 3, (Is Your Main Character Strong Enough to Carry your Story?) I think there are three types of Itches that Can't be Scratched. Any one of these types may be used in a story to deepen a character and drive them in ways they're not necessarily aware of.

TYPE 1: Something your character wants but can't have;

In 'The Lovely Bones' by Alice Sebold, the main fourteen-year-old character is murdered in the first chapter. For the rest of the novel, as she watches her family from heaven, what she really wants is to be back alive on earth with them. This is impossible.

TYPE 2: Something your character needs deep down but don't realize is missing.

Sam, the main character in 'Before I Fall' by Lauren Oliver, needs to be saved from her popular, mean-girl, superficial, selfish outlook on life. At the start of the story she is in a fatal accident. She is then forced to live her last day on earth over and over until she makes the right changes to her life.

TYPE 3: A nebulous (hard to pin down) goal or desire that drives your character and can never really be fully attained. It's more of a state of mind than an object or physical thing.

Seventeen-year-old Hazel in 'The Fault In Our Stars,' has terminal cancer. She wants to not be dying. She wants more days than she's likely to get. This could also come under TYPE 1 but I think of it also as a state of mind because Hazel wants to not feel like she's dying; she wants to feel like she's truely living her numbered days.

Now I mentioned this in Chapter 3, but I'll say it again now: Your character's Itch must be intricately tied in with your story climax and the character's objective (known) goal. Let's look at a few examples of how this works:

EXAMPLE 1:

In 'Before I Fall' Sam's tangible goal is to break out of the time bubble that has her trapped and living the same day over and over. She slowly starts to believe that the only way she can do this is to stop Juliet's attempted suicide. The night of Sam's accident, Juliet threw herself in front of the car Sam was in with her friends. The car crashes and Sam is killed. In the climax, Sam sacrifices her own life to save Juliet, and in doing this, breaks out of the time bubble AND finishes her transformation from selfish mean-girl, to someone capable of thinking of others and seeing beyond the superficial.

EXAMPLE 2:

In the 'climax' of 'The Fault in our Stars' August, Hazel's boyfriend, is about to die of cancer that was supposed to have been cured. He asks his best friend and his girlfriend to prepare him a eulogy so that he can attend his own prefuneral funeral. 'The Fault in our Stars' is a love story between August and Hazel. A love story that ends with August's death. Hazel's obtainable desirable goal was to be August's girlfriend. Her Itch that Couldn't be Scratched was to not feel like she's dying - or to feel like she's truely living the few days life has reserved for her. In August's prefuneral funeral, the climax just before we're told August is dead, Hazel eulogizes:

'There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities....There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get... But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity.... You gave me forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.'

I've cut this down a little, but you can see the link between August's goal -- Gus as her boyfriend -- and her desire to feel truely alive -- how thankful I am for our little infinity. These two aspects of the story complement each other. Though she August loses Gus, she got something that felt like it was impossible: a breath of infinity. I would recommend getting your hands on a copy of 'The Fault in our Stars' so that you can read it all for yourself in context and see how John Green weaves together complicated characters of amazing breadth, light and depth.

Not every main character has an ITCH THAT CAN'T BE SCRATCHED. But if you want one for one of your main character(s), I would suggest trying to let it develop naturally from your character's objective goal and the conflicts that are stopping them from getting what they want. If you've already written your first draft, you may find there's a partially developed ITCH already hidden in your main character and all you need to do is simply excavate it... Otherwise, look at your climax and ask yourself how this journey funadamentally changed your character -- somehow wrapped inside that you may find the ITCH.

Look at other stories, look at the books you love. Do the main characters have one of the Types of Itch? How is it conveyed? How is it resolved in the climax or by the end of the book?

If you have any questions about this, don't hesitate to ask.

Thanks for reading! If you found this useful, your VOTE will be very much appreciated.