Goal
It’s important to create goals for your characters. Stories are all about change and a goal represents a change that your character wants to see.
The Story Goal
The story goal is the change your story’s main character wants to have happen by the end of the story. Typically, story goals are ambitious and complicated. For example, a peasant might want to overthrow the evil king or a detective is assigned to solve a crime. The story goal is usually triggered as a response to an event that happens early in the story, typically the inciting incident. For instance, a crime needs to be committed before the detective can take the case, someone needs to be wronged before they can seek revenge.
The Scene Goal
The scene goal is the change your scene’s main character wants to have happen by the end of the scene. Thus, your scene goals tend to be much more focused and short-term than story goals. Consider taking the overall story goal (e.g., solving a murder) and breaking it into smaller steps (e.g., interviewing a witness, examining the body, collecting evidence, etc.). Each of these steps is a smaller goal that is pertinent to the overall story goal. Each scene should be centered around one of these smaller goals.
Why goals are so important
Having a goal is important to your characters because it gives them agency: they are making decisions and taking actions that affect their lies. Characters who actively move the plot forward are far more interesting than those who passively sit back, letting the story happen to them. As readers, we feel more satisfied when a character achieves their goal through their own merit.
Character goals are also important because they raise questions in the reader’s mind. When we read that a character needs to trek through the forbidden forest to get to the next village, we ask ourselves, ‘will the character make it to the next village safely’. Goals build curiosity and anticipation in our readers. The sooner the goal appears in a scene, the more likely you’ll hook your readers.
Character goals are also important to the writer because they focus us on the character’s motivations. The goals are a remind of what our characters are trying to accomplish in the situation they’re in. If you have writer’s block and you’re not sure what your character should do, always return to their goal.
Raising the Stakes
What changes will occur if the character succeeds in their goal?
- what does the character stand to personally gain?
- how the plot might change as a result?
- how the character will feel about these changes?
What change will occur if the character fails to achieve their goal?
- what does your character stand to lose?
- how the plot might change (possibly in a very unexpected way)?
- how your character will feel about these changes?
Example
Suppose our character, Charlie is employed and is seeking a new job (goal). That’s fine as a goal, but why does that matter?
Let’s add some positive stakes. Suppose Charlie discovers his dream job on an online job board. It pays more than his current job. The benefits and location are better, too. Charlie now has strong reasons to pursue his goal.
But if he doesn’t get the dream job, he’s no worse off than before. So let’s add some negative stakes.
Suppose Charlie just got a new boss who he hates. Maybe the company office is about to relocate to the other end of the city, making for a worse commute.
Increasing the stakes motivates Charlie to want that dream job even more. If he’s successful in his goal to get the new job, he’ll be much happier than in his current role. And if he fails, he’ll be very upset with the new changes in his existing job.
Sometimes you only need to have positive stakes. Sometimes you only need the negative ones. However, when they’re both present they add an emotional charge to the goal, giving the reader more to anticipate.
Stakes don’t have to be life and death (unless you’re writing a spy thriller). It’s important that the character is emotionally invested. The more the goal’s outcome matters to the character, the more the reader will empathize with them.
If a character achieves their goal without difficulty, we have a boring story. That’s why we need to introduce conflict.
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