How to Motivate a Character: A Lack

Motivation is the inner fire that brings characters to life. Without it, there is no drive to act, no need to fill, nothing to inform how the character will react. Types of motivation span across infinite variations, but there’s a good trick to picking one for your character and keeping it consistent. Base it on a lack. There is something missing in your character’s life; maybe it’s acceptance, love, normalcy, or excitement. Pick a concept, not a specific object or person, and begin to work up from there.

A missing concept is the foundation for more complex wants, needs, and actions. For example, say a character is missing acceptance. This base lack can lead to certain behaviors. They haven’t been accepted before, or haven’t recognized it if they have, and so they don’t expect your other characters to give them that, even if they want it. They may be withdrawn and sullen, unwilling to extend a hand that will only be rejected. Yet they don’t leave the group. They still crave that acceptance and may like the more affectionate characters more, showing their attachment through covert actions rather than open words. Or perhaps they latch onto an authority figure who gave them easy praise for something they did well, making them a loyal follower - so long as they don’t feel rejected by the object of their loyalty. From one simple concept of a lack, we can extrapolate entire tropes of behavior and personality.

Furthermore, there are untold opportunities to have multiple characters with distinct personalities springing from the same lack. Imagine another character who lacked acceptance, but instead of becoming quiet, they learned to hide behind an overly friendly mask. They become a clown that can’t wipe the makeup away for fear of rejection - despite never actually gaining acceptance of their true self. This could bring depth to a comic relief character or hide growing resentment in a latent villain. Their jokes gain edges that begin to hurt, but this character has always been a jokester, why spend more than a moment telling them off for it? The annoyance and resentment on both sides could easily lead to a betrayal, martyr, or hurt/comfort arc. Now we can see that having a simple lack for character motivation can lead to complex plotlines and distinct characters, but why not have a more specific motivation?

Specific motivations are helpful in the moment; for example a character who wants to be king would work perhaps to improve their own standing or to hinder the advance of others. They could be hero, villain, or in between. Surely that’s enough to make a character, right? Unfortunately, in my opinion, this sort of motivation needs to come from something deeper for a character to be fully fleshed out. Specific motivations can be useful for side characters who play specific roles, but for an emotional connection, it helps to have a core of need - a lack. We can sympathize with a heroic character that wants to be king because they work hard for it. However true connection comes when the character reveals they want to be king to protect their people - because they themself were not protected, or people they knew were left to fend for themselves. A lack of safety informing a desire to make others safe or a lack of power, in this case power to protect, driving the push for the throne.

Specific motivations can also fail to encompass a character’s full range of action unless the character is obsessive to the extreme. Take our would-be king, for example. Would every action they took be in pursuit of the throne? Would they fall in love strategically and pick their favorite foods in the most kingly way they could? Most likely not. If so, there would be very little internal conflict as their every emotion would align with their specific goal. While a character can be written that way, I feel it leaves them a tad flat and less believable.

Specific motivations also tend to require a “why” if we want the character to be understood. Even if, for some villains, the answer is “because I can,” this question still leads to a deeper motivation from which the specific goal sprang. Examining a certain villainous lion from a famous movie based loosely on Hamlet (and perhaps also on Kimba the White Lion), we see a desire to be king. This seems to be a specific goal that disproves my idea that the character would be flat; after all, the character is charismatic and has a following of fans among viewers of the movie. Yet throughout the movie’s beginning, we see the villainous lion’s dissatisfaction at the level of respect his family and the rest of the pride give him. His specific goal, becoming king, is grown from a lack of respect and power, which eventually shapes how he rules, favoring power over keeping the pride and his followers happy and healthy. This is what makes him more than a two-dimensional drawing on a screen following the plot without any compelling reason. It’s what makes him feel real.

In the end, you as a writer are trying to convince your readers that your characters are real. Not in the sense that they’ll climb out of your book or screenplay and start tap dancing in the readers’ living room, but that they are believable. The things they do begin to make sense as the reader learns more about their motivations, so that even if the reader doesn’t agree with the character, they can understand. In my opinion, including a simple lack in the core of your character is one of the easiest and more versatile ways to give a character that spark of life. Obviously it is not the only way, but I hope this little trick will help keep your characters from having the most difficult lack of all - motivation.

(But overall… have fun writing, no matter how you go about it! Just sit down and get started! After all, that’s the only way to get it done.)