Read Online Creating Characters: How to Build Story People by Dwight V. Swain - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Dwight V. Swain
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humans strive for: possession of (an object, a person, a status, a state of mind or being), relief from (fear, oppression, humiliation, loss), or revenge for (a slight, a loss, a betrayal), plus all the multitudes of variations and permutations of which you can conceive.
2. GOAL: DISSATISFACTION AS DYNAMIC
A goal exists only in terms of an existing situation.
More specifically, it’s born out of dissatisfaction with that situation. In other words, it’s more specific than direction.
Or, getting back to the capsule with which we opened, there’s some aspect of your situation that you’d like to see changed: The girl you adore is dating two other men. You’d like to persuade her to limit her attentions to you alone. Which means that your goal is to get her to agree to “go steady.”
Or, your paycheck just won’t cover today’s inflationary outgo. So you make it your goal to change this sad condition by winning a raise.
Or, your divorced sister has moved back home with her three unruly children, driving your aged parents to emotional and financial desperation. Your goal: to get Sister & Co. out again before Mother and Dad collapse or slash their wrists.
Or, you’ve discovered that one of your superiors in the Defense Department is a mole, a secret Soviet agent. You must find which one ( goal ) before he can pass on vital data.
It’s also worth pointing out that goals are of two types: general and immediate .
The issue here rests on the difference between chronicle and story .
A chronicle is a record of events, a statement of what happened in a given situation: The king married the princess and they had five children .
A story is the record of how somebody deals with danger: The king married the princess and then found she planned to poison him.
Finding that the new queen plans to poison him constitutes an unacceptable change in the king’s situation, his state of affairs, and state of mind.
This change gives the king a general goal: to survive the queen’s plan.
To reach this general goal, the king must attain a whole series of immediate goals. First, possibly, he must avoid drinking the flagon of poisoned wine the queen offers him . . . yet do so in such a way as not to reveal he knows what she’s up to. To that end, he pretends a courtier’s remark has affronted him, flies into a simulation of rage and, with appropriate byplay, flings the flagon at the unfortunate man, then stalks from the hall.
One scene, one immediate goal out of the way. What next?
Afraid to give the queen another chance at him by retiring to their bedchamber, the king goes alone to the castle chapel, allegedlyto ask God for forgiveness for his unseemly display of wrath . . . then steal out a secret door to spy on the queen in an effort to find out whether others are conspiring with her in the attempt to kill him: a new immediate goal.
Mysterious masked figures intercept him. Fighting them off, the king barely escapes. But he does glimpse that the queen has a caller, a woman. Which gives him a new immediate goal: Who is the woman? What is her role where the queen is concerned?
Well, you get the idea. Our character’s attempt to attain a general goal results in one change after another in his original situation—in effect, each defeat or change creates a new situation and so plunges him into pursuit of a series of new immediate goals, each of which involves him in a new scene, a new conflict.
I can’t overemphasize the importance of this matter of goals. Why? Because when you strive to attain a goal, you test characters. Only when a story person fights against odds does he demonstrate whether he’s worthy of reward—or, to put it on the most practical level, whether he’s worthy of readers’ attention. It’s the key factor behind the old Hollywood question, “Who do we cheer for?” Readers won’t cheer, that is offer interest, unless characters—especially key characters—have goals. And if you don’t believe
2. GOAL: DISSATISFACTION AS DYNAMIC
A goal exists only in terms of an existing situation.
More specifically, it’s born out of dissatisfaction with that situation. In other words, it’s more specific than direction.
Or, getting back to the capsule with which we opened, there’s some aspect of your situation that you’d like to see changed: The girl you adore is dating two other men. You’d like to persuade her to limit her attentions to you alone. Which means that your goal is to get her to agree to “go steady.”
Or, your paycheck just won’t cover today’s inflationary outgo. So you make it your goal to change this sad condition by winning a raise.
Or, your divorced sister has moved back home with her three unruly children, driving your aged parents to emotional and financial desperation. Your goal: to get Sister & Co. out again before Mother and Dad collapse or slash their wrists.
Or, you’ve discovered that one of your superiors in the Defense Department is a mole, a secret Soviet agent. You must find which one ( goal ) before he can pass on vital data.
It’s also worth pointing out that goals are of two types: general and immediate .
The issue here rests on the difference between chronicle and story .
A chronicle is a record of events, a statement of what happened in a given situation: The king married the princess and they had five children .
A story is the record of how somebody deals with danger: The king married the princess and then found she planned to poison him.
Finding that the new queen plans to poison him constitutes an unacceptable change in the king’s situation, his state of affairs, and state of mind.
This change gives the king a general goal: to survive the queen’s plan.
To reach this general goal, the king must attain a whole series of immediate goals. First, possibly, he must avoid drinking the flagon of poisoned wine the queen offers him . . . yet do so in such a way as not to reveal he knows what she’s up to. To that end, he pretends a courtier’s remark has affronted him, flies into a simulation of rage and, with appropriate byplay, flings the flagon at the unfortunate man, then stalks from the hall.
One scene, one immediate goal out of the way. What next?
Afraid to give the queen another chance at him by retiring to their bedchamber, the king goes alone to the castle chapel, allegedlyto ask God for forgiveness for his unseemly display of wrath . . . then steal out a secret door to spy on the queen in an effort to find out whether others are conspiring with her in the attempt to kill him: a new immediate goal.
Mysterious masked figures intercept him. Fighting them off, the king barely escapes. But he does glimpse that the queen has a caller, a woman. Which gives him a new immediate goal: Who is the woman? What is her role where the queen is concerned?
Well, you get the idea. Our character’s attempt to attain a general goal results in one change after another in his original situation—in effect, each defeat or change creates a new situation and so plunges him into pursuit of a series of new immediate goals, each of which involves him in a new scene, a new conflict.
I can’t overemphasize the importance of this matter of goals. Why? Because when you strive to attain a goal, you test characters. Only when a story person fights against odds does he demonstrate whether he’s worthy of reward—or, to put it on the most practical level, whether he’s worthy of readers’ attention. It’s the key factor behind the old Hollywood question, “Who do we cheer for?” Readers won’t cheer, that is offer interest, unless characters—especially key characters—have goals. And if you don’t believe
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