How to Motivate a Character In Ways Your Reader Will Relate To

by Stephanie Morrill

Stephanie writes young adult contemporary novels and is the creator of GoTeenWriters.com. Her novels include The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series (Revell) and the Ellie Sweet books (Birch House Press). You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and check out samples of her work on her author website including the free novella, Throwing Stones.

(This post is part of the Writing A Novel From Beginning to End series. You can find other posts from this series on the Looking For Something Specific? tab.)

By the time I close out chapter three, I've usually pushed my character into making the choice to go on the journey she needs to be on. James Scott Bell describes this moment as a "doorway of no return," and I think that's a very helpful way to process this moment in the story: My character is choosing to walk through a door that will forever close behind her.

Does she have to choose it? Not necessarily, but I really like what it does to the complexity of a character when they make the choice instead me of forcing them to travel this path. Suzanne Collins could have had Katniss's name drawn in the reaping rather than Prim's and the result would have been the same. But isn't the story so much more interesting because Katniss volunteers in the place of her sister? 

Sometimes the character is choosing to go on a physical journey, like Bilbo in The Hobbit or Rapunzel in Tangled. But it doesn't have to be a literal journey. In The Scorpio Races, Puck chooses to ride her own regular horse in the races rather than a water horse. She's not physically going anywhere, but rather is making a choice about her life that she can't undo.

The character's hard decision has to make sense to the reader, though. Otherwise it just seems like they're foolish. Or like the author is just pulling strings to tell the story they want to tell. (While of course we do pull strings, we don't want our readers to be able to see them, right?)

I think the easiest way to process how to motivate a character onto a difficult path is to think about my own life. I've made hard choices before, and I'm guessing you have to. When you've picked something hard, why did you choose it?

I came up with a handful of reasons that apply to us as well as characters:

1. The choice is best for someone who I value more than whatever I think the journey might cost me personally.

I hate math, and I've always found nutrition to be super boring. And yet a lot of my daily time and energy is spent weighing out the exact amount of fats, carbs, and proteins in my five-year-old son's meals and snacks. Connor is on a strict medical diet, and if he has too many calories from carbs or protein, he could start having seizures again. I love my son much more than I hate math and nutrition, so I've chosen the path of the ketogenic diet.

We see this in The Hunger Games too. Katniss's love for her sister outweighs her fear of dying in the Games.

2. All the other choices are taken away.

I've been watching It's A Wonderful Life every Christmas for as long as I can remember. Something that makes the story heartwrenching is that George Bailey never leaves Bedford Falls despite having had a bad case of wanderlust since he was a boy. It's a choice he makes over and over during the story, to pass up opportunities for college and world travel, and sometimes he makes the choice to stay because the options to go get taken away from him.

I think this motivation works best when combined with something else on this list, but it can be a good way to back your character into a corner.

3. The potential pay-off is worth the risk.

In The Scorpio Races, Puck knows the races are dangerous. She chooses them because it keeps her
brother at home longer, and she has precious little family. Also, they are badly in need of money.

4. If I fail, I think I can turn around and come back.

Ever had one of those times where you think, "Worst case scenario, this won't work, and I'll just stop."

This can be an effective way to encourage a character through a door. I just read an amazing contemporary YA novel, To Get To You, where the main character chooses to leave home in order to help out his best friend, who is stranded a day's drive away. When he chooses this, he doesn't realize he won't simply be able to bail on the impromptu road trip if things go poorly. 

5. If I don't do it, something big, bad, and scary is sure to happen.

This one plays out in a lot of stories and tends to be directly tied to the "stakes" of the story. If Anna doesn't get to Elsa, it'll always be winter. If Frodo doesn't return the ring, evil will overrun everything. If Veronica Mars doesn't figure out who killed Logan's ex-girlfriend, the killer will still be on the loose and Logan will go to jail for a crime he didn't commit. 

6. Morally, it's the right thing to do.

This one is often combined with other things on this list. I mentioned the Veronica Mars movie in the example above. In Veronica Mars, Veronica doesn't want to go back to her old life of working as a P.I. She wants the new life she's spent years building. But she also can't live with the idea that her choice might result in her old friend, Logan, being sent to jail for a crime he didn't commit. She feels that choosing to return to her hometown is the morally right thing to do.

When you've figured out the reason (or reasons) behind your character's difficult choice, your next job is to make sure you've SHOWN the audience that this thing is important to them.

If we've never seen that Katniss loves Prim, then it'll seem odd for Katniss to volunteer. Or if we didn't know that Rapunzel has been watching the floating lights all these years, the risk she takes to leave the tower wouldn't make sense to us. So be sure to pick a moment or two in the early chapters of your story to show whatever it is you intend to use as a motivator for your character.

I'd love to hear what hard choice your character makes that sends them on their journey. Why do they pick it? And where—prior to them making this choice—do you show their motivation?