Redefining Motivation
Penguin March 25th, 2008
John August has a nice post on Rethinking Motivation:
In film school, we were taught to look at character motivation as the combination of two questions:
1. What does the character want.
2. What does the character need.
He redefines it as: “Why is the character doing what he’s doing?” “you need to be careful not to stop at the first easy answer”.
I think this is a great way to look at motivation and replaces one of the core questions in Where’s Your Story. Even if the audience doesn’t know why the character is doing what they’re doing. It’s definitely important for you, as the writer, to know why.
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