Writing Workshop: How to Find Your Character’s Goal, Desire, and Fear

In my last writing workshop, we walked through creating a character with an interesting, multilayered personality. We created a character that would be fun to read about and one that a reader would want to spend more time with. 

But there’s more to a protagonist than just their quirks, tastes, and career. There’s something deeper that must be understood by the author before setting out to write. This is the very core of the character, which holds their highest hopes, darkest fears, and their plan to achieve one and evade the other.

This center is what makes the reader care about and relate to your character. Without it, your protagonist becomes an interesting shell with nothing meaningful actually going on between their ears. They can be funny, quirky, clever, stubborn, interesting, smart, or unique, but if a reader doesn’t know what drives them — what they truly care about — then they won’t end up relating to your character.

This workshop is going to assume that you’ve already gotten your character’s persona. If you haven’t, go check out my workshop here and do that now. Otherwise, grab a pen and notebook and let’s get started!

Step 1: Understanding a Desire

The first thing to understand is what exactly this inner core is made up of. At its most basic form, it is a goal, a desire, and a fear. But these three elements must be what is driving your character. They can’t just be any old desire. The reader has to know why it matters.

Here’s an example. The saying goes that a protagonist has to want something, even if it’s just a glass of water. This is true, but if the glass of water doesn’t mean anything in particular, your readers aren’t going to care about it. However, if our protagonist is a desperate mother who has traveled across the Sahara desert to find her lost family and is desperately searching for the water that could save her life, suddenly finding the glass of water (her goal) has a lot more impact. Why? Because we connected the water to a core desire: the mother’s desire to have a home and family.

This is a desire that everyone relates to, no matter who they are. Everyone wants to find belonging and community in a tight-knit group of people whom they can tell anything. Because of this, the reader is desperately hoping for the mother to find a glass of water that could save her life long enough for her to find her family. Understanding this underlying desire has two effects. Readers see themselves in the mother, and now they understand how much the glass of water means to her.

So when we go to find a desire, we’re looking for something that is both universally understood and felt — like the desire for family — but also especially meaningful for your specific protagonist. This connects everything they want, every goal that they have, with the tension between the protagonist’s deepest fear and greatest desire.

Now that we have that down, where do we go from there?

Step 2: Ask Why

I am going to use the character I developed in last month’s workshop as an example. We already know she has dozens of hobbies, doesn’t care what other people think about her, and yet works unusually hard on her tasks to finish them as quickly as possible.

The question is — why? We looked at how these traits connect to two core aspects of her personality (the way that she is both a hard-worker and a free spirit), but why is she either of these things to begin with? The answer to this question will get at her core desire, so let’s explore along that vein.

So let’s look at some of the choices that our character makes. We don’t have very many — but that’s okay. We already have a few examples from the chart we made in the last workshop, and any one of those could be the launch point for our questions. So pull out one of them and answer the question: Why does my character choose to do this? What are they hoping to accomplish?

I chose the fact that she walks around singing to herself because that is very uncommon and will give us a unique desire — more so than some of the others might. So now that we have an example of a choice she makes (choosing to sing to herself in public) we should look at why she does it.

Okay, we got an interesting answer. Our character doesn’t care much what other people think about her — most of her choices are based on what they do for her, and not what other people will think when they see her. This is getting closer to what we’re looking for, but it still isn’t a core desire. So, we ask why again, and see what we get…

For your character, it could take just one or two questions, or it could take half a dozen, but eventually you get to an answer you can work with, like we did here. That answer is fun.

Our character does all of this because it’s fun — she values enjoying herself and having a good time more than what people think about her and makes sacrifices so that she can enjoy herself as fully as possible. For example, she works hard so that she can enjoy exploring her hobbies as quickly as possible.

Step 3: Is the Desire Too Generalized?

This desire may sound too generalized. I mean, who doesn’t love fun? Who wouldn’t make sacrifices for it? Doesn’t that make our desire useless, since wanting to enjoy something is a part of being human? 

The truth is that this is exactly what we want. Living a life that is enjoyable and easy is something all of us desire, so that makes this character highly relatable. We’ve all worked hard to enjoy something later, or made sacrifices to do something fun. So when our character makes those same choices, we will understand and relate to them.

That said, not everyone will sacrifice so much for the sake of fun. Some want to make a difference and will sacrifice considerable amounts of enjoyment and fun for the sake of pursuing a goal that they believe could change the world. Others want to stay true to themselves and their values — their desire is to never compromise on their values or lose their authenticity because it would be easier than doing what they believe in.

This makes these desires both universal and unique. They distinguish our character while also having them make choices that we understand and relate to, even if we would not have made the same choices ourselves.

That said, if you’ve asked yourself “Why” so many times that you land at “because it would make my character happy” you need to backpedal and get to the core of the issue. Everyone wants to be happy. What your character thinks will make them truly happy is their desire.

Step 4: Going from Desire to Fear

We can’t just stop at desire. We must know the concept that is driving this character toward their desire, and what they fear will happen if they do not pursue it.

Finding this fear is surprisingly straight forward. You just need to ask yourself what the opposite of your desire is.

While your desire must be highly generalized, this fear can be as specific or as generalized as you like. The only requirement is that it must deprive your character of their desire.

Because this is an example and I am not going to write with this character, I chose a fairly generalized fear — she fears hardship and pain. It could be beneficial to look at specific events that could devastate your character by pulling them farther away from their desire than they ever have been, or making it so that they believe that their desire is now impossible. You can add these events to your plot to create tension, drama, and stakes.

Step 5: Going from Desire to Goal

Finding your goal after you have the other two pieces is very simple. Simply put, it is your character’s plan for avoiding their fear and achieving their desire.

This obviously will depend very heavily on what kind of character you’re writing about, as well as the setting of your story. An archer in the middle ages might have the goal of shooting a deer to feed his family, for example, but this goal would have completely different implications for a character in the modern-day.

I figured that my character might have the goal of finding a job that would provide her with enough passive income that she can explore her hobbies and enjoy herself all day long — a goal that anyone would enjoy, but especially this character, who enjoys fun and ease over anything.

That said, the goal could be any number of things just merely based off of her desire, but what it is will be up to you, as the author. What your character is pushing towards, dreaming of, and fighting for will change a lot about the plot. This gives you a lot of flexibility with both your plot and your character’s desire.

Well, there you have it! You have now fully developed a character with a vibrant personality, a relatable desire, and a starting point from which you can  launch the plot.

Now you just need a story for this character to explore!