Day 62: Motivation Pt. 1

Character motivation is the driving engine of a story. For anything at all to happen, at least one character needs a powerful motivator to push the story along. It can be as simple or as complex as the writer desires, but it usually breaks down into only one or two defining emotions and character traits. As an exercise, I want to explore different combinations of emotions and traits that add up to different motivations in different characters. I'll explore some made up examples and some real stories for the next couple of days or so. At the end, I will make some conclusions based on what I learned by doing the exercises.

Beginning with the most primal motivator, I think that a wilderness survival scenario is the easiest to wrap your head around. The primary emotion at play in a survival situation is fear of death. Though loneliness, boredom, anger, and other emotions can come into play, a survival story hinges on the fact that the main character will want to escape nature (and therefore death) by returning to civilization. Usually this fear either brings out or highlights a particular character trait: determination. The raw will to continue surviving. I think this motivator is the easiest to understand because at some point in time, all humans experienced wilderness survival to some extent. It is in our DNA, so to speak. Anybody on Earth could end up stranded somewhere and every single person would experience the same fear, and be forced to use their determination if they want to survive. To give it a name, this combination of fear and determination adds up to the will to live motivator.

This same will to live can show up in any survival scenario, from wilderness survival to a car crash. The will to live is the bedrock for character motivation in all sorts of conflict where death is lurking just around the corner. War stories, thrillers and action movies, even science fiction often leans on the main character's will to live. In my favorite wilderness survival story, 'The Martian' by Andy Weir, the Mark Watney's primary trait is his determination, the trait that makes him such a loveable character. His intelligence, innovation, and bright attitude in the face of oblivion would all be for nothing, or wouldn't exist at all, without his powerful will to live.

Things are rarely this simple however. Being alive is often taken for granted in life when fear of death is not expressly present. Right now, sitting at my desk with a cup of coffee, writing my 62nd blog post, I have no reason to be afraid because nothing is threatening my doom. My motivation is different. I want to write interesting material, and learn about myself, and learn about writing, so here I am. The primary emotion is the desire to learn, which is driven by a combination of many traits, through primarily curiosity. Its also just plain fun. This is, in my opinion, the most complex motivation to wrap your head around. The internal motivation one finds when there is nothing else driving them externally. Unlike a survival scenario where fear will always be felt, and determination is always the key to success, internal motivation when nothing else is going on is infinitely variable, and highly dependent on traits that the character already has. If the simplest motivation, the will to live, is based on finding physical needs like food, water, and safety, this motivation is at the end of the line, when all other needs are covered. Based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, I'm going to call this one the will to self-actualization.

Between the bedrock simplicity of the will to live, and the infinite variety of the will to self-actualization, lie most, if not all other motivators. Over the next post or the next couple of posts I'll delve into the motivators I find interesting and make some more observations. I'd like to extend the hierarchy of needs analogy if I can, though I think the extremes will be sufficient to make some interesting conclusions. Look forward to more on motivation!

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley