Characters Who Want Something

When I was first learning to write fiction, I came across a formula for organizing a story. Formulae, of course, can be dangerous, but this one held up pretty well. It came from the book Immediate Fiction by Jerry Cleaver, and for the sake of simplicity he reduced it to an acronym:  WOA—Want, Obstacle, Action. A good story will have someone wanting something; there is an obstacle to the person getting what he or she wants. He or she will take action to get the thing. Cleaver added that the action the person takes to get what he or she wants will also reveal their character.

The book is a good book on writing, and the formula suggests an important thing. Characters have got to want something. In great literature (this is also true in film), the characters desire. Furthermore, their desire is not casual. They really, really, really want the thing. This, I think, is what makes some characters from literature enduring. A sampling will suffice to illustrate the point.

Let’s start early. Romeo. He wants Juliet. Does he want her just a little? He wants her a lot, so much that he immediately forgets

Rosalind, the girl who would not return his love and made him depressed. He is willing to risk a beating to talk to Juliet at a party off-limits to him and members of his family. Later on, he risks his very life to talk to her in the famous “balcony scene.” Eventually, he will marry her, knowing it will bring about retribution. He doesn’t care. He loves her. He wants to share her life. We all know how it ends.

Captain Ahab. He wants to kill Moby-Dick, the white whale 

who chewed off his leg. Does he have a casual desire to kill the whale? If he can get him, great, if not, well, there are lots of other whales in ocean? No. He is obsessed, fanatical, and willing to destroy his ship, his crew, and himself to even the score.

Ebenezer Scrooge wants money. He doesn’t want money just a little bit. His whole life is consumed with avarice, the desire to get money. When he is young, he does not marry the girl who loves him. She says a “golden idol” has replaced her. Scrooge complains about giving Bob Cratchit Christmas day off (and won’t give him a bit of coal to keep warm at his job). And he blows up with rage when men come to his door soliciting a contribution for the poor and destitute. “Let them die,” he says, “and reduce the surplus population!” 

Examples could be multiplied, but the point is that characters must want something and be willing to risk everything to get it. They will expend all their resources to overcome the obstacle standing between them and what they want:  the risk of death in an ancient feud for Romeo, the dangers of the sea and Moby-Dick’s skill at ripping whalers to bits (Ahab meets a British sea captain who has lost an arm to the same white whale); Scrooge faces the censure of a society that considers money-grubbing immoral, underpaying employees despicable, and indifference to the poor reprehensible. Their obsession to get past the obstacle and get what they so tenaciously want is what makes the characters absorbing. Without this desire, characters are dull and insipid. And without fascinating characters, you cannot have a good story.

I’ve tried make the characters in my novels obsessive and driven. In The Gallery Martin Rollins wants the love of Siobhan O’Conner and will risk fighting one of the undead to get her. Strange Brew has Andrew Cabot willing to travel time and face the dangers of the pre-segregation Southern USA to help Lybecca. In The Sorceress of the Northern Seas, Lybecca (long before she meets Andrew) fights and struggles to win power and dominance as a sorceress. None of these things are bought at a small price.

Your characters must desire. They must want something and be willing, like Hamlet, to even “couple hell,” to get what they want. No one is attracted by insipid desire. Make your characters want something. Make it real desire. That is how the pot gets boiling.

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