How To Use Wants, Needs, And Fears To Create Better Characters

Learn how to use your characters’ wants, needs, and fears to build stronger motivations, create conflict, and drive your story forward.

How To Use Wants, Needs, And Fears To Create Better Characters

What motivates your characters? Writers must know what their characters want, need, and fear to make sure they change and grow in a credible and satisfying way for the reader.

The Triangle Of Character Motivation: Wants, Needs, And Fears

Wants

Your character must always want something at the start of your story. We are told, time and again, that this want must drive the character’s main goal – so it should be something external and tangible. Here are three examples from different genres.

1. Family Drama: Grace wants to plan the perfect family party for her parents’ Golden Wedding Anniversary.
2. Romance: Joss is divorced and quits her job as a magazine editor because she wants to become a travel blogger.
3. Crime: Trevor, a father and sheriff, wants to find the man who raped a young waitress in the small town where his family lives.

Needs

Of course, the reader must understand an individual character’s need to do these things. A need is something internal and intangible, but it should relate to their external goal. The two should work together as closely as possible.

1. Grace feels she needs to do one thing right for her parents so that they’ll finally forgive her. When they were teenagers, she didn’t stop her younger sister from running away from home. Her sister was never found.
2. Joss feels she needs to get away from her desk-bound career so that she can become independent on any and and free herself from city life.
3. Trevor feels he needs to restore his family’s faith in him as a father, as well as the town’s faith in him as a sheriff, by bringing the rapist to book.

As soon as you link a character’s want to a need, you create a strong sense of expectation for both the character and the reader. This makes the character more real and emotionally engaging.

Remember that a character’s expectations may be misplaced. They may also be unaware of their true needs until later in the story.

Fears

To create a compelling story, Grace, Joss, and Trevor should not get the thing they desperately want – at least not immediately. Along with hope, you must create a fear. Fears should raise the emotional stakes, and you should create an antagonist that embodies this fear.

1. A bossy party planner tries to take over the arrangements for Grace’s party. Then her brother is sent to drug rehabilitation just days before the event. Grace feels like an even bigger disappointment and becomes more consumed by guilt.
2. A violent rainstorm complicates Joss’s first trip to an exotic island. She is stranded in a run-down hotel with Seth – a sexy, famous photojournalist. Joss feels trapped and must rely on him.
3. Trevor is horrified when he begins to suspect that his teenage stepson, whom he has raised since childhood, may be responsible for the rape. Doubt threatens to tear his family apart. When word spreads about his stepson’s relationship with the victim, Trevor’s superior questions whether he can remain impartial in the investigation.

As soon a character feels afraid, they react in a way that will either make them feel in control or try an irrational solution to avoid a fearful emotion or situation. Their behaviour may be unhealthy, their responses misguided, or their actions self-sabotaging. These reactions create conflict and drive the story forward.

And finally a solution.

This is the part writers often ignore in the compelling triangle of motivation, yet it’s often the most important. To overcome their fears, characters must slowly (and painfully) make the connection between their expectations and their fears. This realisation shapes their goals. They may strengthen their commitment to the original goal because it still meets their needs, or abandon it after learning something important about themselves. This provides the solution.

1. Grace realises her parents never blamed her for her sister’s disappearance. She resented her sister for running away and she has to forgive herself and her sister.
2. Joss realises she can keep her independence while loving someone. A man as self-reliant as Seth can love her and still allow her her freedom to be herself.
3. Trevor becomes more determined to restore his family’s faith in him. He chooses to trust his stepson’s innocence and his own love for the teenager. He also sets out to regain the town’s trust by pursuing a homicidal drifter who is the real rapist.

You can interpret the solutions in many different ways, depending on the ending you want to write. However, you must know what your character wants, needs, and fears to make sure they change and grow in a believable and satisfying way.

The Last Word

Understanding what your characters want, need, and fear helps you create believable motivations and meaningful conflict. Their wants drive the plot, their needs add emotional depth, and their fears force difficult choices. Together, these elements shape character development and give your story direction. Ask yourself what your character wants, what they truly need, and what they fear losing most. The answers can help you find your story.

by Anthony Ehlers

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8. 5 Secret Tricks To Strengthen Your Writing
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