Wants, Needs, Fears – The Compelling Triangle Of Motivation

Writers Write creates writing resources and shares writing tips. In this post, we write about the compelling triangle of motivation.

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 Compelling Triangle Of Motivation: Wants, Needs, 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 must be something external and tangible.  Let’s play with some example ideas in 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 be 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. And this is something internal. While it is intangible, it should relate to their goal. The external and internal must line up or mesh as closely as possible.

1. Grace feels she needs to do one thing right for her parents so that they’ll finally forgive her. She didn’t stop her younger sister from
   running away from home when they were teenagers. Her sister was never found.
2. Joss feels she needs to get away from her desk-bound career so that she will feel never feel dependent on any and be free of the city.
3. Trevor feels he needs to restore his family’s faith in him as a father and the town’s belief in him to bring the rapist to book.

As soon as you link a want to a need, you create a melded sense of expectation in both the character and the reader). This makes the character more real and emotionally resonant. Keep in mind: this may be a misplaced sense of expectation or that the character may not even be conscious of it until later on in the story.

Fears

To create a compelling story, Grace, Joss and Trevor cannot get the thing they want desperately – at least not immediately. At the same as
you create hope, you must create a fear. Fears should polarise the character’s emotions. And you should create a villain or antagonism that embodies this fear.

1. A bossy party planner tries to take over Grace’s party’s arrangements; her brother is sent to drug re-hab days before the party. Grace feels like an even bigger disappointment and even more guilty.
2. A violent rainstorm complicates joss’s first trip to an exotic island. She is shut in a run-down hotel with Seth – a sexy, famous photojournalist. Joss feels trapped and has to rely on Seth.
3. Trevor is horrified when he begins to suspect that his teenage stepson he has raised since a young child may be behind the rape. His family is pulled apart by doubt. When word gets out about his stepson’s relationship to the dead girl, his superior doubts his ability to be impartial in the matter.

As soon a character feels fear, 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 faulty or self-sabotaging. This is what drives conflict in your story.

And finally a solution

This is the part writers often ignore in the compelling triangle of motivation, and yet, it’s often the most important. To overcome their fears, characters must slowly (and painfully) make the connection between their expectation and their fears. This will control their goal – to reinforce it with the same need, or abandon it with a hard-won realisation. This provides the solution.

1. Grace realises her parents never held her responsible for her sister’s disappearance and she resented her sister for running away–she has to forgive herself and her sister.
2. Joss realises she can keep her independence when a man as self-reliant as Seth can love her while still allowing her freedom to be herself.
3. Trevor is even more committed to restoring his family when he believes his stepson’s innocence and trusts his own love for the teen. He is driven to win back the faith of the town by hunting down a homicidal drifter and the real rapist.

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

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