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Hello Ereki,

We are gathered together, on this seventeenth day of the month of December, to continue our discussion of character development. Let us begin.

This article will be the centerpiece of our discussion. Please read it before going any further! I will not elaborate very much in this initial post.

Your Character’s Internal Need Versus External Goals

Although this article also focuses on external goals, pay special attention to what they say about our character’s internal needs. At the end of the article is a suggested writing assignment. I’d like to see if we can do something along those lines this week, but I am going to modify it (below).
And by the way, for those of us who are deep discussion lovers, the next few weeks will be very closely related to this topic, so we’ll have plenty of time to discuss this all at length. 😀

This week, though, we’re going to start out with a bit of an exercise:

Remember the list of internal needs and external goals that were listed at the end of the article? Well, we’re going to use those as a jumping-off point so we get the idea of what kind of thing we’re looking for.

I want you guys to tell me about one of your characters. Boil down at least one of their internal needs and tell me about it. Give an example of how they met this internal need, and how this also met a different external goal all in the same moment. Explain how the contrast/relationship between internal need and external goal combine to make the character more dynamic.

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I’ll go first. Meet Endbringer. If you haven’t met him before, go and read my story (which made second place in the story contest!).

Endbringer has several internal needs, but one of the most blatant is his need for self-love. He doesn’t like the fact that he is the bringer of the end to people, and it tears him up inside that he causes pain as a fact of who he is. That’s literally what he does. And he hates himself for it, but he cannot do anything to change that.

Translating this self-hatred into the language of an internal need as best I can: he needs to feel that his existence does not simply bring pain and destruction.

Contrasting this internal need, is a continuous stream of external goals given to him by the voice speaking inside his head, the chief and last of which was: destroy an entire city.

Already, we see direct and complete contradiction between the internal need and the external goal. He needs to feel that he doesn’t simply bring destruction and death, and yet this external goal that he is compelled to strive for is going to cause death and destruction to thousands of people.

As a friend of mine said recently, contrast is the spice of what makes stories, characters, and prose interesting. There is an inherent something that catches the eye and the mind.

By meeting the external goal, Endbringer actually ends up being able to meet his internal need, as well. In order to see how this works… *whispers* go read the story.

And now I’d love to hear from you!

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