Many reasons exist in life for why we do what we do. In novels, our characters need one too. That’s where the M in GMC comes in. In her book, GMC: Goal, Motivation and Conflict, Debra Dixon writes, “Motivation is what drives your character to obtain or achieve his goal.”
Debra Dixon sets out a formula that authors can use when concocting the GMC. The character wants a goal because he is motivated.
In last month’s post on Goal, I used the basic example of having to go to the store to get milk. Let’s suppose that our character has to get milk because her child needs it so he can have a bowl of cereal because that is the only meal she can afford to feed him. So to put the example into the formula: The mother wants to get to the store to buy milk because that is her child’s only meal.
That motivation pulls at your heartstrings, which is another tool motivation plays in writing. Motivation helps the reader empathize with our characters as they strive to reach their goal.
Strong motivation can be used to create any tale. That isn’t the only task that strong motivation can accomplish. Strong motivation creates the emotion of the story and our characters. In our above example, we feel for the mother who has to get to the store to get that milk. She wants to feed her child his only meal of the day. We can empathize with the mother who wants to feed her child. The mother who is most likely struggling to provide for her child, a mother who most likely feels like she is a failure.
As a reader, we are rooting for her. We feel her heartache. That makes a good story. Even if this example doesn’t make for a novel-length story.
Motivation is the substance that glues the story’s character’s goals and conflict. Next month, the focus will settle on the C of our GMC—Conflict.
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