Building a Character with Goal-Motivation-Conflict

May 28

Developing a character begins with asking: What do they want? Why do they want it? What stands in their way?

Faces carved in stone. — Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash

My current work in progress - an adaption of a 14th century French poem - is coming along nicely. Slow, yes, but sure. I broke the story and I’ve got a lot of great notes about the characters.

I want to take a moment to share an exercise that’s helped me ensure my plot and characters are logically and emotionally intertwined. Yes, plot evolves from character motivation and choices, but oftentimes relying on character choices to get you from plot point A to plot point B can be overly confusing.

That’s where Debra Dixon and her book GOAL-MOTIVATION-CONFLICT comes in handy. (Don’t worry, the link isn’t affiliated.)

GOAL-MOTIVATION- CONFLICT (GMC)

Dixon breaks down the fundamentals of creating a character through a framework she calls Goal-Motivation-Conflict. I’m not going to go into any definitions because they should be well-known. But what Dixon does that is so damn simple but so damn effective it’s almost insulting.

Dixon creates a two-column chart. One the left is goal, motivation, and conflict. And the left column is External, or plotline, and the right column is Internal, or themeline.

The purpose of the character chart is to organize the goal(s) a character has, why they want to achieve the goal(s), and what is standing in their way. Seeing external and internal goals, motivations, and conflicts next to each other gives the writer the opportunity to see the relationship between the two.

I created a blank chart to illustrate.