How to Create Strong Character Goals that Keep your Audience Engaged

Strong Character Goals Create a Strong Plot

Some of you may not think of plot in terms of character goals, but I urge you to start. This is what we call character-driven stories, and they are often the strongest. What is a character-driven story, you ask? 

This is when the character has a goal that they are actively working towards which creates the plot, instead of having a plot where things just happen to the character and they react to it.

In this post, we are going to talk about character-driven stories, why they're important, and how to create one using strong character goals.

Why are Strong Goals in Character-Driven Stories Important?

Why do we watch movies and read books? Obviously, it's entertaining. But, usually, possibly unconsciously, we are going there to connect, to feel something. The core of character-driven stories is, of course, the character. If done correctly, the audience will care about the character and in turn will care about what they want. Which is where our character goal comes in.

When the character has a goal that they really care about that they are working hard to achieve, that builds tension. Without any other factors thrown into the mix, if we care about the character, we are going to hope they can succeed and fear that they will fail (which is the core of tension). And that hope and fear is going to hold our attention until the end of the book or movie so that we can see how it ends. Then we add in stakes and obstacles and character arcs, and it just makes everything stronger.

What Defines a Strong Character Goal?

In short, something measurable, actionable, and that has a time limit. Obviously, we have a little bit of room to play around with how strict we are on these parameters, especially when writing a novel. When writing a screenplay, these items are crucial in helping the audience understand the story and the tension because it is such a visual medium. In a novel, it doesn't always have to be as visual because we can make lots of internal character desires much clearer through prose, but we still need to understand what they're after.

Why a Measurable Goal?

Let's say that our main character wants "love". A goal, but an ambiguous one. Not really measurable, no real time limit. So, why doesn't this work? Well, we watch this character work towards their goal, encounter obstacles, and finally they get a wonderful, loving kiss from their crush. Yay! Story over, right? Wrong. Because our main character actually wanted to be dating someone. But without defining that measurable goal from the beginning, our expectations as an audience led us astray to what the story was actually about and what the character was truly aiming for. Don't worry, below we will talk about how you can turn your 'non-measurable' goal into a measurable one.

Having a measurable goal keeps things concise. Your audience does not want to watch your character aimlessly wandering about trying to make themselves happy. We want to know what specifically they think will make them happy (and often times they are wrong, then introducing their 'need' which is what will actually make them happy)

Along with creating proper expectations for your audience, a measurable goal really helps you as a writer. When you know exactly what your character is aiming for, you can create scenes surrounding that effort. You can decide exactly how they're going to try to get it and exactly what you plan to put in their way.

A great way to determine if the goal is measurable or not is to ask yourself what success and failure will look like to them and see if the goal is clear. Will the audience know when the character has reached that goal?

Why an Actionable Goal?

An actionable goal just means that the character needs to be able to take action to try to achieve their goal. If their goal is to avoid going to work then to succeed they just have to not take any action. Now we're just watching someone do nothing, which obviously doesn't make for a great story. If the character can't take action towards achieving their goal, then there is no plot.

The good thing about this is that there is a solution! You just have to turn that inaction into action. So, if the main character's goal is to avoid going to work, then maybe their action is to run away. And we may need to add some other parameters in there. Maybe they have a boss or manager trying to track them down. Maybe we have a time limit and they have to avoid work for a specific amount of time. Maybe they're really poor and avoiding work is making their life really hard. So, remembering the motivations, obstacles, and stakes are really going to help.

Why a Time Limit?

Why would a time limit be so important for your character's goal? Isn't being measurable enough? The time limit ties into stakes and urgency. If your character really wants to be dating someone, without a time limit there's really no rush, right? Sure, they kind want it ASAP, but they don't need is right now for any particular reason. This goal could carry on for years of their life for all we know. If they fail within the parameters of this story, they haven't truly failed, right? They could keep trying forever.

That is why time limit is important. That is why we see so many romances that have other elements to it, like trying to find a date for a dance. So, even though they can work on 'finding love' the rest of their life, they can succeed or fail in 'finding love' for the special dance. We also see a lot of romances that are a subplot or have to do with the character arc, meaning the main character has a separate goal they are working towards which is driving the plot forward, while the romance is on the side.

How to Develop a Strong Goal

Get to Know Your Character

Everything revolves around character, so you need to get to know them. What kind of person are they? What do they care about? What hope and fears do they have? What do they want out of their life? Getting to know your character first can really jump start the plotting process and more easily lead you towards developing a strong goal.

Build off of Who They Are

This is probably the simplest way to do this, as long as you are good at creating your character. Basically, as you start to answer questions about them, develop their character history, their relationships, and what their life is like, a goal will come about naturally.

Build off of the Need

Remember that their need is what's going to influence their character arc. A character's need might be to have more self confidence or forgive a loved one, and they will go on a journey throughout the story to figure out what they need and how to get it. This is how they learn and grow as a character, but it is not typically what they want (at least not initially).

So, one way to develop the character goal (or what they want) is to look at what they need and the journey of growth that you want them to go through and see what goals and obstacles they could have which would force them to grow in the way that they need. The character's want will often be the opposite of what they need (or, at least, going about what they need in the wrong way), so it can help to think of a goal that is in conflict with what they need.

A great example is Stardust. Tristan starts out as a pushover, in love with someone who doesn't respect him, and desperate to earn the affection of those that shouldn't matter to him. The journey that he goes on forces him into hard situations where he learns what he's really made of, grows in confidence, learns new skills, and realizes what's really important in life.

Build off of the Inciting Incident

The inciting incident is the moment that disrupts the main character's status quo which ends up leading them to their main goal. In Stardust, this is when the star falls from the sky, leading not only Tristan but the witches and princes to their goals.

Sometimes it can just help to think of a way that you want to disrupt your characters life. Are they happy or dissatisfied with where they are in their life right now? Is the inciting incident something that happens to them or something that they decide to do?

Turn a Non-Measurable Goal Measurable

If you already know your character or the general plot for your story, then more often than not you already have a goal in mind, it just might not be very measurable yet. And that's okay! That just means that you know your character internally and we just have to make that goal a little more external. Let's give some examples.

Non-Measurable Goals:

• Allison wants to fit in
• James wants love
• Kara wants to be successful

These are non-measurable goals because if we ask "When will they succeed/fail?" we can't clearly answer. You need to ask, when will the character feel like they have succeeded in this goal?

Measurable Goals:

• Allison wants to fit in, and once she gets invited to the popular kid's birthday party she will have succeeded
• James wants a girlfriend, and then he will feel like he has gotten love
• Kara will feel like she is successful once she gets her dream job

Want to make it simpler? Maybe more subtle?

• Allison will feel like she fits in once someone swings with her
• Once James holds this girl's hand, he will feel like he's gotten love
• Kara will feel like she's successful when her boss pats her on the back

Build off What you Got

If you're trying to come up with an idea because you don't have one yet, this obviously won't help you much. If you already have some ideas, then see if you can build off of them. Maybe you just have one scene in mind where you image the love interests meeting for the first time. Start asking questions. How do they both end up in this place? What are they trying to do? At what point in the story does this happen? How does them meeting affect everything else? (EX: Do they help each other, meet now and nothing much happens until later? Do they hate each other? Are they forced to work together?)

You can start giving your character drive towards something which involves this scene that you've already created.

If you just have a cool world or magic in mind, what do you want to happen? How can the character affect this? What goals could you give your character that involve the magic in cool ways? What situations do you want to see? How can you build on those situations to create a goal?

Maybe you have a general problem or circumstance that you really like the idea of. What person would be key to making this happen or solving this problem? What type of character would this problem severely effect? How would different characters react within the circumstances you've created and how might that develop into a plot?

Back Up Your Character's Goal

Now that you have a goal in mind, something that's measurable that they can work towards, you have to make sure that it means a lot to the character. Otherwise, why are they working towards it? Stakes, of course, play into this, but I'm more talking about the character's back story and situation.

Rapunzel (from Tangled) wants to see the floating lights. Simple. Measurable. And has a time limit (they appear on her birthday). This is a strong goal! But, to truly make it strong, we have to understand what it means to her.

How is that goal supported? Rapunzel is lonely and curious. The lights mysteriously show up on her birthday. Rapunzel never gets to leave her tower. Mother Gothel insults her by telling her she’s not capable of doing something Rapunzel knows is capable of. Taking down Flynn Ryder gives her confidence and means. This support, this set up, these emotions all help support the goal. They make the goal believable, achievable, and meaningful.

A lot of this 'support' will come from good planning and character creation. You can use their past, their emotions, their morality, etc to back up their goal. (EX: If your character’s morality is questionable, we’re not going to believe that they’re simply doing something because it’s ‘the right thing to do.’)

Using Set-up to Strengthen the Goal

Hopping into the goal from page one can often lead readers to be disengaged, because they haven’t yet been given a reason to care about the character or what they want.

An excellent example of when this did work, is in Throne of Glass where we quickly find out the main character has been in a slave camp and has a chance to be free. That is a very strong goal (that anyone could understand right away) and an intense way to start out a story, hooking us and helping us care immediately even though we don't know the character yet. And, of course, the goal is backed up and strengthened more as the novel goes on.

On the other hand, The Fellowship of the Ring builds up a little, showing the relationship between Frodo and Bilbo as well as Frodo and Gandolf and gives some history of the ring and its importance. Only after that (along with some reinforcement of what the ring can do and who is after it) do we get the goal of destroying it in Mount Doom.

Using Emotion to Strengthen the Goal

Playing on people’s emotion is a fantastic way to get them hooked. Humans are emotional creatures. Give us a snarky woman defending a helpless animal and we can’t help but like her. Give us a homeless man beaten down from the world, we feel for him. Give us a grieving mother who’s just lost their only child, we’re gonna sympathize.

We care because even if we haven’t been in that situation, we’ve felt those feelings. We can sympathize because we’ve been there in one way or another. Or, at least, we fear to be.

In UP, a simple montage shows us the relationship between Carl and Ellie and we watch her pass away, leaving Carl a very sad and lonely man. This montage has brought hundreds of people to tears. They now pity Carl and they care for him. And when he decides to set out on the trip he never got to go on with Ellie, they all root for him. Despite him being a grumpy old man, people care for him because they know how much he is hurting.

Conclusion

Having a strong character goal is imperative to keeping your audience engaged throughout the entirety of your story. It not only helps them connect with the character, but gives the story a through-line that ties everything together (including the character arc!).

It's great to help your audience, but it's even greater to help yourself. Giving your character a strong, measurable, and actionable goal is also going to make your life so much easier as you are planning and writing out your story.

Happy writing everyone!