Writing Stellar Scenes: Part 4—Character Goals
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Welcome to part four of my series on scene writing!
If you’re just joining in, here’s a quick recape of where we’ve been: I started with an introduction to the eight essential elements of a scene. You can read that here. Now, I’m working through the essential elements of a scene. So far, I’ve covered two: character and setting. Today is all about element #3—goals.
Later on in this series we’ll talk about the your goals—i.e. what you want a scene to accomplish at the story level, but today is all about your characters’ goals.
For a quick review, here are the eight elements of a scene:
1. Character – who will be there?
2. Setting – where are they?
3. Goal – what do the characters want to accomplish?
4. Event or Situation – what is happening?
5. Action – What will each character do or say?
6. Emotion (Reaction) – How will each character react to what is done/said? Why?
7. (Incomplete) Resolution – How will the event/situation end? What will make readers want to keep reading onward?
8. Purpose – How does this scene move the story forward, develop characters, and/or add to the conflict?
Essential Scene Element #3: Goals
Here’s the short version:
Each character that plays a significant role in a scene should have a goal within that scene.
That might sound complicated. But, stay calm, because coming up with character goals doesn’t have to be difficult.
Sometimes, writers think that every goal needs to be significant.
In reality, a character’s goal can be incredibly simple: get a glass of water from the kitchen, find their lost math textbook in a locker. Of course, goals can be far more important: interrogate the murderer and get them to reveal the location of the stolen hyperdrive, rescue the prince from the evil queen’s lair. It just depends on where you are in the story and what is happening around the character in that moment.
A character’s goal can also change over the course of a scene. For example, if a character innocently walks into the kitchen for a glass of water but catches their partner cheating on them with the next door neighbor, their simple goal—get a glass of water—is likely to be replaced by a far more intense one. Maybe they’ll want to figure out what is happening and why. Maybe they’ll want to drive the neighbor (and/or their partner) out of the house. Or, maybe, they’ll calmly walk to the sink, get that glass of water while secretly plotting their revenge. It’s still a new goal, even if the other characters can’t see it.
Scene goals can also exist apart from the main story conflict. A scene goal (and a character’s reaction to either achieving or failing to obtain it) can characterize or show us a new element of the world. Scene goals can also showcase character relationships or provide a moment of levity to change the pace or lighten the intensity of the story overall. Though these side goals shouldn’t distract too much from the overall plot, the characters need to be 100% focused on their story goal, 100% of the time. Alternatively, they might go into a scene with one goal (pee in the middle of the night) and then encounter a complication that changes their scene goal to one that is intimately tied to the story goal (when they go pee they stumble on an orc camp and realize the town they’ve just left is in imminent danger from the story’s overall villain).
Making Character Goals Clear
You might be thinking that it’s easy enough to come up with a character goal but difficult to make that goal clear to readers. For this part, it’s best to see the techniques in action. So here are two examples that do a great job of making character goals clear while also creating a compelling hook (at least in my humble opinion) that makes readers want to keep going with these characters.
First up, an excerpt from the opening scene of Written in Red by Anne Bishop:
Half blinded by the storm, she stumbled into the open area between two buildings. Hoping to hide from whoever was hunting for her as well as get some relief from the snow and wind, she followed an angled wall and ducked around the corner. Her socks and sneakers were soaked, and her feet were so cold she couldn’t feel them. She knew that wasn’t good, wasn’t safe, but she had taken the clothing available just as she had taken the opportunity to run.
No sound of footsteps that would confirm she was being followed, but that didn’t mean anything. Blocked by the wall, even the sounds of the slow-moving traffic were muted.
She had to find shelter. It was too cold to be out here tonight. As part of her training, she’d been shown pictures of people who had frozen to death, so she knew she couldn’t stay out here much longer. But the city shelters that provided a place for the homeless would be the first places the hunters would look for her.
[…]
A second sign was taped to the inside of the door. She stared at it for a long time, despite her numb feet and the freezing temperature.
WANTED:
HUMAN LIASON
APPLY AT THE HOWLING GOOD READS
(AROUND THE CORNER)
A job. A way to earn money for food and lodging. A place where she could hide for a while. A place where, even if she was found, the hunters couldn’t take her back because human law did not apply.
Howling Good Reads. It sounded like a name for an Others store.
She could die here. Most people who tangled with the Others died, one way or another. But based on what she had seen in the prophecy, what happened to her would be on her terms.
That much decided, she tromped back to the sidewalk and hurried to the corner. When she turned right on Crowfield Avenue, she saw two people walk out of a store. Lights and life. She headed toward both.
My analysis:
Did you catch the characters’ goals in that opening scene? There are three. First, the main character is running to escape whatever is hunting her (goal #31. Once she establishes that there are no footsteps behind her, she starts looking for shelter so that she can survive the storm (goal #2). It’s a relatively small change—she’s seeking survival in both cases, but in slightly different forms. Then, she sees the job posting and her goal shifts again. She’s not just looking for enough shelter to survive the night because now she sees an opportunity to gain stability and safety from those chasing her (even if it means courting danger of another kind). At the end of this excerpt, she initiates a new plan by heading toward the store where she try to get the job (goal #3).
In this opening scene, the goals are immediately clear. We know what the main character wants and needs, even though we don’t know her name. We also know the stakes. If she fails, she will die. That urgency makes readers want to follow her story to see if she survives to accomplish her goals.
But what about a scene where the stakes aren’t life or death?
For that, we turn to example #2. The opening scene of The Duke and I by Julia Quinn:
“Oooooooooohhhhhhhhhh!” Violet Bridgerton crumpled the single-page newspaper into a ball and hurled it across the elegant drawing room.
Her daughter Daphne wisely made no comment and pretended to be engrossed in her embroidery.
“Did you read what she said?” Violet demanded. “Did you?”
Daphne eyed the ball of paper, which now rested under a mahogany end table. “I didn’t have the opportunity before you, er, finished with it.”
“Read it, then,” Violet wailed, her arm slicing dramatically through the air. “Read how that woman has maligned us.”
Daphne calmly set down her embroidery and reached under the end table. She smoothed the sheet of paper out on her lap and read that paragraph about her family. Blinking, she looked up. “This isn’t so bad, Mother. In fact, it’s a veritable benediction compared to what she wrote about the Featheringtons last week.”
Here Daphne’s goal is incredibly simple: read the scandalous gossip rag that her mother crumpled and threw across the floor. It’s not life or death. It’s not earth-shattering. And yet, Violet’s dramatic reaction to whatever was written about their family makes readers want to know what that newsletter says. Violet also has goals in this scene. She wants to vent. She wants attention. She wants her daughter to commiserate with her over the negative attention they’ve gotten from Lady Whistledown. If Violet fails, the consequences won’t be earth-shattering. In fact, there probably won’t be any consequences. But it’s clear that this goal matters to her and that is enough to draw readers into the story and to make us want to know more about what is going on in this world. Would these goals be strong enough to sustain an entire story? Of course not. But even these simple goals can help initiate a scene and carry readers into the story.
Now, as you return to your writing this week, look to see if your characters have apparent goals in each scene. If not, think about how you can make the implied goals more clear or establish a goal from the beginning.
Thanks for joining me in another installment of this scene writing series! I hope you’ll come back next week for our discussion of scene element #4—the event or situation.
Until then, happy writing!
FYI: This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something we may earn a commission. For more information click here and thanks, as always, for your support!
