Welcome to Gaia! ::

Hiya! My name is Jesca Dragon. Call me Jesca, Ms. Dragon, Professor, or Hey, you! (I'm used to the last one), and I'm crew for the Writing Help and Tutoring forum - as well as a prolific writer!

My career spans over twenty short stories and four finished novels; fantasy, science fiction, essays, and literature; all added together to five hundred and fifty thousand words!

I've been given one job here - to help you with anything you need.

My name's Jesca. What would you like to know?

Motivation is a question about character.

Some advice would tell you that you'll need to know everything about a given character to know what they'll do in a given situation. I'm a fan of that idea; my prewriting goes at least three pages into a character's life and mind. But even strongly written protagonists can have weak motivation ~

A fix I've found is strengthening the character of the antagonist. Make them a hero (or antihero) in their own story, flesh them out to equal or better depth than the lead, then suddenly you'll be seeing that the lead might identify with the antagonist and try to save them; or sense a weakness and try to use them (and fail); or the fear would grow because even if they didn't have a whole army behind them, they'd still win, because they're the antithesis of the lead, a natural predator.

redface I haven't gotten around to making very much public yet... redface
The next step is always the hardest and with me it's either "Write a query" or "How 'bout writing that new idea? It's novel length? YAY! whee "