David Corbett - The Compass of Character: Creating Complex Motivation for Compelling Characters in Fiction, Film, and TV

The writer who claims to have done it all himself is lying above and beyond the call of duty. A great many people provided invaluable assistance at various stages of this books conception, writing, and publication. Kimberley Cameron and her team deserve credit for getting the manuscript into the hands of the folks at Writers Digest. There, Amy Jones, Kim Catanzarite, and an untold army of others helped hammer this book into final shape, doing so under unusual and challenging circumstances. Thanks to all the folks at Penguin Random House who helped ensure the book made it to press. Everyone at Writers Digest, past and presentspecifically Jessica Strawser, Ericka McIntyre, Taylor Sferra, Tyler Moss, Cassie Lipp, Tiffany Luckeyprovided me a means, both through the magazine and writing conferences, to develop the ideas that ultimately evolved into this book. So too the many teaching and blogging outlets that have granted me a platformspecifically, Therese Walsh and everyone at Writer Unboxed; Gabriela Pereira at DIYMFA; Rob Hart and Rene Asher Pickup at LitReactor; Elaine Petrocelli and all the incredible folks at Book Passage; Susan Page and Paulette Shanklin at the San Miguel de Allende Writers Conference; D.P. Lyle, Kimberley Howe, Taylor Antrim, Christopher Graham and everyone associated with the International Thriller Writers various writing programs; and Steven James, who graciously invited me to join him and Susan May Warren for his Character Conference in Atlanta. I also need to credit three exceptional fellow teachers and writers who have assisted and inspired me at various times: Donald Maass, Robert Dugoni, and James Scott Bell, all of whom abide by the credo: Keep learning. David Ivester no doubt will prove every bit as creative, dogged, and invaluable with this book as he did with my last, and deserves a word of anticipatory thanks for that effort. A word of thanks is long overdue for Arnold Ross, Archie Addison, Ranko Bojanic, Bogdan Baishanski, and all of my professors working with the Ohio State advanced undergraduate mathematics program when I was lucky enough to benefit from their guidance; they taught me what it means to be honest, demanding, and responsible to ones students, and continue to inspire me to this day. Finally, no account of indebtedness would be complete without inclusion of my wife, Mette, without whom yearning would lack all meaning.

About the Author

David Corbett is the award-winning author of the writing guides The Art of Character (A writers bibleElizabeth Brundage) and The Compass of Character. He has published six novels, including 2018s The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday, nominated for the Lefty Award for Best Historical Novel. His short fiction has been selected twice for Best American Mystery Stories, and his nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, Narrative, Bright Ideas, and Writers Digest, where he is a contributing editor. He has taught at the UCLA Writers Program, LitReactor, Book Passage, and at writing conferences across North America and Mexico, and is a monthly contributor to Writer Unboxed, an award-winning blog dedicated to the craft and business of fiction. www.davidcorbett.com

Contents

The Fundamental Methodology of Motivation

• Lack

• Yearning

• Resistance

• Desire

Introduction

More often than not, people dont know why they do things.

William Trevor, The Room

THE METHODOLOGY OF THIS BOOKMOTIVATION AS THE COMPASS OF CHARACTER

One hears it trumpeted at every writers conference, in every seminar and workshop, in every creative writing class: The fundamental question for every characterin every scene of every storyreduces to this: What does she want?

And yet, like all simple and straightforward truths, no sooner is this one stated than objections, rebuttals, and counterexamples emerge. How long does the reader have to wait before gaining so much as a glimpse of what Holden Caulfield actually wants in The Catcher in the Rye? And isnt it possible that the real motives for all of the characters in Harold Pinters The Homecoming lie beneath so many strata of denial and deceit that they arguably dont exist?

Add to this the quote from William Trevor above, which suggests that people are often blind to why they act as they do, implying not only their intentions but their ends remain obscure as well. Worse still, all too often those seemingly most confident of their true desires prove to be wildly mistaken.

Oversimplifying the answer to that questionwhat does the character wantby limiting it to a single goal or objective typically generates facile, formulaic, unsatisfying results.

In