100 Things You Should Know About Writing (Part 1)

6) How to Use Story Goals

I've mentioned a few times that from a plot standpoint, everything depends on goals, conflict, and stakes. 

Now of the three, the goal is the lynchpin. Without the goal, there is no reason for conflict to exist. And without the goal, there are no stakes, because there's no chance of failure if there's nothing to fail at. 

Not having a chance of failure might seem nice, but in a book, it's just boring. Remember that example of mine of a book where nothing happens page after page? Well... lacking a goal causes nothing to happen. 

Well... unless you as the writer have all sorts of things happen to the character. But even then, if those things happen and they don't cause the main character set the goal... everything happens for nothing. Because not setting the goal means the character simply accepts what's happening to him. 

Going to lose everything he/she owns? Okay. 

Going to die? Sure. Why not? 

Going to watch all his/her loved ones come to some terrible end? Hey. At least it will be entertaining. 

Although, not so much for the reader. 

Fortunately, most of the people I've critiqued so far seem to grasp this naturally. At least to some extent. But there are some times when it feels like a main character is just going with the flow. 

And I'm sorry, but this is one of those cases of: if the main character doesn't care, why should I? 

When readers stop caring, it's over for your story. Only a few crazy people will slog through a book to its end if something puts them off. Most readers won't bother if they didn't pay to read it. And there are few things as off-putting as a character that literally cares about nothing. 

And yes, there are many characters that say they care about no one and nothing, but it's your job as a writer to make your characters care about the goal. There will always be things that make people care about getting something done, even if it's just because they wanted some peace and quiet and the villains next door keep making a noise. 

If the character wants to achieve something, they care enough to make the reader care about the outcome. But if the character doesn't even bother to set the goal, there's simply no point for the reader to slog through the book. 

Right, so now you know why goals are important. 

How do you bring the goal into play in your story? 

There are three ways that I can think of.

1) By having the goal exist for the main character since before the story started.

This, for example, works when you're starting a story in medias res (in the middle of the action.) In such a scenario, you'd have your main character doing something from the start because he/she has a goal to achieve.

Note what I'm saying here: The opening action happens for a reason. And that reason is some sort of goal.

The James Bond movies often makes use of this method. And really, so do many second books in series. In the cases of novels and movies, however, inciting incidents still happen later which will either adapt this goal or strenthen it. Or, in some cases, change it completely. And here, the inciting incident still has the job of truly kicking off the story.  

Short stories give a bit of leeway on this. You can have the goal, and make the achieving of the goal the story without necessarily having an inciting incident as one would have in a novel.