Book Blog #12: Designing Desire

Writing Tip: Identify your protagonist’s desire (internal & external). 

Do you ever watch a movie where you realize that you could list everything that happened on one hand? For an example, think of any rom-com ever. One of my favorites is the hilarious, aged-a-bit-poorly, Bridget Jones’ Diary. In it, Bridget shags her boss, quits her job, gets a better job, and ends up dating that stick in the mud played by Colin Firth. The stakes aren’t that high and the conflict is pretty blah. Yet, what makes this film SO GOOD is that Bridget’s driving desire is so clearly communicated. 

If you haven’t seen the movie, then go do that—but, I probably shouldn’t tell you to stop reading, so I’lll give you IMDB’s brief synopsis: “Bridget Jones is determined to improve herself while she looks for love in a year in which she keeps a personal diary.” Right there we have two desires: 1) “to improve herself” and 2) to “[look] for love.” These aren’t big desires, but they are clear and specific. As we watch the film, this gives us the framework to understand the stakes of her decisions, as we witness how they push her nearer to—or pull her farther from—her goal. 

I’ve begun thinking more about desire when I realized that my main character didn’t, well, she didn’t have one. I had this realization when taking a writing course with Gotham City Writers, and my teacher (shoutout Ben Obler) gave us a prompt that asked us to identify what our protagonists’ internal and external desires were. While I had a few ideas about what I wanted my protagonist’s arc to be, I struggled to put her desires into a phrase as concise as Bridget Jones’. By the end of that class, I still hadn’t figured it out. 

Yet, one of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned when writing a first draft is that you do not stop writing. If you find a problem, you hold it in your mind as you steamroll through. Often, continuing to write is the best way to work through that problem. That’s definitely the case for me. I had the desire problem and another plot hole (which I will not be getting into because spoilers, duh!), but a few days ago when I was glaring at my laptop’s screen, I realized how I could fill the plot hole and establish a strong desire for my character. 

Fixing that problem, I realized how hollow my story felt. Without a strong motivation, my protagonist moved passively through the world. Sure, I had a few cool scenes and some interesting ideas, but without her desire framing the reader’s perspective it all fell flat. I cannot even think of a comparison to Bridget Jones, as that story is so centered around Bridget’s goals to improve herself that the story falls apart without it. 

That’s the biggest tip I’ve taken from Gotham: start by designing a character’s desire, and let that desire dictate what happens. I’ve been weaving desire through plot movements I created independent of the protagonist, and starting from that place of desire would have made for a much easier journey.