Was she beautiful or not beautiful? and what was the secret of form or expression which gave the dynamic quality to her glance? Was the good or the evil genius dominant in those beams? Probably the evil; else why was the effect that of unrest rather than of undisturbed charm? Why was the wish to look again felt as coercion and not as a longing in which the whole being consents?

George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

People want things. How do we know that?

…such earthly duty do

Free from desire, and thou shalt well perform

Thy heavenly purpose. Spake Prajapati –

In the beginning, when all men were made…

Bhagavad Gita

Obviously, if the scripture saith that giving up wanting things is both hard and a good idea, then most of the time, people want things. What they want tells you a lot about them, and figuring out what they want is an important job for a writer.

In other words, writers desire to understand desire.

What is it men in women do require?

The lineaments of Gratified Desire.

What is it women do in men require?

The lineaments of Gratified Desire.

William Blake

Here is a short film clip by Harold Lloyd. He's looking into funhouse mirrors. They confuse him, yes. But how does his personal desire affect his actions? Once he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror, what does he want? Does he get it? How does he feel?

Actors are frequently told to ask, 'What's my motivation?' Once, a director friend told me while we were blocking a scene to cross the stage before delivering the next line. I asked, 'Why am I going there?' I'd been taught never to cross a stage without knowing why the character needed to move.

'Because you're all bunched up on the other side of the stage,' he growled. 'And because I told you to.' Oh, okay.

But seriously, when you're writing characters, it's not enough to say, 'Suzie should go to the mall, because I want to describe it, and because I'm tired of writing stuff she's doing in her backyard.' That's fine, but you need to figure out why Suzie's going to the mall. What does she want? To get a taco at the food court? To meet Biff, her bf? To see if there's a sale on? Because she's developed a crush on that guy with the clipboard who tries to inveigle passersby into focus groups? See what I mean? Suzie wants something, even if it's only, like you, the writer, to escape boredom.

What people want, how much they want it, what they are willing to do to get it, has a lot to do with the kinds of characters you'll write about. So, too, does their willingness to forgo what they want, to sacrifice their own desires for others. The strength of their desires – and their strengths in resisting desire – can make or break your characters. Be sure you know how to tell the reader all about it.

Showing is better, of course. Show what they want. Then show what they do about that wanting. Let them show us what kind of people they are. We might learn something about ourselves. We might also learn something about how we treat others.

Here's another clip about wanting and not wanting. There are worlds in those 30 seconds. To tell us this, Kim Hunter spent hours in Make-Up. She really must have wanted the part.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

20.08.18 Front Page

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