Tag Archives: writing

You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You just might find
You get what you need

So goes the chorus from The Rolling Stones song, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

Those are perfect lyrics in which to briefly discuss the three elements that can help a writer build a character.

When creating a main character, ask yourself three questions:
1) What does your main character (protagonist) want?
2) What does your character need?
3) How can these two things be brought into conflict?

Despite what advertising might try to convince about having hunger pangs that only a certain hamburger can cure, there is a difference. Hunger is a need. The body needs food to live. The hamburger (Or whatever other food you wish to insert) is a want. Hunger can be alleviated by a wide range of foods, not just the one being advertised at the moment you feel hunger.

What a character needs is often more important than what she wants.

You can also think of this way: want is often an external thing; need an internal thing. The hamburger is an external manifestation of something that is an internal need: hunger. They come into conflict when you find out you don’t have enough money for that hamburger, or if having that hamburger will cause you to break out in hives, due to an allergic reaction you may have recently developed to ground beef.

The same is also often true of your story’s main character. There is something he wants. There is something he needs. The want and the need to come into conflict.

Take for example, Huckleberry Finn in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

What is it wants: to escape his alcoholic father who has kidnapped him and locked him in an old cabin in the woods, because the father wants the money that Huck is entitled to. He escapes from his dad and hides out on an island as part of his plan to keep from being kidnapped again. What he needs, though he is not willing to even admit it to himself, is an adult who will accept him for how he is (and won’t try to civilize him), but still be willing to take care of him, even guide if not raise him, and love him. Huck finds that in the runaway slave Jim, and at the point of the novel where Huck should turn Jim in as runaway slave, Huck decides not to do what society wants him to do, he sides with Jim because Jim is somebody whom Huck needs, and who also needs Huck. Much of the rest of the novel from that point on is about handling the consequences of that decision and the temptations to still turn Jim in.

There are many other examples in fiction and in film, on the stage and even sometimes in long story poems.

You can have your protagonist side with what he wants over what he needs. This often leads to more trouble or even tragedy. You can have you protagonist win by losing. He loses what he wants, but wins what he needs and is the better for it. He can find a way to make the two work together, with the want being a true outward manifestation of the inward need.

So, decide what it is your character wants (that job promotion, the girl next door, the pot of gold) and what he needs (validation of his self-worth, love, money to buy the thing he always wanted), and then bring those two into conflict.

[Editor’s update/note: click on “building a better story” in the Category listings to find several other blog pieces of information I have put together from classes, books, and other sources (including my own experiences).]