[00:13] Rachel: Hey, writers. Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.
[00:18] Emily: I'm Emily.
[00:19] Rachel: And I'm Rachel.
[00:20] Emily: And today we are going to talk about internal goals again, okay? Specifically, how you can use them to give characters dimension and humanity and just, like, complexity. So you want to define internal goal again for us before we jump in.
[00:38] Rachel: So the last time we talked about internal goals really heavily was in episode number seven, just called WTF's Agency. And an internal goal is the thing that your character really, truly, deeply wants underneath what they're externally pursuing in the story. So they have the external goal, then they have their internal goal. If you want more on external goals, et cetera, go see episode seven. Go listen to episode seven. But the internal goal, the thing that they truly want underneath their external goals, is it's like that inner desire that's driving them. It's often subconscious, sometimes buried, hidden. That means that they don't often know that this is what they really are trying to get. But it should be clear to your reader and to definitely you as an author, that this is what they're really trying to get through the pursuit of their external goal. So it's something that they want, regardless of how they change, they're not going to change away from wanting this internal goal. Our goal is to give them that internal goal, like to get them to that internal goal place. So usually this is what is going to connect them to your reader because it's a universal human want. And that's what we're talking about today, how this connects them to the reader.
[02:04] Emily: Whenever we talk about morally gray characters or like, terrible characters that we love, right. If we think about shows like Peaky Blinders or Game of Thrones, we're talking about the thing that connects us to that, to that humanity. Because everybody has human desires, right? I often like to look at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It's an imperfect tool to use, but it is a good, inspirational place, I think, to go for, like, what are basic human desires and needs that your character wants. You're going to add nuance to that as to why they want it, how they want it, what they believe about it. But it's that thing, that human thing that they want that everybody can identify with in some way, shape, or form. And so if a character is doing horrible things for safety, we get it. We understand it, even if we don't agree with it.
[03:07] Rachel: Yeah. So this internal idea, the reason I brought it to us today was exactly because of this question of if you have a character who wants something or that, you know, they're pursuing something that maybe might not immediately make sense to the reader, or the reader might not necessarily agree with them. Right off the bat, we have to show that internal goal so that the character becomes relatable understandable. They have that three dimensional essence that you often hear with characters. They need to be three dimensional. They need to be complex. This is where you give them that complexity because they're setting out to do something in the story, which is their external goal. But the reason why they're doing it is because they want that internal goal. And we give them these two things paired up together to show who they are, to show their dimension, to make them understandable. Go ahead.
[04:03] Emily: To kind of tie that, because I think that can be confusing, right, how external and internal goals tie together.
[04:09] Rachel: So just to kind of reiterate, right.
[04:12] Emily: Whenever we want something external, it's because we're after something internal, something human. Right? So we might be someone who wants to do really well. You might have a character who wants to do really well at a dance recital. But it's because that character is trying to impress their parents, maybe, and get love or get respect. Or impress a friend and get respect from that friend, right, or a mentor. There can be a lot of different reasons why we're doing something external. And the thing that makes us us who we are is that internal desire that's driving it. I like to use The Hunger Games example because every kid right? So if you haven't somehow come across The Hunger Games, what's wrong with you? No, just kidding. But really but the basic premise is, like, every kid in the arena, or kids get picked, they're put in an arena for a televised fight to the death.
[05:12] Rachel: Right?
[05:13] Emily: And so these kids, some of them are there on purpose. Some of them got chosen randomly, but all of them want to survive.
[05:21] Rachel: Right?
[05:22] Emily: I mean, maybe there's a kid in the arena who doesn't want to, but for the most part, every single kid is trying to survive. But what makes them individual is the reasons why they're trying to survive.
[05:32] Rachel: Right?
[05:32] Emily: So the thing that makes Katniss the main character of The Hunger Games, who Katniss is, is that she wants to survive so she can go home and make sure her family survives. She feels a responsibility to keeping her sister alive and well. And so that makes her her we can empathize with her even when she's killing other children, because we understand why she's doing it. And then there's kids who have volunteered to do it because they want the respect of their home districts, their hometowns. And so we don't agree with them. We understand why they're there. We understand that they've been bred for this fight to the death and that this is like the accumulation of their whole life's purpose. Right? And so we can maybe pity them, maybe empathize with them, but we understand why they're there and making the decisions that they're making. So that's what we're talking about when we talk about the relationship between that external goal and that internal desire.
[06:30] Rachel: Yeah. And I think it's really important to know this when you're developing your character, but to show it on the page very clearly. So I've been working with the reason I thought of this is because it came up in two different client calls with two different clients, literally back to back like this one day. And then the next day it came up and we were talking about this, where one of my clients is writing a story where the main character is it's a ya. It's a coming of age. It's discovering how you want to move through the world and what you believe about love and the feeling of brokenness. So one of her main characters believes he himself is very broken. And so because of that, he's naturally very angry. He's very hurt, he's very upset at the world. So he has a slow temper. He's quick to judge all those things. And as we were developing scenes for him, and as we were looking through some backstory scenes, it was easy for that character to come across as very unlikable, unrelatable. He's difficult to understand because he's so angry. And not a lot of people I think you can relate to anger, but not a lot of people immediately are like, he's so angry. I love that character. Right? That's a difficult thing to get across, developing a strong and deep connection. So we were talking a lot about, like, what do we do? How do we make him feel a little bit more understandable? And it was 100% his internal goal was not clear on the page. This character just truly wants to be loved. He is so hurt and angry because he believes that he's broken, but on the inside, he really just wants to be loved. And so when we just had his anger there, it was like, this guy's being ridiculous. But when we put the internal goal on the page of, like, he's been rejected his entire life, he has no home. He really just wants to find someone who loves him for who he is and to be accepted and to feel belonging somewhere. His anger wasn't so angry. You know what I mean? It took on a different dimension to make him a real person. A lot of us can feel that way. Like, we've got a chip on our shoulder because we've felt rejected or we've felt hurt. And his anger became reasonable, understandable, when we made his desire to be loved clear on the page. And I had a client the very next day who the character wasn't quite so angry, but she had definitely been hurt. And so it was hard to make her decisions clear on the page because we weren't showing her desire to be safe, her desire to feel like her bubble, nothing could happen inside her own little bubble with her family. But once we gave it that level, that depth of, well, this character really just wants to be safe. That's why she's so standoffish to other people. It was so much stronger of a scene you were in it that as you read it, you were like, oh, wow, I get it. I understand why that person is the way that they are. And it was really interesting because after we had talked about that, this second client turned in this scene to her writing group, and they came back and they were like, that's the best scene you've ever written. And she came back to coaching with me, and she was like, they said that was the best scene they've ever written, but they did not understand what I had changed. So it's such a small little thing that, as a reader, they might necessarily pick up on, but it makes such a huge difference to feeling what that.
[10:14] Emily: Character ability to connect to why the.
[10:17] Rachel: Character is doing what they're doing.
[10:19] Emily: Yeah. So I know that there are definitely folks who are probably listening to this thinking, okay, well, how do I if the internal goal is subconscious and hidden.
[10:30] Rachel: How do I show that on the page?
[10:34] Emily: What advice would you give?
[10:36] Rachel: Yeah. When we say, like, it's hidden and subconscious, they couldn't name it. So I don't think that this character that my first client had, he's not walking around thinking, I just want to be loved. But there's such an undercurrent in what he searches for. And I'm talking about the way he moves through the world and the way he processes what he's experiencing, where if you have him being angry, he can then process that by thinking, wouldn't it be so nice if I could just have a home where I don't have to worry about feeling so broken all the time? And we insert that through the way that they think. It's not like he's thinking, my greatest desire is to be loved, but it's thinking, and like, why are all these people out to get me? All I want is just to feel like a normal human being. It's the extra way that you talk about it. It's the way you're dancing around that concept of love in this example.
[11:49] Emily: It's how they would articulate it.
[11:52] Rachel: Yeah.
[11:52] Emily: And you can show that through projection. Right. And jealousy. Jealousy is an envy our emotions that show what we actually truly want. So a character like that could be very jealous of somebody who does have love and think they don't deserve it or whatever and have thoughts like that. So even if he doesn't realize that he's after love right. He's showing that he actually is by this projection. An exercise that I recently did with a client of mine who was having trouble with that nuance was I suggested that she interview her character on the page, just not in a scene, but just interview her about how she felt. It's a character who's basically.
[12:39] Rachel: She was.
[12:40] Emily: Trying to figure out how this character would articulate her views of her daughter and kind of how she felt about her life since her daughter left home. And we were talking about how a lot of her feelings about that are buried on purpose because she doesn't want to realize that she's lost her purpose in life because her daughter was her purpose. And now she feels aimless, but she wouldn't articulate it that way. And so I had her ask a series of seven or eight questions to this character and have that character respond. And it was fascinating because the way the character responded was so beating around the book.
[13:21] Rachel: Yeah.
[13:22] Emily: And she would even say, oh, well, this and this and this, but whatever would slip out. And then she'd be like, she changed a subject.
[13:31] Rachel: Right.
[13:32] Emily: Character would change a subject was fascinating. I was like, look at how much came out in what you've shown via how she answers these questions and the questions she resists and the ones that she's open about, and the way she pivots and redirects.
[13:45] Rachel: Right.
[13:45] Emily: And so there was so much that came through that as humans, we can recognize when she did that versus trying to rotely, put internal processing on the she was having trouble with that. She had to get into her character's voice and how her character would explain and describe the things that she was dealing with and the things that she was feeling and describe the things she didn't want to feel.
[14:09] Rachel: Right.
[14:09] Emily: And how she got around that and hid it and the way she kind of talked about it. So that can be kind of a cool exercise if you're struggling with how to show that kind of a thing.
[14:19] Rachel: Yeah, I completely agree. And I'm reminded, too, of the backstory exercises that we do with our clients where this internal goal has existed in a character's life for pretty much as long as they can usually remember it's. Something that has stemmed from usually a childhood experience where they're looking for that. They're searching for that internal goal for a very long time. Backstory scenes are about how they have formed their flawed beliefs, about what has happened in their life that has created this belief that they hold that now shapes their worldview, which leads them into the story and sets up their arc for change. Ultimately, we're trying to change them away from these flawed beliefs. But when you sketch out and when you write backstory scenes, you can really narrow into what that internal goal actually is, why they have it, and then tie that to the development of their flawed internal obstacle belief. So that on top of character interviews, because this character that I'm talking about in particular really struggled with what his internal goal was at the formulation of it. And it wasn't until we started writing backstory scenes where we were like, no, that's not really what it is. I think it's this instead. I think it is love because at first it was like respect. At some point, it was control, but it wasn't either of those things when we got into writing the scene, because what he really wanted as a child was just love because it had been taken from him. So we got to write those and got to see how it formulated to kind of straight up say it just in backstory, because backstories are they're not going in the actual document. And that was a fun exercise to really narrow in what is driving this character and what does he care about, and then how in the pursuit of that did his flawed beliefs start?
[16:19] Emily: Yeah, it's interesting. I had that same exact experience with a client recently where we wrote her backstory scenes for her character, thinking that what she wanted was to basically impress her parents and get their respect. But after we had written three or four backstory scenes, we realized when we looked back, what was really at the core of all of the decisions that she was making in those scenes was a desire for life, fulfillment that she felt she didn't deserve until she had her parents respect.
[17:00] Rachel: Right.
[17:00] Emily: So it's not that it was incorrect, but there was a deeper layer that was going on, and we had to write through all those backstory scenes to realize, oh, she's not really after approval. Not really. She's after a fulfillment. But she feels she has to have the approval before she deserves to go after fulfillment. It's a layered thing. Oftentimes I find that internal obstacles can be very layered. So if you're struggling with one, ask, okay, well, why do they want that? Why does she want her parents approval? Because does she want their love? Does she want to open doors for something else? Yeah, the why question is a useful one here.
[17:43] Rachel: As always. And I think that's why it so often comes back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, because those are like baseline human experience needs. Because the more you keep asking why, the more you narrow down to one of those things. Usually not always, but it's a good start of thinking, like, okay, if I'm going to keep asking about this character, he wanted control. Why did he want control? Because he felt like once he got control, he would finally be able to be loved. He would be loved. It was the same way. That's why we started with control and respect, was because he felt like if he really was respected, then finally he would be able to be loved. So it's interesting how the deeper that you dive, the more you ask why, you get at the heart of it. And then that's where a character truly starts to shine, in my opinion, and why it's so important to make that clear on the page. And this is something that, as a panther, I'm used to exploring as I write and getting to the heart of it, because I've had a very similar thing where my character set out with very firm, perfectionism ideas of you cannot fail. And it showed up as approval of her parents and approval of basically anyone, approval at her job, approval of her family, approval. Like, validation is really what it came down to. She wanted to be validated. And so the more that I wrote that and the more that I explored, like, how would she talk about it? How would she beat around the bush? How would she actually think about this? It took a nuanced shape. It took a different shape than what I had set out to write.
[19:28] Emily: And nuance takes time. That's the other thing that I'm struggling with right now. They start a new book, Nuance takes time. And I hate it, but it's true because you can't know the nuance of this is why backstory scenes are so important. You can't know the nuance of what somebody wants until you know what their life has been like, until you live through the nuance of their life. And then the nuance of why they feel the way they feel and why they want what they want comes out in just beautiful ways. And even the nuance of why and how they talk about what they want, if their desire is something they've been told they never deserve or shouldn't, that is shameful to want, then they're going to deny it. And denial can be very effective at showing what somebody actually wants, because the more they deny it, the more you're.
[20:17] Rachel: Like, you actually want that like any romance novel. Yeah, almost. Yeah.
[20:23] Emily: And that's what I have been talking to about this with this client whose character wants that fulfillment. She feels she doesn't deserve it. And so she doesn't really go around thinking, I want my parents approval and I want fulfillment. She just does things right. She just shows up for her family, and she's like, well, this is what people do, right? And so she kind of prevents herself from being too introspective, which is very powerful in showing what she wants, because where the reader can tune into where she's not letting herself kind of go. And that nuance took lots of backstory. It took lots of character table discussion. It's taken two rounds of Act One drafts. It's difficult, but be patient with yourself. And it's okay if it feels too cookie cutter or like, too cliche or too cardboard at first. Just keep digging into the details. I'm saying this to myself. Keep digging into the details, because the nuance will come out of that.
[21:27] Rachel: Yeah. I think that's so important to set expectations for what this process looks like, especially with me, too. It is a process of discovery. And I'm not even talking about discovery writing. I'm just talking about, like, the more you get into it, the deeper that you get into it. It really shines light on these areas. And that's important. It's important to put that work in it really brings another layer and level to this.
[21:56] Emily: It's almost like you're trying to connect your subconscious to your character subconscious, and you just can't force that.
[22:01] Rachel: Yeah. No, you can't. It takes time.
[22:03] Emily: And getting to know them right before you can see, you're trying to see through what they can't even see. And that it just takes time.
[22:11] Rachel: Yeah. If you're still thinking like, okay, I know I need an untorable goal. I know that kind of it's discovering a backstory. I know that you can find nuance the more that you write it. We like to start asking, I'm going to give you a linear way to do this, but just know that there's so many different ways to explore that and answer this question. But the the baseline question is, why do they want their external goal? What do they hope to get out of it? That's kind of like the good starting spot. But the more that you know your character, if you feel very forefront in your character versus in the plot idea that you have, think about what have they desired their whole life that they don't have, that they feel like is missing? What is their life lacking from one of these Mazzle hierarchy of needs to give you a jump off point? And because they feel like that's lacking, what are they going to do to search it out? What do they feel like they need to accomplish in order to get that thing that they lack? So you can do it either way. You can start with your external goal and think about, hey, they're doing this thing. They're trying to accomplish this thing. Why? Or what do they believe their life is lacking? And start with the internal goal and then think, okay, if they believe that, what are they going to do to try to get it?
[23:34] Emily: Yeah. And I would just add it can be very subconscious. It can be subconscious to the point where your character would reject the idea that that's a thing that they want.
[23:49] Rachel: Or that they need.
[23:50] Emily: This client would reject the idea that she wants fulfillment because she thinks that that's a shameful thing to desire. So allow it to be very subconscious. I get that a lot of pushback of people who would be like, well, that's not what they would say. It's like, it doesn't matter what they would say. It's what subconsciously. Deep, deep down inside, they really are lacking at a soul level. So just allow yourself to explore that and allow it to be contradictory. Right. Allow it to be a goal that they would totally reject because that's very powerful. So don't resist that.
[24:24] Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, then the last point that I have is this is something that I highly encourage you to study in books that you read, to ask these same questions of those characters, because I think that we absorb lots of knowledge from doing that. We've talked before, you and I Emily, and especially with our community tenacious writing how important it is to study published works. But this feels to me like one of those things that the more you absorb it, the easier it naturally becomes, just like it is for our characters. Sometimes with Conscious, it can feel that same way when you're writing it. So dive into those published works, dive into what is this character, what's their external goal, and what is that internal goal that they really think that they want or that they are unsure that they want or that they are hiding from themselves? A lot of that you can really determine in act three, because that's where they get it. Usually. They're searching to do this external goal, task or achievement. So at what point do they, number one, complete that goal, if they do it all? And number two, when do they get their internal goal? Or what does that look like? So what's that character in the final snapshot of the book thinking and feeling and experiencing? And how have they processed the events of this book? Do they feel whole again? Do they feel like they have that thing that they didn't in the first scene? I love that it can also be.
[25:51] Emily: A really fun exercise just to that. I feel like what you've described is really looking at how that's implemented in the story via a written story. But I think there's something to be said for just kind of passively being a little bit introspective about the characters you connect with. And that can be television characters as well. I do this all of the time, especially with morally gray characters. So, like, all through Peaky Blinders or succession or anything like that, I'm like, well, Roman in succession is doing this because he feels that he's never been loved.
[26:26] Rachel: Right.
[26:26] Emily: He's after Dad's affection in this way for these reasons.
[26:29] Rachel: Right.
[26:29] Emily: And this character is doing it for these reasons. And it can kind of be a fun way to do some character exploration. But what you're really asking is, why.
[26:39] Rachel: Do I empathize with this person?
[26:41] Emily: What is it about what I know about their past, what I know about their desires that allows me to empathize with them even if I hate them?
[26:49] Rachel: Right?
[26:51] Emily: It's disgusting. But I can empathize with him because I've seen his relationship with his father, right? And then Tommy Shelby and Piggy Blinders is like it does horrible, awful things. But you see his love for his family and you can kind of understand and his fears, see his nightmares about the war. And so you get to understand. And so just start to notice some of your favorite characters, especially if they're morally gray. Where is your humanity connecting with their humanity in a way that allows you to empathize with them and that'll help you start to practice this finding, this complexity in depth.
[27:26] Rachel: Yeah. Awesome. Okay, so to wrap up here, we have mentioned this a couple of times on the podcast. We are getting these questions, but if you have a writing question that you would like us to tackle on the podcast for a listener question episode, feel free to email us in your question at [email protected]. It can be any type of writing life craft, community challenge question, whatever that you're experiencing, throw it at us. We're going to cover it. And then in your email to [email protected], put podcast question in the subject line. We have been getting your email, so if you sent one in, thank you so much. We're collecting them, and at some point in the future, we will do a listener question episode. All right. If you want to build a successful, fulfilling, and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.
[28:22] Emily: Sign up now to get our free email course. The magic of character arcs. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.
[28:31] Rachel: Link in the show notes. We'll see you there. Bye.
