Novel Writing Workshop

Lesson 4
The Story Goal

You should now have a crisis that's appropriate to your target genre, "bad" enough to make the lead want to pursue a goal to solve it and inherently interesting.

Now we need to figure out what that goal is that your lead will pursue.





As you are thinking about your lead's goal keep these points in mind:
- The goal your lead sets to solve the crisis must be the most logical goal she would set under the circumstances.
- It must be believable that achievement of this goal would solve the crisis.
- This goal must cause your lead to try to gain either possession of something (for example, a person, a thing or information) or relief from something (for example, pain, suffering, fear, oppression, loneliness, domination or poverty).
- It must be clear that if your lead fails to achieve this goal, he will suffer terrible consequences. Life without the crisis solved would be unthinkable.
- Your lead must have a worthy motivation for pursuing this goal. It's not enough that your lead is pursuing this goal to solve the crisis; she must be acting out of a worthy motivation, any of the motivations that drive the heroes in our most commpelling stories. Some worthy motivations are duty, love, honour, justice, integrity, patriotism, redemption and self-respect.
- "Soft" motivations like kindness or generousity don't work as effectively as the "harder" ones just mentioned, because soft emotions do not usually bring abouot dramatic, exciting action. For a different reason, negative motivations, such as envy, lust, anger, greed, hatred, vengeance, covetousness and excessive pride, do not work either. We find stories whose leads are driven by such motivatioons, but because it's far more difficult to make a reader sympathize with an antihero lead of this kind, the beginning novelist should avoid such a story.
- The goal must pit your lead against great odds. It should seem virtually impossible for the lead to achieve this goal.





Your exercise for this lesson is to review the following checklists.

Crisis Checklist:
- Appropriate for target genre?
- Will upset lead's life enough so that he/she must try to solve it?
- Interesting to you?
- Interesting to readers, in your best judgement?
- Fresh and original, to the best of your knowledge?

In response to the crisis, my lead decides to ....

Goal Checklist:
- Most logical under the circumstances?
- Believable that achievement of this goal will solve the crisis?
- Will cause lead to try to gain possession or relief?
- If lead fails, he/she will suffer terrible consequences?
- Life without achieving this goal and solving the crisis wouold be unthinkable?
- Worthy, high- minded motivation?
- Pits lead against great odds?



When all the previous criteria have been satisfied, express your story idea in the following format on your Statement Sheet:

Story Idea:
In my novel, whose genre is ... , the lead, a (male/female), (adult/teen/life stage), (crisis) .... As a result, my lead decides to ....(goal)......



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