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(listening) ...okay. (listening) ...Hey. Ohhohoho no.
Hello Animals! This week, we're talking about our fifth Cubby:
Desire. In any story, your main character should have
a desire that they're pursing. Commonly, your main character's desire is
a specific, tangible goal like: Rescue a kidnapped loved one, find the buried
treasure, acquire the golden fleece. Or, your character could have a more intangible
desire like: redemption, love, or respect.
These types of desires are more abstract and commonly inform the theme of your story.
Your character's desire could also be a little bit of both:
tangible and intangible. Perhaps he wants redemption, and that's concretized
in a specific circumstance. Say - Can he save this sick little boy and
his mother from the marauding bandits? In either case, it's a specific desire that
your main character is actively striving for. A specific goal that they are trying to achieve.
This desire propels your main character through the story.
It gives them something to move towards and fight for.
Your character's desire also gives your audience something to invest in. It gives them something
to root for. When it comes to desires, going primal, is
the best idea. Primal desires are inherently understood by
every human being out there, and they elicit a strong emotional response.
Far and away, they are your best choice when crafting your character's desire.
Primal desires! Survival, freedom, love, sex, shelter, respect,
food, water, meaning, forgiveness, justice, redemption, power, acceptance, revenge.
Clearly this is not an exhaustive list. We call these "primal desires" because they're
basic drives, basic needs and wants. And being so basic to the human experience,
they inspire an immediate, primal, emotional response
in not only your character, but your audience as well.
A clearly defined desire gives your audience a sense of the scope of your story.
Once they know your character's desire, they can immediately imagine the end game.
They'll be able to picture a hypothetical goal-line where they see the story resolving
itself and the aimed desire being achieved, or lost. They'll know when the story is over
when they've seen the desire acquired or not. If the audience feels powerfully for the character's
desire, if they want it too, then they'll follow along intently as the
character strives to achieve it, right to the end.
With all this talk about emotions, you can see how these ideas would directly
tie to the "emotion" cubby, which we'll be discussing in another few videos.
But for now, let's get a little more specific and talk about how to craft your Desire Line.
What's the specific structure of it? Well, a solid desire line will have an overall
desire, broken down into smaller sub-desires. "If, Then" statements are an effective short-hand
for putting all this together. For example:
Your main character wants to break out of jail. That's his overall desire.
Well, IF John wants to break out of prison THEN he's gotta convince his cellmate to join
in on the plan. So the sub-desire would be
"convince cellmate to join escape plan" Once this sub-desire is achieved, the cellmate
is on board, they move on to the next sub-desire. IF they want to break out of prison THEN they
gotta steal the guard's keys. And so on.
Each smaller sub-desire is a step towards the ultimate larger desire.
To create conflict in your story, you'll take these sub-desires and drop in roadblocks along
the way. Specific setbacks that impede your character's plans.
Lets talk about that next week, when we discuss Conflict.
It's gonna be like a punch to the face!