Figuring Out Your Character's WHY

In writing, we talk a lot about the character’s motivation. A character is motivated by their past and what they want. Contemporary books hinge on character voice and point of view. Today’s reader wants an authentic, rich, unique, and active character to draw them through the storyline. Character drives plot—the choices characters make should shift the narrative.

You might have the quirkiest character with the most involved backstory—but if a reader doesn’t care about them, none of it matters. So, how do you make a reader fall in love (or utterly despise) a character?

The secret is in figuring out the character’s “why”. This, and many other topics, are the subject of my upcoming workshop on writing the speculative novel.

Writing the Speculative Novel
DATE: 4 Weeks Starting May 5th, 2025
TIME: Asynchronous, Self-Paced via Writing Workshops
​Price: $299
Learn how to write (and finish) a speculative novel from outlining to revising to submissions.
Learn tips from a freelance editor who has worked with successful speculative writers to edit their books to perfection. With over ten years of experience in editing both self-published and big fiver writers, I know what works and what doesn’t when it comes to longform writing. In this class, we’ll explore techniques for outlining, critiquing, and revising the speculative novel. Learn how to create your own outline that you can re-use for future projects. Learn how to take on revision from the big picture to nitty gritty proofreading. Craft your book so that it has the best possible chance to get published!

Here’s a scenario I encounter often in teaching writing: A writer submits their first chapter for critique, and everyone agrees that the story is interesting, but it’s missing something. “I loved the writing and how beautifully everything is described. But I was confused. I couldn’t figure out why the character [did x].”

Let’s step back a bit: Where does all this obsession with character goals come from? Well, it comes from the reality that most contemporary readers are used to active characters. Active characters have agency—they make choices, for good or for worse, and those changes impact the story. Not all genres need an active character. For example, children’s and young adult books often have less active characters. Things happen to these characters that are outside of their control. And that makes sense because they aren’t adults—they don’t have as much agency over what happens in their lives. Kids don’t make their own bedtimes or choose to go to school or not.

When we use the terms “active” and “passive” to describe characters, we are referring to the character’s agency. Most writing advice says to avoid having passive characters. Active characters tend to have more internal conflict. They sort through what they want to do about something and then enact their plans toward a goal. This gives them more “agency” and hooks the reader faster.

Passive characters don’t act, they react. Because they can get stuck in loops, they feel less interesting to readers.

This is another argument for picking a strange character. Unique points of view are more active in nature. That being said, passive characters can still be fascinating if written well.

Active Characters:

• Choose to create change

• Move the story forward

• Are believed to have more “agency”

• Have internal motivators

• Let the reader project “what they would do in the situation” onto the plot

• Can feel flat if they are constantly moving forward and never reflecting

Passive Characters:

• Are not great at decision making

• Have external events impacting them

• May have less agency or more internal agency

• Have external motivators that “push” them into action

• Seen often in children’s literature

• Get stuck in loops

• May feel dissatisfying to the reader

In the past, books could get away with a slower pace and more passive characters, as well as more distant narrators. A good example is The Great Gatsby. Largely seen as one of literature’s most well-written books, this book often leaves modern readers confused, mostly because the book is written from a distant observer’s point of view in the character of Nick. Nick may be the book’s protagonist, but his story isn’t central. NIck gets thrown into the story by chance. By comparison, consider a book like The Hunger Games. The protagonist literally volunteers to put her life in danger and in the center of the book’s action.

Modern books rely on very close points of view with a lot of what we call “interiority”. These are characters who think, feel, and speak on the page. The psychology of the character becomes the impetus for reading.

Think about why we read: It’s to learn about ourselves. The reader who encounters say, a hyperintelligent detective who’s trying to solve a mystery, will think: How would I solve this murder? A super-capable captain of a spaceship hurtling toward a black hole? How would I save the ship? and so on. As we read, we think through the problem the character is presented with. We might not make the same decision as the character, but that’s fine because the character isn’t meant to be universal. We can start to guess how the character will react, until we know and love even the most cantankerous character. (Looking at you, Sherlock.)

“If you read a book that's fiction and you get caught in the characters and the plot, and swept away, really, by the fiction of it—by the non-reality—you sometimes wind up changing your reality as well. Often, when the last page is turned, it will haunt you.” —Jodi Picoult

Story is emotion. Story isn’t the same thing as plot. Plot is events: Things that the character does or that happen to them. But a character who only reacts can be boring because there’s no internal choice required. There’s no rock and a hard place.

Most writing advice books emphasize the importance of providing your character with a clear goal to pursue, yet they often fail to explain why this is essential to storytelling. The key to a compelling narrative lies not just in the goal itself, but in the character's motivation—what fuels their desire to reach that goal. This motivation adds depth to the character and creates an emotional connection with the audience. By understanding why a character is striving for their goal, readers are more likely to engage with their journey, experiencing the struggles and triumphs alongside them. Ultimately, motivation transforms a simple objective into a meaningful endeavor, making the character's pursuit resonate on a deeper level.

“Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.” —Ray Bradbury

Every literary genre fundamentally hinges on understanding the “why” behind its narrative. In a memoir, for example, it becomes essential to go beyond merely recounting the sequence of events that the author experienced. Readers want to know the significance of these events from the narrator's perspective—what motivated their decisions, how these experiences shaped their identity, and why they resonate on a deeper emotional level. The “why” serves as the backbone of the personal story, encapsulating the internal struggles and conflicts that the author faced, adding layers of meaning and relatability to the story. This emotional connection not only engages the reader but also illuminates the universal themes present in personal storytelling.

The “why” also translates to the author. I often ask authors as I edit: Why did you make this choice? Why this character? Why right now? These questions can stump a writer but they’re meant to get the writer thinking about why they made the choices they did in their book. While you may not know why you chose a certain plot point, you can bet the reader will make up their own guess. Better yet, make a character with a changing why—one who starts out say, with a selfish motivation and slowly becomes interested in saving the world.

“If there is no possibility for change in a character, we have no interest in him.” —Flannery O’Connor

I love the larger conversation in the writing community now about the writing advice “show, don’t tell”. A lot of times, I think the writer’s struggle with the why comes from this well-meaning advice. It says that you should show us, through the character’s actions, what they feel. But a little bit of telling can be really helpful when it comes to getting across the reasoning behind character motivation.

Most reader confusion comes from the assumption the writer makes that the reader can put together context clues. But if those clues aren’t on the page, the reader will never figure it out! Putting your character’s why on the page helps guide the reader.

Sometimes, the most compelling thing you can do on the first page of a book is give the reader a desire to find out the why of a character. If you can set up one burning question about the character, you’ll hook a reader for the whole book.

Let’s look at an example. Below is the first page of Martha Wells’ super-popular, soon-to-be-streaming TV Series, The Murderbot Diaries. The book’s title tells us a lot about the main character: A murder bot. But in the first paragraph, Wells twists our expectations about the character:

I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don’t know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.

I was also still doing my job, on a new contract, and hoping Dr. Volescu and Dr. Bharadwaj finished their survey soon so we could get back to the habitat and I could watch episode 397 of Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.

I admit I was distracted. It was a boring contract so far and I was thinking about backburnering the status alert channel and trying to access music on the entertainment feed without HubSystem logging the extra activity. It was trickier to do it in the field than it was in the habitat.

Murderbot could have become a murder bot, but instead chooses to watch cozy streaming shows. This immediately makes us like Murderbot. Why doesn’t Murderbot want to kill? Well, all that killing would be a lot of work, and it would rather watch its favorite show. This makes the character deeply relatable. The why is why we like Murderbot. Plus, there’s no “showing” required. Murderbot tells us outright what their deal is, and yet, we want to keep reading.

Figuring Out Your Character’s WHY

Here’s a journaling prompt to get you thinking about your character’s why. Write a list of your character’s goals in your book. They might change, and there might be several. Next to each goal, write out why the character cares about that goal. Now, write a scene where the why is central. If you get stuck, simply tell the reader in the character’s voice why they want to achieve their goal.

For example: My character is a bot who has hacked their command module. Their goal is to find any way to keep watching their favorite streaming show. Why? Because although they are a robot, they are more human than the humans they encounter and don’t want to hurt anyone, thus shifting the most common robot trope.

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