The coincidence of Charli Mills’s latest post on the loss of a secure base with the buzz about the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth later this month (more on both later in this post) reminded me of this piece on fear as a motivator that has languished in my drafts folder for well over a year.
I’m a great fan of Emma Darwin’s posts on writing because, while they’re stuffed with useful advice, she never pretends there’s a simple formula (or two or three or two hundred and three) to make our novels novel and our sentences sing. That’s not the case in some other corners of the creative writing industry. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m particularly hacked off by an implicit assumption that the classic quest underlies each and every story structure: we just have to decide what our hero wants and thwart him in his journey to find it. While I can see how that works for some fiction, lots of the novels I read and love don’t go down that route. On top of that, human motivation is a complex construct: some people genuinely don’t know what they want and some are far too passive to follow their dreams. Some are constrained by circumstances or demons from the past and some characters sabotage their own desires.
I’m a great fan of Emma Darwin’s posts on writing because, while they’re stuffed with useful advice, she never pretends there’s a simple formula (or two or three or two hundred and three) to make our novels novel and our sentences sing. That’s not the case in some other corners of the creative writing industry. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m particularly hacked off by an implicit assumption that the classic quest underlies each and every story structure: we just have to decide what our hero wants and thwart him in his journey to find it. While I can see how that works for some fiction, lots of the novels I read and love don’t go down that route. On top of that, human motivation is a complex construct: some people genuinely don’t know what they want and some are far too passive to follow their dreams. Some are constrained by circumstances or demons from the past and some characters sabotage their own desires.
Rather foolishly, I tried raising my concerns with writing gurus. I thought I’d found my answer in a post on the parallels between character motivation and mathematics but the response to my comment suggested I was still missing the point. Others suggested I reframe an absence of motivation as motivation to avoid. So, for example, with the central dilemma of my debut novel, Sugar and Snails:
Diana is terrified of anyone discovering her past
becomes
Diana is driven to obscure her past
Voila! But I’m still not satisfied. My character’s motivation to avoid seems qualitatively different to another character’s motivation to possess or share or celebrate.
Diana is terrified of anyone discovering her past
becomes
Diana is driven to obscure her past
Voila! But I’m still not satisfied. My character’s motivation to avoid seems qualitatively different to another character’s motivation to possess or share or celebrate.
To take a simpler example, suppose I’m out in Jane Eyre country, wanting to walk from Carr Rocks to Brookfield Manor down in the valley. I might be frustrated by the fact that there’s no direct path but, while I’m taking the three-mile detour, I’ve always got my final destination in mind. But what if I’m walking away from a place? What if the mad woman has escaped from the attic at Thornfield and is running after me with a blazing torch? I’m not going to be so bothered about where I get to, so long as she doesn’t follow. In my panic, I might well run full circle and land back without realising it as the exact place I started.
(If you’d like to know more about the area in which Charlotte Brontë was thought to have set Jane Eyre, North Lees Hall is open to the public later this month, and I’m leading a guided walk at the beginning of July.)
Many of my readers also visit Charli Mills over at Carrot Ranch Communications. If you’ve followed her excellent posts for a while, you’ll probably be aware of how keen she is on the quest or hero’s journey. So it might come as a surprise that I discovered (what I’m hoping might be) the solution to my motivation dilemma in one of her posts. When she challenged us to poke a pencil at fear in a 99-word flash, it occurred to me that fear (even when it’s paralysing) can be as strong a spur to action as desire.
The experience of fear is universal and our characters might be driven by fear at one moment and desire at another. But there might also be enduring personality traits that make us more prone to one type of motivator than the other. I’m particularly interested in characters who are driven by this fundamental fear than those who are primarily driven by want.
From my reading of attachment theory (worth revisiting this post on attachment and self-compassion for the illuminating video), it seems that those who grow up with a secure foundation would be more likely to be motivated by desire, while those with insecure attachment patterns would be more motivated by fear. If you can’t trust that the world is generally safe and you can get help when you need it, you’re going to be more heavily invested in minimising threats than in seeking out rewards.
That’s certainly how I perceive Diana in Sugar and Snails, as well as Steve, the antihero of my next novel, Underneath. I think the same applies to Tess Lohan, the main character in Mary Costello’s deeply moving novel, Academy Street (p158-9):
She had been too afraid. She had always been waiting for something to take, for the veils of abstraction to lift and reveal the life that was meant for her.
(If you’d like to know more about the area in which Charlotte Brontë was thought to have set Jane Eyre, North Lees Hall is open to the public later this month, and I’m leading a guided walk at the beginning of July.)
Many of my readers also visit Charli Mills over at Carrot Ranch Communications. If you’ve followed her excellent posts for a while, you’ll probably be aware of how keen she is on the quest or hero’s journey. So it might come as a surprise that I discovered (what I’m hoping might be) the solution to my motivation dilemma in one of her posts. When she challenged us to poke a pencil at fear in a 99-word flash, it occurred to me that fear (even when it’s paralysing) can be as strong a spur to action as desire.
The experience of fear is universal and our characters might be driven by fear at one moment and desire at another. But there might also be enduring personality traits that make us more prone to one type of motivator than the other. I’m particularly interested in characters who are driven by this fundamental fear than those who are primarily driven by want.
From my reading of attachment theory (worth revisiting this post on attachment and self-compassion for the illuminating video), it seems that those who grow up with a secure foundation would be more likely to be motivated by desire, while those with insecure attachment patterns would be more motivated by fear. If you can’t trust that the world is generally safe and you can get help when you need it, you’re going to be more heavily invested in minimising threats than in seeking out rewards.
That’s certainly how I perceive Diana in Sugar and Snails, as well as Steve, the antihero of my next novel, Underneath. I think the same applies to Tess Lohan, the main character in Mary Costello’s deeply moving novel, Academy Street (p158-9):
She had been too afraid. She had always been waiting for something to take, for the veils of abstraction to lift and reveal the life that was meant for her.
Charli’s latest flash fiction prompt is about the acute form of this kind of fear, the immobilising panic when all the things that ground us are swept away. This is so much a theme of my writing that, as has happened before, it almost wasn’t constraining enough, until, driving at the speed limit yesterday to my voluntary job near Jane Eyre country, a car overtook mine on the bend, sparking this little fantasy:
First aid
They say, in an emergency, the training kicks in. But I’d hoped I’d never need to put it to the test. Yet I pulled over promptly, running through the ABCs in my head.
Fortunately they were conscious, and breathing, and there wasn’t much blood. After making the 999 call, I was calm enough to let work know I’d be late.
Wall-to-wall meetings, the usual stuff. I looked forward to cocktails, scented candles and a warm bath. But, back in the driving seat, I can’t start the car. It’s not the engine that’s stalled but trust the world is safe.
First aid
They say, in an emergency, the training kicks in. But I’d hoped I’d never need to put it to the test. Yet I pulled over promptly, running through the ABCs in my head.
Fortunately they were conscious, and breathing, and there wasn’t much blood. After making the 999 call, I was calm enough to let work know I’d be late.
Wall-to-wall meetings, the usual stuff. I looked forward to cocktails, scented candles and a warm bath. But, back in the driving seat, I can’t start the car. It’s not the engine that’s stalled but trust the world is safe.
RSS Feed
