Manage Your Wants And Needs

Wants and needs in the context of the story mean what your character wants to achieve and what your character needs to realize. Quite often, your main character will have a clear goal in mind, such as fame, love, or acceptance. Yet, their way of achieving that goal tends to be flawed - or blocked, in some way, by the antagonist. However, as in real life, what your character wants often is not what they need. They might not even want to be heroes, but just stay where they are and lead a regular life! Unbelievable, I know, but it can happen.

This is where the needs come in. Your character might just want to be famous for fame’s sake, but they will have to learn that fame isn’t everything. They need to learn that, as a matter of fact, to put into perspective what they want. Or they will need to learn that love can’t be forced and that only be accepting their love interest they way they are, they have a chance to win love. Or that you can’t be accepted by pretending to be someone else, but need to be accepted as the person you are, because there’s a lot of aspects you can’t change about yourself. Needs can also be different, though. An arrogant main character might have to learn humility or a meek character might need to develop some confidence (Alex is such a case).

Identifying your character’s want and need is an important part while you’re working on the story, no matter whether you start writing immediately or whether you are a plotter and planner. Both need to figure into your story and they need to be connected. Whenever you wonder why the climax of a story didn’t really work for you, chances are someone didn’t connect the wants and needs and made the black moment (where the character is at their lowest and has to face the need) unconnected to the actual climax for the character.

An example.

Say your character wants to be famous and has an ample amount of arrogance. Their need, clearly, will be to learn humility. The climax of such a story could be the main character no longer arrogantly assuming they can do everything, but instead asking for help with a task which is beyond their skills. The black moment, the need, should be the main character trying to do the task or something similar by themselves and failing, dampening their arrogance and showing them they’re not as perfect as they thought they are. Throughout the story, show the character being arrogant, more focused on their own skills than on what they’re actually doing with them. Focused on becoming a famous … whatever skills you want to give them, it doesn’t matter whether they’re warriors, singers, athletes, or something completely different. As soon as they have a marketable skill, they can become famous for it, after all. Let’s say they’re a singer, because the ‘warrior needs to learn to rely on others’ trope is used pretty often. So, you show them sail through the first few levels of a singing contest, treating other singers like dirt. They do not pay attention to the rules of the rounds much, either, but instead just do their thing. In the semi-finals, they’re giving a duet to sing, but they refuse to practice the song together with the other singer - and fail because of that. That is the black moment, because basically seconds before the ultimate goal they’re out of the running. But then they are given a last chance: the other duet didn’t perform much better and the semi-finals will be repeated. They’ve learned from their mistake and realized that their skills alone will not carry them through all tests. They have also learned to respect the other singer in their team who practiced long and hard, so this time, they work together with that other singer and make it together. They win the semi-finals and have to go up against their team-mate in the finals. Instead of looking down on the other singer, they give their best and respect that the other one is also giving their best. In the end, they win, but only by a small margin.

In this example the want (fame) and the need (humility) are connected by the character’s arrogance. Because the character is arrogant, they think they deserve fame more than everyone else and they’re prepared to do whatever it takes - not just practicing, but also putting others out of the running. When they’re humiliated, they have to rethink their strategy so far and they realize that their arrogance sabotaged them. They learn not to think they’re better than everyone else and, thus, manage to prove they’re worthy of the title, not only because of their skill, but also because of their character.

A bad example?

Your character wants to be accepted by their family, but the family is made up of proud warriors and your character is simply not good at fighting and has no real interest in it. The character still joins the military and trains hard to become the fighter they think they have to be. They become good at what they do, are respected and even adored by people. The black moment comes when someone calls them conceited and proves they’re not as good as they thought they were. In the climax, they train even harder to prove themselves stronger and better and win the day. Doesn’t really fit together? That is because the need (humility) has nothing to do with the want (acceptance). The lesson for the character to learn should be that they can be accepted they way they are, not the way they think they need to be. But both black moment and climax completely ignore the actual want and are completely focused on a need which is not in alignment with the want.

What should have happened, is that a skill or trait which the character always had, but ignored to fit in with the family, comes to their aid. They were sent out to deal with a very powerful enemy, say, and in the black moment they’re forced to realize that they can’t do anything against that enemy with their warrior skills. But they’ve been very empathic before, it was one of their ‘weaknesses,’ and so when they catch up with the enemy again, they talk to that enemy and come to an agreement. The enemy leaves, the country is saved, and they have proven that their weakness never was a weakness, that they can do something great with a trait which their family thought was bad. That gets the family to change its stance and accept them the way they are. Here, both the want (acceptance) and the need (to accept themselves and realize that they don’t have to change to suit other people) fit together.

Ask yourself what your main character wants and what they really need. Then find a way to combine the two. That might happen through a trait or skill which fits with both (as with the arrogance example). Always ask yourself if the climax of your story fits with what you have promised in the beginning (including the want) and, if not, whether not keeping the promise still works out. Generally speaking, you should try to always keep your promises, because your audience wants for things to work out as they should. The audience usually wants to see the hero succeed, which means getting what they want, but by accepting their need and growing as a character.