Motivation and Agency

The story’s engine is the plot (or, most likely, the plots), but the characters can’t do things just because of the plot. They need a better reason. They need both motivation and agency.

 

If your character is acting like everyone with common sense would and it serves the plot, motivation and agency might not seem that important. Running from an exploding bomb doesn’t need any motivation above ‘I’d like to live another day’ - which is pretty common in people. ‘Let’s go into this spooky, old house and split up to search for clues’ is only everyday behaviour when you’re driving around in a blue-and-green van with three other kids and a dog. That is when motivation and agency come in. Going into that spooky house to look for clues can seem like a great idea when you’re trying to find out who has been keeping everyone in town awake at night for days, especially if you’ve seen lights come from there and know that it’s uninhabited. That gives you agency - a reason for going to that house. The overall motivation is to find out who’s behind that supposed haunting.

 

One big problem for stories is when a main character, perhaps even the protagonist, has no motivation and/or agency. When they’re only reacting and not doing anything because they’ve decided to - or are even doing everything because someone else told them to.

There’s nothing wrong with being sent on a mission per se, but at some point, the protagonist should decide to continue or abandon it because of their own reasons, because they have the motivation to do it or not to do it any longer. Perhaps they now really want to save the world, even though it was their mentor who sent them out to do it at first. Perhaps they now really don’t want to save the kingdom as it is, because it’s corrupted and what comes after might be better. At some point, their actions must be motivated by their own decision, by their own agency.

 

It’s not always easy to reconcile plot and motivation/agency. Sometimes, your plot might demand of your protagonist to do something outright stupid. Then it might be necessary to change the plot, smooth it out a little, make it more believable that the protagonist would do something. Or to change the protagonist, give them a derring-do streak or a tendency for lapses in judgement. Such a change can’t be too abrupt, the best thing would be to ease it in, bit by bit, long before that decision is necessary.

Humans do make stupid decisions, but there’s a limit to how stupid for most people. Someone who always runs into danger head first won’t last too long, no matter how good a fighter they are. There must be some caution and a good reason to ignore it and go into that old, spooky house. Agency and motivation often provide that reason if they go with what we’ve seen about the character in question before.

Of course we know the Scooby-Doo gang will go into that house and investigate it - that’s their thing, basically their job. For everyone else, there must be a good reason to go in there. Perhaps their friend or a family member is suspected of the haunt and they need to prove that it was someone else. Perhaps someone or something important was taken. If they have the right kind of character, even a dare will do. A reason that seems believable in-story.

 

And that, of course, is where we come back to motivation and agency. Agency means that the characters do something out of their own volition, because they want to do it. They follow a goal of a sort, no matter whether short-term or long-term. Agency means a character isn’t just passively going along with what others are doing (to or with them) like a classic damsel. They get into trouble because of something they are doing because they want to, because they walk into that old, spooky house or into that front for the supervillain’s operations, not because the supervillain decided to kidnap them.

There may be situations in which the character doesn’t have another choice than to do what they are told to do, but they can still be working on changing that situation, they can still be motivated to get out of that.

Motivation can be everything from ‘I want to get out of that alive’ to ‘I want to know what all of this is about.’ It should be clear, though, what your protagonist and your other characters are motivated by. What their plans are. Their wants and needs. Not necessarily right from the beginning - it’s usually a little unclear what it all is about at the beginning. It needs to become clear early, however.

One example for ‘showing the motivation way too late’ is Severus Snape in the Harry Potter novels. From the first book onwards, the reader sees Snape going after Harry, clearly hating him. Yet, there’s also always those suggestions of him helping or saving Harry at certain points. That doesn’t go together well. Snape very much comes across as that one teacher we were all afraid of as children, because they would pick a student or two and torment them in class - they were bullies, when all was said and done. And, to a degree, he even might be that kind of teacher - he’s certainly not the kind of person who should have become a teacher -, but that doesn’t account for his saving Harry as well. He hates Harry and it’s said soon that this has something to do with Harry’s father James. Not soon enough and not clear enough (the first time we see what was going on between them is in book five), but it is said. The connection between Severus Snape and Lily Potter, however, is not uncovered until Snape’s death. That should have come in much earlier, too, because it changes the perception of Snape and makes it clear why he’s so torn between hatred and protection. On one hand, Harry is James Potter’s son (and looks a lot like him, as we hear over and over again). On the other hand, he’s Lily Potter’s son (and has inherited her eyes). Snape still is a guy who should never have become a teacher and he should have been reigned in early, either by Dumbledore as the headmaster or by McGonagall as Harry’s head of house, but in the light of these facts, his actions are much more believable and his motivations become clear.

Learn from this and don’t hold out on a character’s motivations for too long. Give the reader an understanding of why the important characters are doing what they are doing.

 

Look into the motivation and agency of all important characters, from protagonist to antagonist, early on. Show it early as well, so the readers can understand why the characters do what they do, can fathom how far they might go to reach their goal. Your plot drives the story and your characters drive the plot. It’s their motivation and agency which drives the characters - without it, nothing really moves.