In Frank Oz’s comedy What About Bob?, Bill Murray’s neurotic character sobs to his psychiatrist (who’s trying desperately to get rid of him), “Gimme, gimme, gimme! I need, I need, I need!”

To some extent this is what every one of our characters should be internally screaming. We’re all familiar with the idea that the protagonist must be driven through the story by some great need. But the truth is one need just isn’t going to be strong enough to get a character all the way through a book. You are going to need to discover, not just two (or more) needs, but the two friction-causing, conflict-creating, mutually exclusive needs of every character.

The ever wise and entertaining Victoria Mixon (in her book The Art and Craft of Story) says it this way:

Characters are only important to readers insofar as they need things. Things that contrast. Things that conflict. When someone seriously, desperately, aggressively needs two mutually-exclusive things, well, stuff tends to happen to them. Big, exciting stuff! That’s the fabulous stuff of fiction.

Creating Character Arcs (affiliate link)

So how does this work? How do you go about choosing not just one but two story-shaping needs for your character? Let’s break this down and take a closer look. To begin with, consider the three intrinsic elements of character needs:

1. Your character’s two needs must be equally important. If they’re going to create the necessary conflict, they have to be heavyweight enough to challenge each other.

2. Both needs will be present essentially from the beginning of the story. Since they rest at the heart of your character’s inner conflict, they must be there from the get-go in order to fuel his arc.

3. Your character can (and probably will) have more than just two needs. The more needs he has, the more complicated and intricate the book’s conflicts and themes will be. Just make sure the needs all conflict on one or more levels.

Got that? Good. Now we’re going to take a head-on dive into the specific elements of our two needs

Character Need #1

This need is the one riding the breaking waves of your plot. This is the foundation for the goal your character is trying to accomplish. It’s the outer need, the thing the character knows he wants and thinks he has to accomplish to reach his primary objective.

For Example:

• In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Jane’s primary need is to marry and live with her soulmate, Rochester.
• In Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca, Rick’s primary need is to reunite with his lost love Ilsa.
• In Karen Hancock’s The Light of Eidon, Abramm’s primary need is to survive his enslavement and return home to wrest his throne from his treacherous brother.

Character Need #2

In many ways, the secondary need is the more important of the two. But, ssh! Don’t tell anybody. Even the character herself may not realize how important this need is until late in the story. This need is curled up deep inside her and is at the core of the weakness holding her back from achieving her full potential. Sometimes, this need can stand in stark contrast to Need #1, to the point that achieving either one of the needs means completely abandoning the other. And sometimes, this need can end up being the perfect complement to the primary need—in which case, it’s the character’s resistance to this need that stands in the way of her achieving not just its fulfillment, but the fulfillment of Need #1 as well.

For Example:

• In Jane Eyre, Jane’s need to remain true to her moral duty, as well as her need to grow into the strength to truly stand as Rochester’s equal, impedes her from remaining with Rochester after she learns of his insane wife.
• In Casablanca, Rick’s need to fight the Nazis and support Ilsa’s freedom-fighter husband prevents him from running away with Ilsa.
• In Light of Eidon, Abramm’s deep spiritual need to submit himself to the true God and His will for his life first stands in the way of his achieving his ultimate goal of survival (thanks to his resistance to Need #2), and then removes his anger and need for vengeance against his brother.

The more deeply at odds these two needs, the stronger and more compelling an inner conflict will emerge from the fires. As your characters wrestle with either relinquishing one of these needs (and if they truly need it, then relinquishing it will always be bone-breakingly painful) or somehow harmonizing the needs, they will plumb the depths of themselves and present a story arc that will resonate with readers for years to come.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! What are your character’s two conflicting needs? Tell me in the comments!

Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in Apple Podcast or Amazon Music).

___

Love Helping Writers Become Authors? You can now become a patron. (Huge thanks to those of you who are already part of my Patreon family!)