Wrestling With GMC

You've heard me whine about this before. GMC: Goal, Motivation and Conflict.

When Suz and I were up in Sedona for our mini retreat, she helped me work through the GMC on the werewolf story I'm trying to rewrite for Ellora's Cave. I'd gotten stalled about 17,000 words in and knew it was because something wasn't right with my characters. So, over the course of two days, in intermittent bursts between shopping and taking in the sights, we talked about it.

Suz: "What's your heroine's internal goal?" (Yeah, you see why it's not so easy. You've got internal and external goals, both of which need motivation and conflict.)

Me: "She wants to prove that she can take care of herself."

Suz: "Why?" (I really came to hate that word!)

Me: "Um, because."

Now, of course, my critique partner wouldn't let me get away with that. So as we worked it out, it came to light that the heroine's mother was very needy, married five times, and the heroine had determined that she would never be that dependent on anyone.

Suz: "Okay. So, the heroine wants to prove she can take care of herself because her mother was too dependent, but she can't because...?"

Me: "Because she has a werewolf on her tail and doesn't know how to take care of herself in this situation."

There. See how that works?

Moving on. Suz: "What about her external goal?"

After several "she wants to do this because, but can't because" sessions where we kept tossing bad ideas out, we settled on this:

The heroine's external goal is to get information on repelling werewolves.

Suz: "Because?"

Me: "Because she has a werewolf on her tail."

Suz: "But she can't because...?"

Me: "The hero, who's allegedly an expert on werewolves, won't cooperate and share the information." (The reason for this is tied into his internal goal to keep his secret... that he's a werewolf.) See? More conflict right there. She's trying to get rid of a werewolf and is going to end up falling in love with one.

That's how it works. We did the same exercise for the hero, for one of the secondary characters, and for the villain. While the GMC for the villain and secondary character will remain mostly in the background, information used only by me, it's there to help me write much more clearly. Let's face it, even the villain needs to have logical reasons to do what he does and if I understand his reasons, I can write with that in mind. It's a little too cliched, in my opinion, to have him taking action merely because he's insane.

This exercise was the best thing. I think I'm going to have to wrangle Suz into helping me do this every time. It's true what they say: two heads are better than one!