Tag Archives: motivations

#NaNoWriMo Day 4: Antagonist’s Call to Adventure

Day 4
Word count: 6,350 words
Word count goal: 8,000 words
Mapping the Hero’s Journey: Call To Adventure
Save The Cat: Debate

I’m really enjoying meditating on the works of Akiya Kageichi for this project. They are so full of story inspiration. The second top image by Andrew Ferez made me think of the Chekov’s Gun exercise (like the Simple Task on day one) to make sure that objects described in a scene are important to the story. I love detailed journal image Fossil Boy by Chris Rush. When I saw it, I thought, which of my characters might keep a detailed journal? How could I incorporate this into the story?

Plotting with Tarot

Where do my antagonist’s motivations come from? What was his Call to Adventure?

Today’s scenes include three different antagonists, so I’ll be doing a few different readings. I’ll include all three pictures and you can see if any seem to apply to your antagonist (s).

Okay. Something very strange happened when I chose the first set of cards. The layout you see is exactly how I set them on the table. I turned on my DSLR camera and took the picture the same way I have each morning, but the camera took the picture upside-down. Without changing a single setting I did the next two readings and the camera took the pictures right-side-up.

The interesting thing about the camera deciding that my first reading should be upside-down is not only does that change the meaning of the cards, it also changes the position. Thus, an upside-down Queen of cups would be what my antagonist is up to when he gets the call to adventure and the upside-down High Priestess would be why he would consider it.

I have a lot to think about. Not only about the electronic interference of poltergeists and the unseen powers in the universe, but also whether there’s a hidden or unseen aspect to my character, a dark underbelly if you will.

Ask Your Character

Ask your antagonist –

  • Who has been the kindest to you in your life?
  • What are the most important lessons you’ve learned in life?
  • What is your earliest memory?

Word Of The Day

bellicose: adj. aggressive, hostile

8 Action Verbs:

achieved          budgeted          contacted          documented

governed          listened            processed          served

Poem prompt

Today’s poem has a form prompt. Write a rondelet about your antagonist’s motivations.

Motivation

I need to achieve
To finally get what I deserve
I need to achieve
Smiling faces blockades meant to deceive
But I’m quick to swerve
Because my needs I serve
I need to achieve

Awesome Sentence Challenge

A sentence can do one of four things:

  1. Make a statement:declarative sentences
  2. Ask a question: interrogative sentences
  3. Make a command:imperative sentences
  4. Make an exclamation exclamatory sentences!

Practice writing the four kinds of sentences. Then try the same sentence all four ways.

Today’s Simple Task

Show antagonist’s goals, needs and desires.

Warm-up Exercise

Set your timer to 20 minutes. Write a scene where your protagonist and antagonist share a meal. – from Anna C. (NaNoWriMo poster)

Recommended Word Crawl

Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along crawl. A great way to study bad guy motivations and I wanted an excuse to watch it again.

 

More Prompts From Twitter

Twitter is a treasure trove of writing prompts. #prompts is a good place to start.

It led me to @sempersum which led me to #NovemberFalls poetry challenge

NovemberFalls poetry challenge

There is also a take a prompt/ leave a prompt thread in the forums of the NaNoWriMo site.

Happy Reading and Writing!

Revision: Exploring my characters’ motivations

A nice sunset

A nice sunset

And after a few revisions in Windows Photo Gallery

Sunset with revisions

I love playing with simple photo editing software. All of those fabulous colors were in my photo just waiting for me to draw them out–slough off a bit of brightness, delete a bit of shadow, redefine the contrast and saturate the hues. Now, to apply the same principal (drawing out the good stuff) to my manuscript.

This morning I approached my task in a new way. My goal is to make the motivations of my characters clear to my readers. I had planned to read through my manuscript and note my characters’ motivations for each major action in the margins (and I am still planning on doing that), but as I wrote my morning pages, I started exploring some of the hermit’s major motivations: Abandonment, Rejection, Betrayal, Judgement. Then I explored events in her childhood that would have led to these feelings. I quickly filled my morning pages with ideas. One of the ideas for betrayal seemed to be a better motivation for my other main character.

Looking at the origin stories of my characters’ motivations, I saw a common theme–Perception. Specifically, how incorrect perceptions both internal and external can negatively affect one’s life. At first it felt like a revelation to define this underlying theme, but really, it is no surprise. I got my M.S. in perception, be it the biopsychology (behavioral neuroscience) of visual perception and memory, but I am obviously (though somewhat subconsciously) writing what I know.

Now, I’m daydreaming about quoting my own journal articles and bringing in quotes about the physical aspects of perception and anxiety. It could be a fun tie-in for chapter titles. I’ll see where it takes me.

Today, I’m excited to be making some progress toward taming the beast named First Novel.

Anyone have revision tips? Every idea is welcome and appreciated.