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There’s one thing all my favorite fiction characters have in common. Villains, heroes, side characters—all good characters share one thing. Not gleaming pectorals or a sob-inducing backstory. Not catchy theme song or cool costume. What is it? It’s conflicting character goals.
Make the hero attracted to the love interest but too heartbroken from a past relationship to fall in love. Make them determined to investigate the truth but deeply afraid of what they’ll find out. Make them a pacifist who’s determined to fight in the war of good and evil.
Why? Conflicting character goals add depth and complexity to a fiction character. They make characters into people.
Conflicting Goals Make Fiction Characters into People
Everyone in real life has conflicting interests. We want to move to the big city, but we don’t want to leave our friends behind. We’d love to swim in the ocean, but we fear drowning. We want to stand up for people we see being bullied, but we don’t want to become endangered ourselves.
We all have conflicting goals that we pursue. When your characters have the same struggles, they become more life-like.
What’s more, these conflicting goals force us to make choices. We choose one goal or the other (we can’t have them both since they’re conflicting).
That changes us since it means abandoning one of our goals. We once pursued both, but eventually, we choose one and forgo the other.
We choose what’s more important to us. Now, we’re either big-city residents or small-town folks.
For people in real life, that’s change. For a fiction character, that’s called being dynamic.
Dynamic Characters Vs. Flat Characters
In fiction, characters are either flat or dynamic.
A flat character doesn’t change. From the beginning to the end of the story, they remain the same.
Think of the wise-cracking protagonist who goes through book after book without missing a beat. Their personality, their goals, and their attitude never change.
This isn’t always a bad thing, but it’s not interesting. It means they have no character arc. And a good character arc is one of the most important things in fiction writing.
Dynamic characters do change. As the story progresses, they change in personality, goals, or attitude. Sometimes the character only changes once in a big way. Other times they evolve slowly in many ways over time. These changes form a character arc.
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Not all character arcs are virtuous or lead to personal growth. Heroes usually become kinder, braver, or smarter. Some characters can become angrier, shallower, or meaner.
Not all characters should be dynamic or have character arcs. Side characters will rarely have enough storytime to complete an arc. But most major characters benefit from having a character arc. Being a dynamic character makes them stronger and more interesting.
Now, conflicting character goals are not the only way to make a character dynamic. Anything that causes a character to change makes the dynamic. But conflicting character goals are a good way to build dynamic characters in your story.
Han Solo: A Fiction Character with Conflicting Goals
Take Han Solo from Star Wars. He’s an easy example of conflicting character goals. He has two goals: serving his personal interests (money and saving his own skin) and caring about others. When he’s first introduced, he clearly favors his first goal, serving his self-interests as a smuggler.
But then he joins the Rebellion, and the scale tips in favor of caring about others. In the final movie of the trilogy, he flees the battle, and it appears he has chosen to serve his own interests. But then, he returns at risk to his own life and clearly decides he cares more about helping rescue the people he cares about.
Han Solo struggles with two goals, self-interest and caring about others, throughout his story. He flip-flops, he wavers. This makes him way more interesting than if he simply had one goal he sought consistently.
This also makes him a dynamic character—he’s a different, more selfless person at the end of his story. When a character has to choose one of their goals and sacrifice the other, they’ve changed (for better or worse). They’ve become dynamic.
Remember: Conflicting Goals Make Complex Characters
Giving a character multiple conflicting character goals makes them more complex, interesting, and dynamic. All good things for your characters. So if you want to make your characters stronger, try seeing what conflicting goals you can give them.
Mint is a writer and digital marketing pro who lives in coastal Virginia with her family and one lovable pitbull. Her passions include helping people and businesses display their best side through the power of communication, buying her dog costumes he doesn’t want to wear, and talking all day about Batman.
