Chapter Twenty

The Goal Column

The character’s long-term goal drives the external dramatic action of the story. Her pursuit of her long-term goal ultimately leads her to change, grow, mature, and transform. The character also needs a goal in every scene. She may or may not even approach that goal by scene’s end, but the reader needs to know what the character is up to at all times. Hence the Goal Column in the Scene Tracker is used to note, in an abbreviated form, the protagonist’s goal at the start of every scene. These scene goals are not your goals for the character, but the protagonist’s. They are the specific steps she plans to take that she believes will help advance her toward her ultimate goal.

What does the protagonist want? This question poses a challenge to many writers, but unless the protagonist wants something specific in every scene, the scene and story wander.

For scenes in the beginning of the story, you’ll indicate in the Goal Column the steps she takes toward her ultimate goal. Usually by the end of the first quarter of the story, the protagonist has been forced, coerced, or convinced to let go of her attachment to the familiar, the safe, and the comfortable. When she arrives in the middle, you’ll summarize her long-term goal and indicate on the Scene Tracker how this change causes her short-term scene goals to change.

After the crisis, her goals generally change again. As the character’s goals become riskier, more difficult to attain, more dangerous to pursue, or trickier to achieve, the reader has to believe that the character will continue even in the face of peril. Use the Goal Column to indicate what you conveyed in each scene related to the character’s motivation. These are the reasons why she has the goals she has and takes the actions she takes.

Here are some common driving motivations:

• increase or loss of material well-being
• an authority
• making amends
• love
• criminal action (including murder)
• solving a mystery
• searching for something significant, valuable, meaningful, or necessary
• honor and dishonor
• fulfilling a destiny
• desire
• safety
• revenge

Track her motivation in addition to her scene goals, and, when appropriate, include where, when, why, and how her motivation shifts and changes.

The difference between a dream and a goal is that a goal is quantifiable. To achieve your writing goals, make them small and achievable.

Case Study: Where the Heart Is

The following scene demonstrates how a character’s goals are expressed without the character stating what she wants explicitly. Those goals are then inserted into the Goal Column on the Scene Tracker grid.

In the opening scene of Billie Letts’s Where the Heart Is, we learn about the protagonist.

Three paragraphs later the protagonist’s scene goal is made abundantly clear.

Sometimes a scene’s beginning and end are not clear-cut and thus become subjective. The first scene of Where the Heart Is might be considered the entire first chapter, a total of fourteen pages. We know it is a scene because the action is being played out moment by moment. But a dream sequence lies in the middle of chapter one, so you might decide that the dream marks the end of scene one and the beginning of scene two. Or the moment Novalee walks into Walmart could be the marker. How you decide where a scene begins and ends in your project is not always an exact science. For our purposes here, it matters less how you decide on these parameters and more how you justify your decision to yourself for tracking purposes.

Throughout the first fourteen pages of Where the Heart Is, we are with Novalee moment by moment. At times, Letts interrupts the showing to tell us information about Novalee’s past, but the telling is always within the context of the action going on in the scene. For our purposes, I have made the decision that scene one ends when she enters Walmart.

Either way, Letts establishes Novalee’s goal at the very beginning of the scene, and tension is created immediately because the reader knows that something needs to happen soon or Novalee will be in trouble. In the same way that we are shown Novalee’s goal and her motivation to relieve her discomfort, we are also shown that her boyfriend has the completely opposing goal to keep driving.

Beware of the trap of discussing your story too much with others. Instead use all your energy for the actual writing. It is possible to kill a story—the punch of it, your passion for it—by talking it to death.

Case Study: All the Pretty Horses

In the opening scene, there is little to inform us about the character’s scene goal and why he is where he is. Therefore, we leave this box blank.

Case Study: The Sea-Wolf

We learn in scene one that the protagonist intends to write an essay titled “The Necessity for Freedom: A Plea for the Artist.”

Case Study: White Oleander

We learn of the protagonist’s goals from her narrative in scene one:

For our purposes, we mark only the short-term scene goal on the Scene Tracker.

Tracking Your Story

With your Scene Tracker in front of you, refer to your manuscript and fill in the Goal Column with the protagonist’s goal in the scene.

The short-term scene goals and long-term story goals do not have to be plainly stated, but they do have to be at least implied. A short-term goal gives direction to the scene. Without it, a scene loses its significance and tends to ramble. The protagonist must always be working toward something. Conflict is created by all the factors that prevent her from achieving her short-term scene goals and, ultimately, her long-term goal.

Creating both short-term and long-term goals for the protagonist is difficult for many writers. Stick with it. Readers stay with a story to see if the protagonist is going to achieve or accomplish what she wants in life. Suspense is the state of anticipation, wanting to know what happens next.

By having the protagonist want something of utmost importance, the reader knows what is at stake.

Often the protagonist’s desire rules her entire life only to find in the end that her desire does not bring satisfaction.