DISSECTING THE G, M, AND C
by Robyn Ratliff

Recently I was discussing movie preferences with some writing buddies, at one point we ended up talking about scary movies. We chuckled about the clichéd woman in horror movies who runs into the dark woods in her pajamas, or equally as silly, goes into the basement simply because she hears a noise. And let’s not forget that she knows very well that there is a madman on the loose and he’s got an ax with her name on it. (And I can’t NOT mention that she doesn’t wear a bra while all of this is occurring…)

What is it about the above scenario that is so humorous? Despite the fact that our heroine has an aversion to underclothes, it boils down to character motivation. Or rather the lack of character motivation. Most of these movies are shot with one goal in mind, to scare the movie-goer, so they get their characters in scary situations no matter how poorly motivated because it suits their plot. And horror movies are all about the plot, there’s little to no room for character development or growth. But in romance, we have a different goal. We write relationship stories and therefore we cannot simply stick our characters in Idaho in chapter five because we need them to be there for chapter seven. We must give them legitimate, believable reasons for being Idaho in the first place.

I’m a huge fan of Deb Dixon’s book, “Goal, Motivation and Conflict”, I think it is THE book every writer shouldn’t be without. Ordinarily when discussing these three elements, we would start with goal, but to me motivation is the true key, and often the most overlooked element. While I believe that all three are essential to good fiction, motivation is what makes your fiction readable. It’s like the secret decoder ring that comes in cereal boxes; it explains all of those crazy things your characters do or don’t do. With strong motivation, readers will follow you anywhere.

Have you ever read a book that wasn’t that exciting or perhaps wasn’t that well written; yet the characters were so compelling you couldn’t put it down? I’d wager that motivation played a big role in why you loved those characters.

Let’s go back to our woman from the horror movie, investigating a noise is not enough motivation for most people to go out into the night when a crazy murderer is on the loose. What if the noise she hears is her dog who’s outside tied to the swing set? Is that believable? To serious dog lovers it might be enough. But let’s try something else, suppose she hears someone cry for help, is that believable? Well, for those of us seasoned horror movie watchers, this is an old trick, scary madman generally can talk as well as swing an ax, so they can be the ones crying for help. So this might not be believable either. (I know you know where I’m going with this and it’s a trite example, but it works.) Okay so let’s say the voice she hears is not one of the crazy mad man or any other stranger, but the voice of her own 10 year old daughter. This gives her plenty of motivation to swing open those doors and run out into the night in nothing more than a robe and her bra (or lack thereof). A mother’s urge to protect her children is a strong and universal motivation that even those of us without children can understand.

Here’s another example. Let’s say your heroine needs a job - that’s her goal. But why does she need the job? That’s our motivation. Well, she needs this job because there are some pink shoes in a store window downtown that she simply must own. So is wanting the pink shoes enough motivation to sustain your story? Probably not, unless this is a very short story.

But if we beef up the motivation, we might find a bigger story to tell. How about she wants those shoes because her grandmother owned a pair just like them and her memories of her grandmother are the only ones she has of being loved and cared for. Now we care. Now we can cheer for our heroine to get that job so she can buy those shoes.

I’ve used some very basic examples here, but the bottom line is motivation gives the reader a reason to care for the characters. It is one of the greatest tools we have as writers to make our imperfect characters, that we love, loveable to our readers. Developing strong motivation forces you to think, to dig deep into your characters, and in the end it can be the difference between someone finishing your book, or putting it back on the shelves.

Okay, so we’ve looked at the M in the GMC equation. Now let’s take a closer look at goals. Every character needs them. And in romance they generally need both internal and external goals. I hate to say they MUST have both because there is always an exception to the rule, so let’s just say that it’s in your best interest to have both.

Goals what are they? In simplest terms, a goal is what your character wants. Often writers have their character’s goals be to maintain the status quo this isn’t necessarily wrong, but is it strong enough to maintain an entire book? And won’t it be a futile goal when our heroine learns in chapter one that the status quo is gone. I’ve seen this a lot in contest entries, specifically with historicals where our heroine is expected to marry and she simply wants to remain the rebellious girl she’s always been. Riding her horses with her hair whipping in the wind and tending her garden or writing her novels or whatever it is she wants to maintain. So if we take a closer look at this we see that what our heroine really wants is the independence to do what she wants, but freedom isn’t a tactile thing and while this might work for our internal goal for our external goal we should strive for something more concrete.

What about that garden she loves? What if she’s been working on cross-breeding roses since she was a young girl and if she marries she’ll have to leave her precious garden and resign herself to a life of parties and needlepoint. This will never do. So our heroine doesn’t simply want to maintain the status quo, more specifically, she wants to complete her cross-breeding of her roses. This is concrete and a worthy goal.

What about our heroine who wants to buy those pink shoes? More than likely this heroine doesn’t consciously think, “I want those shoes because Grandma had some just like them and she loved me and if I own them then I’ll feel that love again.” That would be awkward and clunky and let’s face it, if your heroine is that in touch with her emotional needs, then she’s probably has no internal conflict at all. So instead she thinks she wants those shoes simply because they remind her of her grandmother and she remembers always liking them. But as readers we know that while this is a tactile goal, what our heroine really wants is for someone to love her and give her security. That’s her internal goal and she’s going about satisfying it in the wrong way. This is a common mistake for our characters and one that usually takes an entire book to figure out. This is our character’s arc.

The trick for creating strong and believable goals is to make them specific to your character and their situation. If you can plug in any goal or mix and match goals with characters, then you haven’t done your job. Think specific and concrete and you’ll be on the right track.

So all that is left in our GMC equation is that little thing called conflict. If you’ve been in the writing business long, then you’ve probably heard things like “fiction is conflict” or “the strength of your conflict is the strength of your book” or some such statements and I will not argue with that. When you’re writing popular fiction, without conflict you have no book. At least not one worth reading.

Well, then what is conflict? According to Webster it is “a clash between opposing elements or ideas”. Simple enough. But in romance we deal with two kinds of conflict, external and internal, and differentiating between the two can be trickier than we first think.

Let’s start with external, it’s all the stuff happening outside of our characters. This is the hero’s meddling mother, the evil other woman, the villain, the tornado and the killer shark - this is all external. Generally the way external conflicts works in romance novels is you have your hero and heroine have opposing goals which creates conflict. Or perhaps you have them have the same goals, but their motivations are in opposition. This is generally the meat of your book. Imagine taking your characters out of the world they live in and plucking them down alone on a deserted island. If it’s just the two of them, all alone, then all the external conflict should disappear, provided they have no hurricanes and they have plenty of food and necessities to survive.

The internal conflict, on the other hand, would still exist on that deserted island. I’ll go one step forward. Your character’s internal conflict should exist with or without the hero or heroine. That is to say if your hero’s internal conflict is that he believes all people expect the worst of him, then this is his internal conflict even if he never meets the heroine. What makes the heroine integral to his conflict is that she’s the reason he decides to change and overcome this belief.

Let’s look at an example with the movie Twister. Now when I went to see this movie, I expected it to be about twisters. And it is, but it’s also a romance. Jo, our heroine, is a tough and witty scientist out to change the warning systems for tornadoes. Obviously the external conflict is the tornadoes themselves, but we also have conflict with the rival team led by Jonah as well as the conflict between Jo and her soon-to-be ex-husband, Bill.

Now we’re given a hint about her internal conflict at the beginning of the movie when we see a family run to the storm cellar only for the father to be ripped into the center of the twister. But it’s truly revealed to us in a scene where she and Bill have missed getting their tracking device up into the tornado. They start arguing and she blurts out that he doesn’t know what it’s like to have a tornado skip this house and that house and come after yours. She took her father’s death personally (obviously) and it has shaped her entire life and motivates all her external actions. Basically she’s afraid of losing the people she loves. This conflict exists without Bill. It’s not until Bill tells her to look at what’s right in front of her, meaning himself, that she’s willing to take the risks necessary to overcome this internal conflict.

Conflict is tricky, no doubt about it, but it’s also one of those aspects of writing that people make harder than it should be. It’s not rocket science. Go back to your G and the M and your conflict should be right there, inherently connected to the other elements. Or develop the GMC from the conflict or from the motivation. Or however it makes sense to you. The trick to all of this is to develop a GMC for your character that is consistent and specific.

The bottom line is that strong GMC is the backbone of creating sympathetic characters, which in turn is the backbone of creating saleable books.