This week's Writing Skill is Same Act, Different Reasons, playing with character actions and motivations – and how those motivations shape the action. This is a two-parter, so if you have twenty minutes to spare, start with Part One. If you can only snatch ten minutes from the Jaws of Time, skip merrily ahead to Part Two.
Part One: Listing motivations
List exercises are always brilliant for coming up with ideas, because they take the pressure off the individual idea. As a rule of thumb, whatever you're trying to think of, whenever you can't come up with one, come up with twenty! In this list, you're going to come up with motivations: all the different reasons a person might do a thing.
Either give yourself ten minutes for this or write the numbers 1–20 down the side of a page. Some people prefer a time limit; some people find time limits stress them out and prefer a quota. You choose whatever suits you best. Then write a list of motivations. For example,
- for love
- to show off
- as revenge
- to cover someone else's mistake
- out of laziness
It's fine to write big general motivations, eg "for love", "for money". Then, if you can, break those down into more specific motivations, each its own item in the list. Eg "for money" could be...
- to pay basic necessities
- to help a struggling friend / family member
- to repay a debt
- to keep up social appearances
- to fund a gambling habit
- to give to a charity
and so on. The more motivations you write, the more possibilities you see!
Part Two: Same Act, Different Reasons
The central action is simple enough: your character is going to sing a song in front of people. That could be around a fire with friends, in a folk-song type pub, at a formal historical gathering (Austen / Poldark style), out busking, whatever appeals to you. You don't need to have an existing character for this; they can simply emerge out of the action and through the writing.
Yu're going to write the same central action twice over, with the same character, each time with a different motivation. If you did Part One, you'll have your own list of motivations to refer to. If you didn't, here are some suggestions:
- for love
- to show off
- as revenge
- to cover for someone else's mistake
- out of laziness
- to repay a debt
- to keep up social appearances
Pick two motivations that contrast very strongly for you. If you're doing this as a ten-minuter, set yourself a timer, five minutes for each piece. And if you'd like an extra challenge, then don't give the character's internal thoughts to explain their motivation: only describe their and others' actions and reactions, to show the motivation.
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