writing-questions-answered:
Anonymous asked:Does every character need an internal and external...
Anonymous asked:Does every character need an internal and external goal? Or does the protagonist need both? My protagonist wants to meet his birth parents (external) but he doesn’t have an internal goal.
Every character in a story doesn’t need to have an internal and external goal, but every protagonist does. However, this is not as difficult as most people make it out to be. If your character has an external goal, odds are they have a related internal goal. Why does your protagonist want to meet his birth parents? Look deeper at the motivation and see if you can find sub-motivations. His initial motivation might be that he wants to learn what health conditions run in the family. But maybe, deep down, part of his motivation is that he needs to understand why his birth parents chose not to raise him themselves. That would be an internal goal related to the external goal. :)
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