Character Goals: Why they have to change

Welcome to Day Seven of the Addicted to Heroines Blog Tour.
Today we’re delighted to share with you a guest post by author Samantha LaFantasie, who has some cogent remarks about what makes fictional characters, and maybe even real people, do what they do. Samantha writes:

Imagine, if you will, a story where the protagonist has only one goal in mind. It can be any goal. Your goal, perhaps…it really makes no difference how big or small that goal is.

Now imagine that this goal never changes. No matter what, it remains the same.

Would you find this story a bit dull? Would you think the character was cardboard and not 3-D? What other issues with the character would you have?

First off, you would want the protagonist of any story to be relatable. For that to happen, they need to change. When a person changes in everyday life, so do their goals. Whether that main goal has become a minor goal or shifted to a completely different goal altogether, it still changed. It’s forever altered by the experience of you or the character and the environment you or the character is placed in.

That is a short and sweet way of explaining why character goals have to change. Especially if authors want the story to have any impact or keep their readers interested and invested in their characters.

Take Heart Song for instance: Relena’s goal at the very beginning of the story was escape. She wanted to escape the Balai, the town, her father, and even her life as she knew it.

When Marren came, she felt her desires and goals change. Suddenly, they involved him. And when they crossed into the immortal realm, it became freeing the immortal races, and so on and so forth.

Relena’s goals changed repetitively throughout the story. They changed as she changed. She changed as she experienced her environment and events around her.

Now, imagine what her story would be like if she only wanted to continue running away? Although it could be an interesting concept to write up now that her story is told, but I’m thinking it wouldn’t be much of a story at all. Not to mention, I don’t think anyone would be interested in reading it.

Readers want to see character motivation, growth, and most of all, they want relatable. In order to do that, characters have to change and that means so do their goals.

Check out other posts in our Guest Post Round Robin, like

this one from Alesha Escobar on the weaponization of heroines on  Cecelia Robert’s blog ,
or this interview with Francene Stanley on Samantha LaFantasies’s blog
and mine, “The Thick Plottens” on Alesha Escobar’s blog