CREATING CHARACTER GOALS 2

by Deb Elkink

Short Story Character Goals

I take a big-picture, plotter approach to developing the goals of characters within novels. But for shorter fiction, my character goal formation is more relaxed and possibly more creative. I keep in mind my basic novel order of author goal (message) first, followed by a character’s macro-goal governing the story arc that I punctuate with micro-goals.

This time, rather than plotting each scene ahead of time, I sketch out my main story message, then occupy the page with people developed along the way. Shorts don’t need as much attention to keeping track of actions, more focused because of the brevity of this “slice-of-life” style. Thus, I give my short story characters only one main macro-goal, based upon my authorial goal of message, and then as many micro-goals as needed, according to length and number of scenes.

Blurbs Keep Me Focused

What helps me keep to the basic direction and character goals of my short story is to write out a very condensed blurb that often ends up introducing the story once published. I follow the format of online movie descriptions. For example, here’s the blurb for the film Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris:

A widowed housecleaner in 1950s London feels invisible until a Dior gown sparks her imagination and sends her on a life-changing journey.

Reading the blurb, one suspects the grieving traveller—feeling insignificant and needing her soul awakened—is looking for joy, her apparent goal. The blurb of another recent movie—the theologically and politically charged flick Conclave—indicates main plot, conflict, and, again, implicit goals:

When Cardinal Lawrence is tasked with leading one of the world’s most secretive and ancient events, selecting a new Pope, he finds himself at the center of a conspiracy that could shake the very foundation of The Church.

The wording of this brief come-on hints about the Cardinal’s goals: to take responsibility, to break through secrets from the past, to battle a world-shaking conspiracy.

Writing a blurb before starting to draft my short story often helps guide me to clarity of character goals. Following are several of my blurbs appearing in my 2024 collection of stories and novellas. In parentheses I’ve included the theme for each—that is, the authorial goal driving the message—with sub-points giving examples of character macro- and micro-goals:

• “The Curious Tourist” (His Word, a never-changing standard, is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.): Terra Célèste, visiting mystical Montpellier in the South of France on a subconscious quest for more than store-bought souvenirs, bunks in the attic of wise and aged mapmaker Great-Uncle Elroy, who warns her against straying from the safe and true path.
  • Terra Célèste’s desire to tour the “real” Montpellier (macro) leads her to the door of an antique shop specializing in the occult (micro), from which she bolts (micro) as she rejects evil (macro).

• “Wet” (Trinity is God as one in essence and three in persons.): Drowning in trauma and pursued by pain-soaked memories, Beth has bolted from the west-coast island home of her childhood for the drought-ridden Canadian prairies, returning home now to face her sorrows, responsibilities, and long-lost joys.
  • Beth’s immersion into a farmhand identity (macro) has her building a barbwire fence (micro), exposing her to a prairie storm (micro) that makes her face her identity (macro).

• “Clanging Symbols” (Symbolism without substance leads nowhere.):Doran, an American tutor in 1970s’ Japan, disenchanted with love and the Christianfaith he once embraced, plunges into Kyoto’s pantheistic culture.
  • Doran, rejecting the cross of Christ in favour of Eastern thought (macro), finds himself praying at a Shinto shrine (micro), exposing him to a false “deity” (micro) that eventually proves to be empty (macro).

• “Reconstituted” (Resurrection is the ultimate answer for our resistance to getting old.): Aging ex-pat Dolores tours a Mexican mummy museum to face the fear thatdrove her from family and the grace that calls her back.
  • Dolores, hating her wrinkles (macro), compares her aging to corpses (micro) and to the dewy youth of her granddaughter (micro), who also exudes a spiritual life (macro).

A Few General Tips

• Do brainstorm imaginative character goals (possibly using the 101 fun ideas from last article). You might employ the “SMART” framework popularized by the business-management community to ensure your character goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound.
• Don’t get too many story goals going at once. Even longer pieces and novels must be boiled down to the minimum in your mind so that your direction is clear.
• Do allow character goals to formulate the plot, conflict, climax, and resolution.
• Don’t force your characters to do or be what doesn’t suit the story—even if you’ve set up goals for them. Allow yourself to rewrite goals as your story unfolds, but do this within reason, as changing too much in the midst of the tale can leave you (as it has me) rewriting large chunks of earlier story segments.
• Do resist the impulse to clump all resolutions at the end of the story. Instead, with the macro-goal unfulfilled but ever in mind, allow the character’s micro-goal actions during the course of each scene to produce a change in the next scene’s micro-goal. Nurture the most conflict-producing problems and character goals scene by scene to heighten tension until the story climaxes, and only then resolve the macro-goal.

by Deb Elkink

Deb Elkink (The Third Grace, The Red Journal, Vagabond Come Home) writes from her cottage on the banks of a creek in the rolling hills of southern Alberta, a stone’s throw from the Montana border. Her award-winning fiction—literary with a theological twist—incorporates travel and taste buds and tumults of the heart.