CHARACTER MOTIVATION THESAURUS

FORCING A BIG CHANGE (DARK)



Never struggle with Show-and-Tell again. Activate your free trial or subscribe to view the Character Motivation Thesaurus in its entirety, or visit the Table of Contents to explore unlocked entries.

CHOOSE MY PLAN

HELPFUL TIP:

To understand why your character is driven toward a certain goal, get to know their positive and negative traits, as well as any significant emotional wounds that might be motivating them. Then you can explore the various kinds of conflict that could block them as they move toward their goal.
NOTES:
Like FORCING CONVERSION, this involves a character deciding what's right for others and forcing that change upon them. However, instead of encouraging a change of belief in others, the character simply decides what needs to be done and does it.

FORMS THIS MIGHT TAKE:
Releasing a disease to purposely decimate a population
Banning an activity (or an industry, a practice, a color, a language, etc.) through threat of death
Taking over a country by force and changing society in fundamental ways
Enforcing sterilization
Enforcing a breeding program
Placing specific people in a concentration camp
Changing universal currency overnight (thereby deciding what has value and what does not)
Driving people from their homes and lands through a forced migration
Making people live differently (forcing them to live underground, transfer to a different planet, wear GPS trackers, have their thoughts read, etc.)
Stripping people of their identity, careers, or roles and assigning them new ones
Legalizing something that was previously illegal
Criminalizing something that was previously legal
Reassigning who has authority (removing a ruling royal family from power and giving that position to another family, changing the justice system, dissolving a goverment and installing a new one, etc.)

HUMAN NEED DRIVING THE GOAL (INNER MOTIVATION):
There are five basic human needs that, when missing from a character's life, could motivate them to pursue this goal. The following needs are all possibilities, but only one of them should be the primary driver for any given character. For more information on the relationship between human needs and outer motivations, please see​ this ​Character Motivation tutorial.

Self-Actualization: A character with skewed beliefs could feel that a sweeping change (especially one that will hurt or kill many people) is a necessary course correction, and by undertaking the responsibility for it, they are giving themselves over to a higher purpose.
Esteem and Recognition: Characters who are drawn to power often host a great amount of self-doubt, so bringing about a large-scale, tangible shift might confirm their own specialness and worth.
Love and Belonging: A character may bring about a change that disrupts society in the name of love—either to prove themselves worthy of it or to prove the lengths they will go to show it.
Safety and Security: If a character feels that their safety is at stake (or the safety of their culture, beliefs, country, etc.), they may pursue a big change, believing it to be the only way to neutralize the threat and make them secure again.
Physiological Needs: In the case where the character's own survival (or the survival of the people they care about) is threatened, they'll be willing to impose change on others, even against their will.

HOW THE CHARACTER MAY PREPARE FOR THIS GOAL:
...

POSSIBLE SACRIFICES OR COSTS ASSOCIATED WITH THIS GOAL:
...

ROADBLOCKS WHICH COULD PREVENT THIS GOAL FROM BEING ACHIEVED:
...

TALENTS & SKILLS THAT WILL HELP THE CHARACTER ACHIEVE THIS GOAL:
...

WHAT'S AT STAKE IF THIS GOAL ISN'T MET?
...