My current nemesis: GMC. (Not the car company.)
The unfortunate side effect of all the research I’ve been doing on how to write is that I have found out, well . . . how to write.
Oops.
So I have entered the forest of GMC; Goal, Motivation, Conflict. It is a thicket with deceptively large entry signs that turn into wandering little footpaths of hope, angst, self-doubt, and double-guessing. There is no yellow brick road.
Authors swear by this method. I’ve found article after article rhapsodizing about how critical this is to writing your novel. There are charts. There are helpful little tables. It’s perfectly obvious in the articles, but when I start applying it to my own writing it goes something like this.
Goal-What does my character want?
My main character has a crystal clear goal. I mean, she is the main character. By the laws of such things, that means she has a goal. QED.
After looking it over several times. . . no, she doesn’t. DAMNS IT. The way I’ve written it, she’s just drifting along and happened into marrying the man who loves her. Why? Who knows? My readers sure don’t. In my head she’s decisive and practical, family oriented and loving, and perhaps a bit too stubborn to see what’s right in front of her. The more I read and edit, the more the sneaky idea that she’s not in fact the main character bobs out from behind bushes, waving and grinning.
Her new husband, the man who has always loved her, is edging into my main character spot. It’s easier for me to get in his head and his goals are clear. Also, easier to throw roadblocks in his way to torture him and hopefully my readers (she wasn’t in love with you when she married you, dude. You’re going to find out you were the Second Choice and there was Another Man. It won’t be fun). And I now need a new opening chapter to my finished* manuscript, from the point of view of my real main character.
*Finished, for a given value of finished.
Motivation-Why do they want this?
I feel like I’m stomping around like the most spoiled actress in Hollywood, the kind who demands silk toilet covers and golden bowls full of petit-fours and ice balls. What is going on with my characters? Why are they making these choices? What is my motivation? *wails*
This one is harder than the goal, and sounds suspiciously similar. Isn’t motivation the thing that makes you go after a goal? So is it the steps to that goal, or the roots of that goal? Or is it more Freudian; the deeply buried schema, the fears, the primal urges that motivate you toward that particular goal? I’m over-thinking my thinking, about thinking. I give up. The nice GMC chart I printed out now reads like the most unhinged Reddit post in the world, with little arrows all over the place. The arrows do not help. They are anti-arrows.
Conflict-What’s in the way?
By now I’m reeling around this GMC forest banging off the trees and barking my shins on the knobbly roots, blind in the dark. This sucks. In the plot in my head, my characters face definite conflict. The way I see it, there are plenty of clashes coming. Unrequited love that turns into requited love with big speed bumps made of pride, stubbornness, self-realization and fear of being vulnerable and alone dropped in the way. The more I try to summarize it and fit it into the chart, though, the more I second-guess myself. This doesn’t sound conflicted enough. I’d better throw a tornado at them. Maybe bandits. Something slimy? A wild animal? I DON’T KNOW.
#yes
By the end of the exercise I’ve decided GMC tables are not for me. Yes, it’s important to have a clear plot and at least a vague sense of where this is all going in the back of my mind. I should definitely know my character’s motivations, but I think I’ll be using a different method to figure it out. In the end, to stay sane, I have to toss a strict GMC table out the window and leave this forest. #PantserForLife
I realize I just spent an entire post outlining why Goal/Motivation/Conflict tables don’t work for me, but they might be the perfect thing for your Author Toolbox. If they are, and you have found your way out of the dark GMC forest, you were obviously a scout in some former life and I salute you.
Here’s an excellent starter on a three-part series from author toolbox member Cheryl Sterling (using The Princess Bride to illustrate, which just makes it even better).
And author Sooz at Pub Crawl.com has great examples of GMC, as illustrated by famous stories. She makes it look easy.
And here’s good summary of GMC and why it matters from Valerie Comer from To Write a Story