Emotion and Motivation

Keep your characters well-motivated. Emotional stakes may include guilt, fear, worry, shame, etc. Often this directly relates to the internal conflict.

Heads up: Motivation

This week's Craft topic is Motivation. Look for "Motivation" posts on Wednesday.

GMC

GMC stands for Goal, Motivation, and Conflict. This term was popularized by Deb Dixon, who does workshops and published a book on this topic.

Basically, the theory is this: All primary or secondary characters worthy of appearing in your story should have GMC, which can change over the course of the story and which can be expressed as follows:

[Character] wants [Goal] because [Motivation], but [conflict].

This is also one way to set up your story pitch when querying editors and agents.

EX: Susie wants to marry Johnny because she just found out she's pregnant with his baby, but she's engaged to Johnny's scary biker brother and the wedding's tomorrow morning.