Barb Caffrey's Blog

Folks, I’ve thought long and hard about this topic (the topic being motivation, as the title says), as I think what motivates you as a writer is likely to be what motivates your characters, too.

Now, you might be shaking your head here. Your characters probably range from awful people to good ones; from those who keep fighting to stay afloat, and those who sink like a stone; from those who do, to those who wait. They would seemingly all have different motivations driving them, right?

And all of it — all — comes from you.

Your motivations are important. They infuse everything you write and everything you do. Whether you believe in miracles, believe in hard work, or a combination of the two, much less your not-so-good characters believing in expediency and “going along to get along,” why you do things can’t help but shine through.

This is why people talk about “what is your brand.” I wish we’d come up with a better way to put that, as I don’t like codifying people in the same way as we codify objects. However, as this is the term we’ve got, I’m going to run with it.

My “brand,” so to speak, is this: Out of desperation and tragedy comes hope, safety, and romance. A better life awaits my characters, if they can just get through the morass they’re in right now.

Now, that’s not exactly a great “tag-line,” another concept I’m not entirely keen on. How can you sum up yourself and your writing with one, simple sentence? If you could do that, why would you write at all? You’d have your one sentence, and you’d be done.

Yet I’ve been compelled to write all sorts of things. Books. Stories. Novellas. Blog posts. Opinion pieces. Sports articles. Poems.

What’s the one, common denominator in all of those disparate things? Me.

So, what you bring to the table — or the internet cafe, or the workroom, or whatever — is absolutely crucial. Everything you are, everything you have done, everything you have observed, gets into your writing, much less the entirety of yourself.

That’s just a fact. But what you do with that fact is up to you.

What do you think about motivation? What drives you and/or your characters? Tell me about it in the comments!