Almost ten years ago, I sat down to write the one. You probably know what I mean. The story that would finally make it and catapult me towards my writing dreams.
The idea had already been brewing for years, and I believed in it with every fibre of my being. I mean, who doesn’t want to read about a time-travelling Indiana Jones and their hapless queer sidekick? And yet, a few months later, I was back in miserably familiar territory. Despite all that early enthusiasm, and all the promises I’d made to myself, the story had lost its spark.
I felt lost. Like I was trudging through mud and never getting anywhere. Even though things were clearly happening in the story, the pacing felt sluggish and the characters were wooden. I was losing momentum: the excitement I used to feel replaced by a dull and sickly dread. I avoided opening the manuscript at all, slowly circling the plughole of self-doubt.
Maybe the idea wasn’t good enough. Or maybe I wasn’t good enough. In the pit of my stomach, I started to worry that I’d never have a story worth telling.
With the benefit of hindsight, I can see that none of those things were true—I’d simply fallen into a trap I’d stumbled into a dozen times before, and one that still catches me off guard if I’m not careful.
I’d failed to properly consider my protagonist’s goal.
When a character wants something, the reader does too
Here’s something I wish I’d known back then: passive characters will poison a story. They kill it slowly from the inside, wandering around aimlessly until something happens. Perhaps there is something they want, but they never do much about it. Instead, they stand around and wait for the next part of the plot to arrive.
Importantly, our main characters can be almost anyone, have an almost endless variety of personality traits, but they must always be driven.
It doesn’t even matter what they’re driven towards. They might want to open their own coffee shop, become the kingdom’s greatest warrior, or be the first to explore another planet. But whatever it is, they need to want it badly. It should infuse every particle of their being and occupy their every waking thought.
If it does, that character becomes the beating heart of your story: pushing everything forward. Their goal creates a lack, a sense of absence and longing. It makes all your story’s glorious tension bubble up to the surface. The reader starts wandering: will this character get the thing that they want? Vitally, they’ll keep reading to find out.
But if the main character’s goal isn’t strong enough? Then things go flat, the story loses momentum, and our readers lose all interest.
And as writers, of course we want to do everything in our power to avoid that.
A goal is a roadmap. The destination in the GPS of our story. And that gives everything else purpose.
Because of the protagonist’s goal, their journey has meaning.
How missing goals leave readers lost
When our protagonist has a strong goal, it’s like entering a destination into the GPS of our story. All of a sudden, the readers know where they’re going and can judge the main character’s progress.
Think of it as the difference between a midnight dash and a lazy Sunday drive. In one case, we’re racing across the country, trying to escape the zombie apocalypse that’s destroying everything we ever loved. In the other, we’ve climbed into the car whenever we want, with no real idea of where we’re headed, and no firm deadline on when to be back.
When we’re fleeing the zombies, disaster is always right on our heels. Every traffic jam or closed road becomes vitally important, because it could derail everything. It might even be the difference between life and death. But if we’re just out for that lazy Sunday drive, it doesn’t matter if the roads are crammed or we have to go through a hundred diversions. There’s nowhere we need to be, and no ticking clock to push our hearts up into our throats.
This is the magic of goals: they make everything matter, turning a series of random events into a gripping narrative with everything on the line. Suddenly, a car wreck up ahead isn’t just a minor inconvenience—it could bring your whole family under attack and leave them running for their lives.
That’s the jolt of excitement and adrenaline that my time-travelling fantasy novel was missing, and it’s a problem faced by literally dozens of the books I’ve worked on as a developmental editor.
But fortunately, it’s incredibly easy to fix, once we know how.
Getting back on track
When we’re developing our protagonist’s goal, there are a few things to keep in mind. Ideally, we want to make sure their goal is:
Concrete. “Become part of this specific friend group” will always be more powerful than “be accepted.”
Achieved by the end of the book, or else lost forever. This is part of what gives our readers the sense of closure they crave.
Something the main character wants more than anything. In a contest between their goal and other things they desire, the goal should always win.
It works best when our other characters also have strong goals—especially if those goals come into conflict with each other. For example, when what our protagonist wants is aligned with their love interest’s goal, that becomes a powerful glue that binds them together. A way to build chemistry, and show the reader how well they work as a team. But then things change, and their goals are suddenly pulling them in different directions. When that happens, the havoc we can wreak on our characters (and their budding romance) is immense, and our readers will be glued to the page, hungry for more.
But that only happens when the goals aren’t just working in theory—when we’re making sure they affect everything our character does, and every choice that they make.
Here’s how we ensure it’s part of the action, woven into the fabric of our plot:
Start with the character’s goal for the novel as a whole. The single thing they want throughout, that will get resolved at the end.
Break it down into smaller steps. If the protagonist’s goal is to find her missing sister, her temporary goals might look something like this:
Talk to the friend who saw my sister before she disappeared.
Follow them, because I'm convinced they’re hiding something.
Fight off the bandits that have attacked me.
Escape from the bandits’ hideout with my life.
Make it back across the desert to safety.
Go back to the friend and confront them. Was my sister involved with the bandits? Are they?
Make sure the character is taking action towards those goals in every single scene and throw obstacles into their path.
Think of your favourite stories. The Fellowship don’t just wander around Middle Earth coming under random attack. They have a goal: to get the ring to Mordor. Because of that, every obstacle—from the Balrog to Boromir’s betrayal—matters because it stands between them and the fate of the whole world.
A goal is a roadmap. The destination in the GPS of our story. And that gives everything else purpose.
Because of the protagonist’s goal, their journey has meaning.
Reading the roadmap of story
If you find yourself stuck in the same trap that I was, know that struggling with character goals doesn’t make you a bad writer. It’s just a warning light on the dashboard, showing us that the story has lost its way.
Even years later, I still fall into this trap sometimes—writing pure vibes, wandering off on a tangent, or just plain losing focus. Course corrections are inevitable, and even the best writers need to make them sometimes.
So, if you’re struggling with your current WIP, look at the last scene you wrote and ask yourself these questions:
What does the pov character want in this scene?
And what do they do about it?
If you can’t answer both right away, you’ve likely found a scene that’s draining your story’s momentum.
To fix it, find them a goal that matters more than anything. And make sure they’re pushing hard towards it.
Because, when you’ve done that, everything will come unstuck. And your story will truly shine.
You absolutely right and beat me to it on this! If one of my writers said they were getting feedback about goals being too overstated, that's exactly what I'd look for: are we telling the reader ABOUT the goal, rather than showing it driving the character's actions?
The other thing I'd look at is whether we're breaking the goal down enough. Sometimes if the character has just one goal and are repeatedly bashing their head against the same thing over and over, it can feel like a lot. That's when we want to look at smaller steps that are still part of the overarching goal. Like with the example above about the character looking for her sister, with micro goals like: talk to this person, follow them, etc
If readers feel like a goal is too much, it's almost always because of that, or because it's told rather than shown, like you say!
Thank you. A new problem I've had recently is that I've internalised this writing principle so much some readers are saying my characters' goals are too overstated! Like, it's good I know what they are, but that doesn't mean I have to have the character repeat or think about them over and over! I guess this is another form of telling instead of showing: I should just be showing them getting on with trying to achieve their goal, not constantly restating to themselves and others 'I must get this; I must get this'!