Monica Leonelle shows how to tie a character's goals to their false beliefs using her Story Symmetry Framework. Order beliefs from easiest to hardest to overcome, then create concrete mini-goals that either break or reinforce each one. She uses Katniss Everdeen as an example, showing how the method works in a three-column layout: false beliefs, goals, and the transformation each goal triggers.
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Hey there, Igniter! Monica Leonelle from theworldneedsyourbook.com here, and today is day 10 of the challenge, and we are talking about character goals and how they relate to the false beliefs. We are on day 10 of the challenge, character goals and the false beliefs. So just like on day 9, we did character motivations and the fatal flaw. Now we're going to look at character goals and the false beliefs, and it's really the same idea. So we talked about false beliefs on day 8. The character goals are the external version of the fatal flaw. So there's motivations, and then you have all these, um, basically like sub-motivations or sub-goals, um, at, you know, that are kind of underneath that motivation. Those should mirror the false beliefs. And so, as I said in day 8, you have the fatal flaw and then you have all these like sub-fatal flaws, which I'm calling the false beliefs, that support the fatal flaw. And so the character goals is really the same idea. The character goals are going to support the motivation. So in the case of Katniss in The Hunger Games, Katniss wants to get home. So because she wants to get home, one of her goals is that she has to win the Hunger Games. Another, you know, and then this, you can kind of break that down into more goals. So she wants to score high on her interview, she wants to impress her mentor, you know, and you can kind of go down and look at like all these goals that she has. So, um, you know, you can move through the plot with the goals, and that's, that's fine. And, you know, some books do that and they have, they have success. Um, but what, um, what creates the emotional resonance is going to be matching those goals to the false beliefs. So every time— so like, one example is Katniss doesn't think she's very attractive, but then she, she's trying to, you know, be charming and win this interview, or like do well on this interview. And, uh, you know, because of that, because she does perform well, um, she actually breaks through a false belief she had. And, and part of that false belief is that like nobody likes her, she's not attractive, she is not friendly. You know, there's all this, all this stuff around that. But for The Hunger Games, one part, one big part of its success, if you break it down, is that every single goal helps Katniss break through her false belief, which is aligned to her motivation and her fatal flaw. So it's, it's all very aligned. And this is, you know, my system, the Story Symmetry Framework, which is in the book Story Symmetry, previously published as Nail Your Story. It, it, um, basically the goal of that is to get everything into alignment. And so this is a really big thing that you can get into alignment that will make your book significantly more successful than if you were to just use, you know, a regular plotting device that basically leaves out any of this. Like, this is a very critical part. So, you know, that's why we're doing this fairly early on, days 7 through day 10, because it is so critical. And if you get it into alignment early on, then it just increases your book's chance of success. So, um, let's look at what this is. So you want to match the character's false beliefs to their goals, and you can do this for your protagonist, for your antagonist, protagonist and also any additional point of view characters, any important characters. So you'll probably want to look back on day 8, which was your character false beliefs. So you should have already done half of this. But what you want to do is you want to lay those false beliefs out from least difficult to overcome to most difficult to overcome. And if you can have like 4 to 6 total. It can be much more, it can be much less, but— or I guess it shouldn't, shouldn't be too much less. But you know, whatever you have, I would just lay these out from least difficult to overcome to most difficult. You want to do the least difficult to overcome early in the book and the most difficult later in the book, right? Like that, that kind of makes sense that the book is going to kind of like the path that the character is taking is going to get more and more difficult to overcome as the book goes on. So you can put that in the first column, this false belief. And then the fatal flaw is the one that the character breaks through in the final battle scenes. And that they, you know, this kind of— this, this is just kind of how it is. So the fatal flaw is like the final boss before the transformation. So you'll do the false beliefs and then the fatal flaw at the bottom of this column. And then in the second column, you have the goals. And so you can come up with, you know, kind of mini goals that ultimately drive your plot as you go. And then at the bottom, you have the motivation. That's what we talked about, um, in day 9. And then this third column is around resolution and how it creates a transformation. So as far as goals and false beliefs go, you can have your character try for a goal and fail at it. So one example from The Hunger Games is that Katniss tries to save Rue, tries to protect Rue, and she fails at it. And so what does that ultimately teach her. Even, even a failure can break through a false belief. It doesn't, you know, you don't have to have success to break through a false belief. A failure can also reinforce the false belief that you then have to break through later. So you can play with this. You know, another thing that can happen is they, the character has success with a goal But the false belief is overcome still because they basically think something is gonna give them success and then they find out that it's not going to. And I don't know, I've experienced that in my personal life. I've had a success or like a goal that I've worked toward and then once I got it, it felt very empty. So this is, This is, you know, I think a fairly common thing that we've experienced, so your character can experience that as well. So then at the bottom is the transformation. That's really going to flow from the fatal flaw and the motivation. So you can kind of think of this as almost like a spreadsheet for your character, and you don't have to have all the information on here, but the goal here is to get it all into alignment as much as you can now before you start to add in other stuff. And this is, this is really like, um, it's really a skeleton for your story. It truly is. And so I really encourage you to go deep with this and don't skip over this section because it is really important and powerful. All right, so you can do this for 5 characters. Thank you so much for watching and listening to day 10 of the challenge, which Wow, we're on day 10. Pretty crazy. We're already a third of the way through the challenge, and honestly, it's not that easy to do this challenge. It's 30 days. It's a lot of work. So give yourself a pat on the back. Congratulations for getting this far, and just know that your dream around your novel is coming true through this challenge. So that's pretty cool. If you have any questions about today make sure you drop a comment below. I can share some resources with you. I can give you some answers. Additionally, if you haven't signed up for the challenge yet, there are links below in the description. So make sure you do that. It's not too late to join. Again, we're only a third of the way through, so you have plenty of time to catch up. It really isn't a big deal. Right now is the perfect time to start. So definitely, if you're interested in it, check out the links below. That's all for me. Thank you so much for watching and listening. I hope it's been helpful to you. Have a wonderful day!
