Day 9: Matching Character Motivations and the Fatal Flaw

Hey there, Igniter! Monica Leonelle from theworldneedsyourbook.com, and today is day 9 of the challenge. We are talking about character motivations and how they relate to the fatal flaw. We are on day 9, character motivations and the fatal flaw. And so what we're doing in this section is we are trying to find the external character arc to go with the internal character arc that we've been mapping out through days 7 and day 8. So every protagonist is going to have that internal and external conflict. You want to overcome that before reaching the transformation. So these conflicts are expressed early on in the book through two devices, which are the motivation and the fatal flaw. So it's the external conflict and the internal conflict, uh, two acknowledgments of the same problem is how I think of them. So So the internal conflict, for example, in The Hunger Games, Katniss, you know, she's really, she's fine to sacrifice herself for her sister. Or she, I can't say she's fine to do it, but she's willing to do it. She's willing to sacrifice herself for her sister. She is having inner conflict around Peeta versus Gale, so two love interests. She's having conflict around who, you know, what, what she has to do, like who she has to fight, who she has to kill, who she has to— just being in the game. It's like a real psychological, just, you know, psychologically challenging for her. And so that's her internal conflict. You know, the motivation is that she wants to win and go home. That's her external conflict, and you really need both of them to make the book, uh, resonate with people. So the reason that people love Katniss is because of her internal conflicts and how she handles this very challenging external conflict. You know, one of her One of her flaws— I don't, you know, this isn't necessarily the fatal flaw, but one of them is that she doesn't really— she's not— she's willing to like sacrifice herself for people who are weaker than her, so for the underdogs. So you see that with Primrose, you see that with Rue. They're both much younger girls, and she is willing to sacrifice herself to protect them. And so that, that is a, that is a flaw that she— I mean, it's not a flaw, that's one of the reasons that people like her as a character, but that is a flaw in terms of the external conflict of winning the Games. So the ideal to win the Games is to not try to help all the underdogs, but rather to build up your own strength and, you know, see everyone as an enemy or see ways that you can double-cross each other. So, you know, these two, these two pieces, the motivation and the fatal flaw, they really kick off the plot and character arc basically. The reason that you need this character motivation is because the book doesn't move forward based on a fatal flaw. So if the fatal flaw is that Katniss is willing to sacrifice herself for underdogs, like, that's not really a story. That is something that is helpful to her, but that is going to be pretty subconscious to her. She's not going to be able to, um, she's not going to really understand, um, what's going on in her psyche around that. So the character motivation is what, you know, drives that plot forward. And as the plot unravels, she will be confronted with this fatal flaw in terms of false beliefs over and over again. Um, so these are, you know, again, fatal flaw and motivation, they go together. All right, so, um, you're gonna do this for each character. Find the character's motivation and the quest that they are going to go on. So Katniss's motivation is that, um, she wants to come home. She wants to come home to her family. Uh, her quest then is that the only way she can come home is to win the Hunger Games and to survive. And so this isn't, you know, this isn't a quest that she chose at all, but it is the quest that she's on. And so you can go through each character, look at what is their motivation. So for Katniss, it would be get home. What is the quest that they're on? The Hunger Games. How does the motivation reflect the fatal flaw? Yeah, that's an interesting one. For Katniss, I would say that wanting to get home— I think she really wants to get back to her sister, who is the person that she joined the Hunger Games for in place of to begin with. So I think that is her— those two things are mirrored, that she wants to get home and that she is willing to sacrifice. And so it's in order to get home, she's gonna have to sacrifice even more, right? Like, she's probably gonna have to kill people. She's gonna have to try to win these games even though it goes against her morals. So she's gonna have to give up a part of herself in order to sacrifice for others, like her, her mom, her sister, Gale. And then how does the quest end? Well, you know, if you read the book. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that for Katniss, the quest ends— she does manage to win the Hunger Games. But there are obviously twists along the way. So you can do this for 5 different characters, and then there's also a page for additional notes. Thank you so much for watching and listening. I hope this has been helpful to you. If you have any questions, make sure you drop those those below in the comments section, and I will try to get back to you with a resource or an answer to your question. Additionally, if you have not signed up for the challenge yet, yes, we're on day 9, but there's still plenty of time to sign up for the challenge, to be a part of the challenge. All the links and information you need are below in the description. Hope this has been helpful to you. Have a wonderful day.