: Re: How to communicate character desire? As mentioned elsewhere, it has been a stumbling block for my readers to understand what drives my characters. I had thought I had communicated character desires

@Sims2267584

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You are on the right track, but apparently your showing was not explicit enough. A possible problem might be that you have a perfectly fine image of the mother in your mind, but you never communicated it clearly.

Have you described the actions of the mother? The choices that made her the kind of person she is? The things she valued and the things she did not appreciate in others and herself? Did someone show what she did for the people around her?

If the desire of your character is to follow her then she should try to think a very common phrase that you may of may not with to use in the following way:

What would my mother do in this situation?

Yeah, that's about as clichee as it can get, but that is not necessarily bad. She has to show which way she is trying to follow. And she has to show which problems she has with not accomplishing her goals of having to deviate from the path that her mother apparently had.

Possible ways to show this might be to have other characters talk about the deeds of her mother. Maybe older friends of the mother who have known her for a long time and can talk about the great things she did - and the not-so-great things that she always tried to minimize.

Your character reacting to descriptions of her mother or other people that follow a similar path might also be useful. Maybe someone is commenting that the heroic deeds of her were just a way to run away from her obligations, making her a coward - which might not be the way the daughter perceives the deified mother.

In a sense you therefore have to make it more explicit. You don't necessarily need to make her say "I am trying to follow my mothers path of always honoring pacts", but people commenting "You are just like your mother" after she did something honorable followed by a short internal monologue about how proud she feels about this comparison might go a long way.

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