: Still struggling with character desire, positive vs. negative, hooking readers Apologies for the difficulties I've been having, and leaning for help here. Every step seems to be its own stumbling

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You have some great advice here, and I agree, negative motivations can be just as compelling as positive motivations, provided they are well-rooted.

And to that end, I would take the time to backstory your character. It's a lengthy process that seems like a waste of time if it won't make it into the book, but it's so worthwhile. Because a character's goal is far more compelling when it's born out of her deepest desires, his deepest fears, her most poignant moments in life, and it's always more plausible if it is. When your reader understands the deepest desires that motivate your character's goals, they'll root for them right to the end.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is a good example of this. If you asked Harry, 'Why do you risk getting expelled to go and look in the mirror of Erised?' and he replied, 'Because in it, I see myself as captain of the Quidditch team,' as Ron does. The reader isn't going to connect deeply with that goal.

However, when Harry looks in the mirror, he sees his parents. And we know from his backstory that his parents were murdered when he was a baby, he never got to see them or know them. His aunt and uncle abused him and he's never known what it was like to be truly loved.

So, when Harry keeps going back to the mirror, you understand why it's so important to him. His goal is informed by his deepest desires, his deepest fears (of Voldemort) and memories of his past.

So, you know your MC needs a goal. But don't pick one out of thin air and then spend the book trying to convince the reader that she really wants it. Find out who your character really is, deep down inside, what motivates him, what affects her to the deepest marrow of her bones. And use that to give birth to their goal.

Good luck!

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All else being equal, is a positive desire/goal/motivation (of the main character) more 'hooky' for the reader than a negative desire/etc?

Personally, I think this must be the wrong question because I can think of many examples that need both. Look at the Bourne Identity series: Jason wants to live a normal life (positive) but to do that he needs to kill an army of people that want to kill him (a decidedly negative goal). But isn't his goal running away from who he was and killing his past?

In Star Wars, Luke wants to save the universe from the Dark Side, but has the negative goal of killing Darth Vader and his minions.

In Taken, the protagonist is intent on saving his daughter, by killing mobster sex traffickers by the dozens.

The same for James Bond and Kingsmen, doing good by slaughtering hundreds in clever and fun ways.

Is vengeance for the death of a loved one a negative goal, or a positive goal? Especially if the vengeance realized will stop the career of an evil person.

I just watched a rerun of "The Equalizer" with Denzel Washington (2014, a sequel should come out soon), a vigilante ex CIA agent wiping out Russian mobsters and corrupt cops because the mobsters beat the living crap out of his coffee-shop friend, a teen prostitute. Is that vengeance?

While I agree that readers should learn something about your character's baseline before you start slicing him with razors, remember the First Act (your 10%-15%) should end with the reader understanding the nature of the big-ass problem he faces.

Many stories begin with characters running like hell from a bad situation, they witnessed a mob murder and only want to get away, fast, with no other plan. Or a wife is being beaten bloody by her husband. Or a sex slave only wants to escape her captivity and end her misery.

So perhaps you have just gone too far with the normal life and life-affirming goals by pushing them all the way to 15%. Perhaps you need a turning point from normal to "Oh crap" at 5%, then "I need to run away to survive" at 10%, then at 15%, and the closing of Act I, the big ass problem is "running away won't work".

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Negative feelings resonate in humans more strongly than positive ones - but a positive spin is needed for long term motivation

Humans have a tendency to value what they have, and therefore what they might lose, higher than what they may achieve. This is important from an evolutionary point of view, because when we have everything we need to survive and see an area that might have more fruits for example it is a risk to go to the new area. Staying where you are and defending what you already have at all costs will make sure you survive - after all, you currently survive. Only when the current situation is so bad that we can't live we will seek something more.

Of course this is a drastic way to describe the behaviour and it's not easy to see nowadays where he have the basics we need and try to strive for ever more money, fame, ... But in essence, we prefer to stay where we are and where we know it's safe.

This leads to the problem that positive things are something to be expected, while negative things are something that has to be avoided under any and all costs. This translates to reading in the way that we will quickly forget about simple jokes or nice feelings of that time when everything was alright - because that's what should be normal!

But negative things are what sticks in our mind. If the protagonist falls and is hurt, if family members are kidnapped, if the home burns down and the live seems to be destroyed - when something is taken away from them in some way. Their happiness or health or anything like that. This hurts because it already belonged to the character and it should continue to do so! The nice stuff blends into a general feeling of a nice, normal past, but each blow they receive sticks as a distinct situation.

Try to remember all the nice things that happened to your favourite character from the last SFF book you've read. Now list all the negative things. How long is each list and how detailed is it?

Of course the big solution at the end is probably on the positive list and may overshadow some other things at first, but most people will remember the bad stuff far more detailed than the good stuff.

Therefore negative feelings resonate more strongly and can be easier to see as an immediate motivation of what happens and why a character acts the way he acts. The problem is the long term motivation. Running away is not really a motivation unless your book is supposed to end in a tragedy. Getting my old life back is the normal way to give this a positive spin. There is a lot of bad stuff happening and the character is trying to get back to the good times, remembering how everything was alright when he had everything he needed and how even the small stuff was beautiful in hindsight, now that everything is bad and the sky is falling down on him he can only try to survive and get from day to day, hoping to one day return to normality.

The positive spin is important for long term motivation and to give the reader a better feeling at the end when the character accomplishes his goal - maybe in a different way than he imagines, for example by starting a new life with someone he met on his journey, but in essence he accomplished his goal.

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