: Re: 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

@Sims2267584

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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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