: Re: How to answer questions about my characters? I'm reading KM Weiland's Creating Character Arcs. In it, she lists: Questions to Ask About the Thing the Character Wants and the Thing the Character

@Holmes449

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The "lie" can be just an untruth that she accepts.

Here, the untruth can be that she knows the way to happiness. She thinks that by expanding her husbands land and wealth, this will keep her family together. But that might not truly be what her husband wants, or even if it is, it may not be what her children want or need. They may want a father that isn't working all the time, that isn't at war with his neighbors (whose children are their friends) over land rights, or water rights, or passage rights, or whatever.

Another falsehood can be that she thinks that by controlling her kids and their lives she may make them unhappy for now, but she will increase their happiness in the long run, by making them "successful." In fact it seems like the lie can be, for her, that she thinks "financial success and wealth" are synonymous with happiness, and in your story world, believing in this lie leads to utter disaster.

Say, one of her children commits suicide, or becomes a drug addict, or goes into horrific debt trying to get wealthy gambling. Her husband, by her pushing, becomes successful -- And successfully begins a love affair with another woman, much the opposite of her, and then divorces her.

How is the Lie holding your character back? It prevents her from seeing the red flags in her life, about her unhappy children and unhappy husband. They rack up the accomplishments, and her assumption that "awards + money" = "happiness" makes her blind to the unhappiness they feel.

How is the Lie making your character unhappy or unfulfilled? She doesn't understand why they don't appreciate her prodding. She is only trying to make them better, or make their future better. Can't they see that by forcing them to produce now, she is guaranteeing their happiness later? Yet all she gets is resentment, resignation, and tears.

What Truth does your character Need to disprove the Lie? That people really can be happy with "enough" money and property. That life is finite, that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. That all work leaves no time for romance, or laughter, or just being glad to be alive. And some people, if they feel doomed to slavery for life, would rather be dead and get it over with; there would be less net misery.

How will she learn this Truth? That is up to the author.

What does your character Want more than anything? In a twisted sense, the happiness she doesn't have, and has probably never had. The happiness she thinks her children and husband lack (although a big source of their unhappiness is her slave-driving). She wants happiness more than anything, she is just suffering under the obsessive delusion that somehow wealth IS happiness.

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