I got stuck this morning in my writing. Usually this means I having figured something out. Today, it was the motivations of the two bad- guys who are working together and the interplay with the organization for which one of them works. Very few of my characters have one pure motivation. That is, bad guys aren’t bad simply because they want to oppose the good guy. They have multiple reasons and rationales for how they behave and what they believe, and not infrequently, these motivations conflict. Thus, the weave of the multiple objectives, points of view and motivations becomes complex as I work them through.
When I was new to writing, I would have just plowed right through, figuring the problems and questions would somehow work themselves out, only to find the characters wandering aimlessly through the story. Now I relish working on motivations. For me, it’s what makes everything hang together – and what makes writing fun!