The Place For My Writers Notes

Which Way Did They Go?

Goals, motivation, conflicts -- right? That's what gets your characters moving, and provides the framework for the action, which grows up into the plot. But that goals part -- how do you set goals?

Ah, my friend, you have come to the right place. Over here on this webpage http://www.mindtools.com/page6.html there's a whole discussion about setting goals! But since I know you're busy with nanowrimo quotas, allow me to summarize some of it for you. In particular, you might want to consider the broad sweep of these categories:

• artistic
• attitudes (improving your behavior or changing attitudes that you don't like)
• career
• education (particular knowledge or skills, perhaps to support other goals?)
• family
• financial
• physical (athletic, health)
• pleasure
• public service

Where does your character wants to make the biggest achievement or change? What time frame are they focused on?

Now, inside that timeframe, what are the smaller steps that they need to take to reach that?

And, for the overachievers, we've got some advice about effective goals. Their suggestions are:

• express goals positively
• be precise (measurable achievements by specific times)
• set priorities -- pay attention to the most important ones
• Write goals down
• Keep operational goals small and achievable -- something you can do today helps you see your own progress
• set performance goals that you control, not outcome goals that depend on lots of other factors
• set realistic goals. Other people like to set unrealistic goals for us to fail to achieve, and we often set unrealistic goals for ourselves because we don't understand the obstacles or the requirements -- but achieving realistic goals feels better!

SMART goals! Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound. Something that you can do in a reasonable period of time, that means something to you, and it is specific and measurable enough that we can all agree that you achieved it.

Think about it. What goals does your character have? Are they large, long-scale ones, or are they little temporary ones? Then think about what depends on those goals? What makes the character want to open the first fried fish restaurant in the sleepy little town in the middle of Kansas? And what is going to get in the way (what, they don't have fish in Kansas? Okay, how about a fried gopher restaurant? Oh, the FDA won't like that? Well, what kind of . . . chicken fried steak? Heart attacks for everyone!)

Where were we? Oh, that's right. Lay out those goals, figure out those motivations, and spice with conflicts. Then . . .

WRITE!
tink
(about 400 words)
Dancing, dancing . . .