How important is motivation of characters?

[Pure]

What do you do about it?

I want to channel some discussion here, based on the AH thread that amber started .

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=583774

IMO, this is the achilles heel of most porn/erotica. the only obvious motive is lust, to get off.

i'm reminded of the old saw, "women require a reason for sex; men simply require a place." and since most porn is for men, perhaps that explains the lack of attention to motivation.

in case anyone has a "special interest", i think the problem arises also in SM stories. we do see,

"Master I want to submit.. ooooo" and

"Little One, you will do what i say," said John, sensing his power over her.

but beyond 'need to submit' or 'desire for the rush of power' the motives are usually poorly limned.

===
PS. I don't intend in any way to downplay the importance of Khukuri's thread on motivation.

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=540191

I don't see much overlap with this thread as intended. That thread seems to be specifically focussed on brainstorming for motives in the particular story K is writing.

 

[Kislen]

I think motivation can make or break a story. If two characters simply see each other, and immediately engage without any "foreplay," it makes the story rather bland, unless the writer is extraordinarily good at describing the specific details of intercourse.

But even then, it's the situations, the relations between the characters - the physical or mental reasons for their attractions - a particular type of body, a tense situation, a social aspect that would normally hold them back from engaging each other - or someone that is an object of desire for another being pursued until they are finally had.

If I was looking simply for simple sexual gratification, I'd just look at naked pictures.

 

[sunandshadow]

I think some readers care a lot about motivation, others don't care much at all. And the ones who don't care are the ones who want sex on page one, while the others want the psychology and emotions to be the source of the sexiness rather than just bodyparts in motion. The longer the story, the more important the motivation is going to be.

 

[Jedikool]

Well, in erotic stories you have to ask yourself what kind of motivation is needed. Think about real life. Sometimes when you have sex with someone, or want to, its not because of some deep motivation but simply because you find that person extremely attractive.

I mean there are reasons some people have sex that go beyond that and if you want to put that in your story you should, for example an overly promiscuous character. Though usually motives dont have to be that deep, because sometimes in life they simply aren't that deep. For example, in my story my main character cheats on her boyfriend and sleeps with a guy at a college party because she felt like she was being held back from living the care-free college life that others around her seem to be enjoying and didn't want to miss out on any longer.

 

[Lalah]

I think motivation is like background info. The author should know it because it shape who the character is, but it should not necessarily be spotlighted in the story unless it actually add something to it, and in some sex based stories it might not.

Someone might have some very important motivations, but at this moment he just saw his secretary in a sexy skirt and he just want to bend her over the copy machine and have his way with her.

 

[manyeyedhydra]

Someone might have some very important motivations, but at this moment he just saw his secretary in a sexy skirt and he just want to bend her over the copy machine and have his way with her.

You can apply motivations there to make the story stronger though. Why does he want to bend her over the photocopier? Is it the thrill of the act in an improper place? Is it to reinforce the sense of power he feels over one of his minions? Is it because his wife hasn't had sex with him in over a year and he's desperate enough to take risks?

What about the secretary? Is she scheming to sleep her way to the top? Does she just find powerful men irresistible? Is she just too scared to say no?

The story might not necessarily need them, but motivations add a bit of depth IMHO.

 

[Lalah]

Well I don't consider those real motivations, more like basic building blocks of the fetish you're writing on. Exhibitionism, power play, etc.

I see motivation as the long term goals they may have. They do add to the story, but most of the time showing them wouldn't be a good idea in a short story as it tend to beg for longer plots.

I just tried giving an example of a motivation, but just thinking about it morphed it into a story idea and I had to write it down in my story ideas file. Damn, it's a really good idea too, now that I've given it some thoughts! It's going to make one hell of a novella.

This is why motivations can be dangerous for short stories...

 

[Geeky_lover]

IM(H)O, The best way to invent plausible motivation....

is the following:
1st what's the mental state of the character.
In a story that I'm trying to get looked at for Literotica, the female lead (Freya) lost her breast just after her 13th birthday (declared cancer free 5 months later), now after 62 months being cancer free just wants to know what sex feels like but embarrassed about having no right breast.
The male lead (Joe) has made several passes and offers of date over their entire 3 semesters friendship, but she has turned down every one of his offers and every offer that any man has made (as far as he saw, and even ones he didn't see).
During a Joe's 18th birthday party (at university), a lesbian friend makes a pass at Freya and in her frustration, she vents to the only friend of hers who remained (the last person present, Joe). Joe remarked he thought she was lesbian (cited turning down every man every time). He then mention he knew she had only one breast (from hugging her a few times and observing the difference in movement characteristics when they shimmied).
They went and got a hotel room within an hour, because they couldn't have opposite sex visitors after midnight in their dorms and it was already 10:45.

Background: he graduated HS @ 16.5, and she @ 16 [as in 17 - a few weeks]).

Notice the plausibilities of events here. Breast Cancer in a teenager is rare, but the emotional effects if it happened would be there. Both were very comfortable with each other (she helped him pass Art Appreciation -- a class that his doing multivariable calculus in his head / programming whizkid mind just couldn't compute). Helped her silver-tongued (future lawyer or ad-exec brain) comprehend remedial mathematics and college mathematics.

Okay, ran long.

PS: Do i need to get a story edited first or can I just post it?
My biggest difficulty is deciding what details need to remain and what should get cut, also I sometime forget that not all characters have "my accent" and need to reword what they say. I'm a better grammarian than most non-English majors, but I'd spell worse than Danforth Quayle if I didn't have a spellchecker.

 

[bisexualsmoker]

I think the motivation can be spontaneous too.If it is,then the story
should at least have strong characters,and a good plot buildup.
Theres 8 billion stories where boy meets girl,they have sex and that's it.
There has to be something unfolding first and an adequate background
set.

 

[wildbeauty]

the motivation of specific characters is critical in every story.

Motivation of characters can be as basic as lust, or as complex as... well, you can imagine!

Readers tap into motivations they can relate to, and plausibility increases the chance of a stories success.

 

[Iconoclast99]

IMO, this is the achilles heel of most porn/erotica. the only obvious motive is lust, to get off.

"Sometimes a pipe is just a pipe."

Motivation is important in adding flesh and blood to the bare bones of a story, but most people have a hard time understanding their own motivations for all of the things that they do. I think this is especially evident in strong emotional situations such as love and hate.

Our reactions to people and events are guided by both intellectual and emotional reasons, an amalgum of learning and experience. This creates a fuzzy indeterminacy in explaining our underlying reactions, and makes the task of a writer much harder. Does the writer go on for many pages trying to explain all of the reasons why his character does the things he does or does he or she just cut to the quick and go straight to the action, using the shorthand of love, lust or other emotions to explain the motivation for the plot?

I suspect that there is no single answer which applies in every case. However, it is the job of the writer to provide sufficient background to keep the reader interested in the plot and the characters without going so far as to be boring.

Iconoclast

 

[kromen]

Im sooooo back asswards

For me, the sex seems too easy to write. It's getting them together and making them want to fuck makes my job a little difficult. I've suceeded in my last three attempts garnering accolades as well critisisms as being "too wordy" or "having flat writing", but it tells me I'm headed in the right direction.

 

[percept]

If it's simply porn it would be wise to check out on an Adult movie or some adult magazine instead of going for a full length feature film.Any film porn or no pron without a story and a script is bound to fall flat on it's face.If a sensuous scene is to be shot it must have a script to support it. Only then will the audience find a reason to remember it or it may just pass of as another sleeze flick.

 

[elparedon]

I think motivation can make or break a story. If two characters simply see each other, and immediately engage without any "foreplay," it makes the story rather bland, unless the writer is extraordinarily good at describing the specific details of intercourse.

But even then, it's the situations, the relations between the characters - the physical or mental reasons for their attractions - a particular type of body, a tense situation, a social aspect that would normally hold them back from engaging each other - or someone that is an object of desire for another being pursued until they are finally had.

If I was looking simply for simple sexual gratification, I'd just look at naked pictures.

Readers do want to get to the sex part within the first chapter of a short story.

Still, the first few paragraphs should reveal something about the characters.


Michael

 

[elparedon]

I think the motivation can be spontaneous too.If it is,then the story
should at least have strong characters,and a good plot buildup.
Theres 8 billion stories where boy meets girl,they have sex and that's it.
There has to be something unfolding first and an adequate background
set.

What about stories where they have known each other for quite some time?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

That's a very interesting observation, Pure, and one I'd even expand upon.

It's the difference we've often discussed between porn and erotica: porn being writing whose only purpose is sexual titillation and erotica being the literature of sexuality, the examination of how sex fits into the human experience. If the only motivation in a story is lust, you'll inevitably end up with this definition of porn because nothing else but the most shallow of sexual feelings will be involved. If you want to explore how sexuality relates to the experience of being human -- i.e. if you want to write erotica -- you'll have to have more motivation than mere horniness.

We read porn for entertainment. To whack off. We read erotica for the same reason we read literature. To be entertained and to learn something we didn't know before. To gain insight and wisdom.

But this issue isn't just true of character motivation. It's also true of all insights an author brings to his telling of a story, the depth of a story; its third dimension. Character motivation is basically character psychology or depth of insight into a character. Porn is notable for its shallowness and superficiality, which is why it gets no respect. We've noted before that porn is easy to write because it's basically descriptive prose, not analytic. If you can describe two people fucking, you can write porn, and that's what most people do. Writing erotica takes analytic skill, the ability to analyze what things mean, and that's something not all people have, and so erotica's harder to write.

I think most writers are hard-pressed to tie sexuality to any non-sexual feelings other than love, so erotica is almost always a love story and love is the main motivation, and that's too bad. It doesn't have to be. Sex infuses everything, from ideas of self to concepts of religion and everything in between. The whole universe is saturated in sex and the erotic is always with us, always. There's a huge area of sexual feelings out there waiting to be explored. The things people do sexually are expressions of inner mental states, whether the author realizes that or not as he's writing them, and it's the inner mental states that are really sexy.

 

[ProFane]

Motivation has its own spectrum

I am making a purely personal observation that erotica and porn are essentially "action-based". It seems that if the definition of writing in this style is that it includes frank and explicit sexual activity, then we are dealing with an action-genre.

That being said, motivation is essential towards tying the action together and putting the action into some narrative context. If you think about it, even video games have motivation (not to mention character and setting) to drive the "non-stop" action. Only a few authors miss this point, taking satisfaction just from "writing dirty". Gratefully, Literotica seems not to have many of these types of stories.

Just as it is possible to have too little motivation, it is possible to have too much. I have read some stories that have taken several pages of detail before they can get to that single first sexual act. In cases like this, I wonder if this is really an expression of the author's intent or simply what they had to do to justify to themselves that they were permitted to write about the sex. I have observed that this is also a matter of personal taste. The brain is our primary sexual organ, and maybe this type of build up not only reflects their own experience of sexuality, but also arouses them. Some people need to gent into the heads of their characters before they can get into their pants.

Relativism of personal style aside, there have been moments where too much and too little motivation has been truly disappointing to me as a reader. The first cause is where the level of motivation (and other detail) runs contrary to the type of story written. The original post brought up the issue of BDSM as it affects carrying motivation into a story. I would offer that there are several types of BDSM stories and motivation must be measured to fit the narrative. In a story where a casual Master-slave encounter happens in a club or party, motivation would probably need to be less of a factor because the people involved and the situation itself has little motivation. However, a longer term Master-slave encounter, especially the "training scenes" are laden in psychology in real life and too little motivation will stand contrary to the reality of the tale.

So, for me, it seem that there is a scale of motivation that is relative to certain factors. I think that perhaps the best way to evaluate what it too much or what is too little is to approach the story as a whole with outside perspective. Does the psychology seem forced or unnecessary? Is your story explicit but seems to lack "life"? It might also be useful to pay attention to the ratio of action versus set-up, and then play with that ratio in your exercises to explore what more or less motivation would feel like to you as a writer.

This is a very good subject to consider, and I appreciate this forum as a place to read and write about this issue.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

[...cuts...]

I would offer that there are several types of BDSM stories and motivation must be measured to fit the narrative. In a story where a casual Master-slave encounter happens in a club or party, motivation would probably need to be less of a factor because the people involved and the situation itself has little motivation. However, a longer term Master-slave encounter, especially the "training scenes" are laden in psychology in real life and too little motivation will stand contrary to the reality of the tale.

How much of a character's non-sexual life to bring into a sex story is a matter of authorial judgment, of course, and I know what you mean about stories in which the set-up is way out of proportion to the pay-off. It depends on the effect you're trying to achieve and how deep you're trying to go. The standard cliche is that men like to read about the deed and women like to read about the seduction, that is, everything that leads up to the deed, and so women's stories are heavier on emotion and motivation so you get more set-up and backstory, while men like to cut right to the chase. Men write visually, women write emotionally.

But I think what Pure was talking about was a level of intellectual interest in a story, and I think BDSM can help us here move this topic from the abstract to the concrete, because BDSM and D/s is an area where this motivation issue really stands out.

In most BDSM stories, the motivation is a given: doms like to dom and subs like to be dommed, and we're expected to accept this and that's it. What you get once this fact is established is usually the simplest kind of story: a recounting of what one person did to another. It might be arousing if you're into that (I'll assume we are) but that's about all you're going to get out of it. It's classic porn: descriptive and superficial, at least as far as engaging the intellect goes.

But what if the story were to go deeper? What if it were to probe just what it is that makes John want to dom and Marsha want to sub? Instead of accepting the premises of the BDSM story, it would investigate them. We'd try to get inside John's head and understand the appeal of binding Marsha and what he feels as he takes control of her, try to unravel some of the complexities in the very complex relationship between them, wonder at times just who was controlling whom. This is tantamount to digging deeper into the characters' motivations. It's a matter of depth.

Now we're actually flirting with literature. Now we might actually learn something from this, whether we're reading it or writing it. It might start us thinking or make us look at BDSM in a new way, even if the author's ideas turn out to be more or less bullshit. At least it will be interesting, something to engage us.

The change comes not so much from changing the characters' motivation, but from examining those motivations, from digging more deeply. It's always a matter of depth.

The greatest writers, in my opinion at least, are the ones who show you stuff that's already there but that you never noticed on your own before. Or they ask questions you never thought to ask. It's like they reveal a hidden world to you that's been right under your nose all this time, and by doing that they enlarge the world and make it a bigger place for us. And the way they do this is through a story's third dimension: depth - through looking more closely and more acutely than we normally do.

That's great then. The secret to writing good stories is to be a great writer. Thanks a lot. No. The secret is, it isn't just motivation. It's the whole ball of wax. It's how closely can you see and what can you recognize? What can you pull out that's beautiful and meaningful?

 

[Otto26]

Motivation beyond simple lust/love can be very difficult to sketch in a short story. It's better suited to a longer format and that often taxes the reader, particularly if they're simply cruising for a good stroker. I've got a series of three stories where the motivation of the characters is explored. The dominant feels a real sense of guilt and self-loathing, two of the submissives are emotionally damaged, and one is an adventuress. They each have their own motivations and behaviors beyond the arena of sex. But readers who are kind enough to comment often note that they hated waiting so long to get to the sex. Sometimes their votes reflect this. The guy that wanted to give me a negative score springs to mind.

So writing motivation beyond lust/love is often discouraged by our readers and their expectations. I still think it's important and makes a story stand up to repeated examinations long after the sex scenes have lost their novelty and become stale.

 

[Guest]

The greatest writers, in my opinion at least, are the ones who show you stuff that's already there but that you never noticed on your own before. Or they ask questions you never thought to ask. It's like they reveal a hidden world to you that's been right under your nose all this time, and by doing that they enlarge the world and make it a bigger place for us. And the way they do this is through a story's third dimension: depth - through looking more closely and more acutely than we normally do.

I just had to quote that. Simply terrific, and true.

As to the actual topic-question: I cannot, cannot, CANNOT, even when cruising for the simplest "stroke" tales, continue reading a story if the characters get to the sex without me having any idea exactly why they're choosing to go at it here and now. Even if it's just "I want to get back at my boyfriend for making me mad", or "I've wanted her since the first time I saw her and now this is my chance and I'm going to have her." Fine. Give me SOMETHING, please!

 

[Rob_mDear]

Erotica requires reverse motivation

I think you've got it backwards. In erotica, mostly the characters want to get together, of course they do, so that motivation is obvious and easy. But there's no conflict, which is the heart of any story; no conflict, no interest.

The thing is, to get the conflict, there generally has to be motivation for the lovers not to get together. It's not the motivation to have sex that matters, but rather the motivation that threatens to keep them from having sex. That's where the good stories come from, where there's an obstacle, and the reader has to actively root for them to overcome that obstacle and get it on.

Then, of course, their motivation to have sex needs to be even stronger than one might expect, in order to overcome the obstacles.

Of course, the obstacles can be physical (distance, for instance) or social (e.g. race, family, homosexual), but those are rather bland. Generally, character motivation (e.g. they hate each other, or they've known each other for too long, or they're married to mutual friends) is emotionally stronger and makes for a more interesting story.

 

[davion2308]

Re:

Motivation gives the story realism. I have scrapped a few story ideas because I couldn't figure out why the characters would do what they did nor show their intent. I've seen a lot of negative comments on stories saying something like, "That's so unrealistic." Even if it's porn, a story can't be sold on pure sex. Movies can and people still make fun of them because there's no plot. The fact that people NOTICE there is no plot says something about creating a real and believable world with people interacting.

Motivation is significant to me. If two people see each other in a bus and are overcome and start fucking, it's probably not going to be as good a story as reading about a guy who's finally seen some success at his job and his life, decides to act manly and pick up a girl, and nails her, all because he was tasting confidence for the first time.

 

[Vielle]

Motivation is everything for me. It drives me when I'm writing. If I can't find it when I'm reading I quickly lose interest.

I hate empty mechanical descriptions of sex. I fail to see the point.

 

[Verdad]

I think you've got it backwards. In erotica, mostly the characters want to get together, of course they do, so that motivation is obvious and easy. But there's no conflict, which is the heart of any story; no conflict, no interest.

The thing is, to get the conflict, there generally has to be motivation for the lovers not to get together. It's not the motivation to have sex that matters, but rather the motivation that threatens to keep them from having sex. That's where the good stories come from, where there's an obstacle, and the reader has to actively root for them to overcome that obstacle and get it on.

Then, of course, their motivation to have sex needs to be even stronger than one might expect, in order to overcome the obstacles.

Of course, the obstacles can be physical (distance, for instance) or social (e.g. race, family, homosexual), but those are rather bland. Generally, character motivation (e.g. they hate each other, or they've known each other for too long, or they're married to mutual friends) is emotionally stronger and makes for a more interesting story.

Bull's eye! This post is so good it should be printed out and handed out at the door. Thanks for putting in simple words something I'd probably obscure beyond recognition.

 

[driphoney]

That's a very interesting observation, Pure, and one I'd even expand upon.

It's the difference we've often discussed between porn and erotica: porn being writing whose only purpose is sexual titillation and erotica being the literature of sexuality, the examination of how sex fits into the human experience. If the only motivation in a story is lust, you'll inevitably end up with this definition of porn because nothing else but the most shallow of sexual feelings will be involved. If you want to explore how sexuality relates to the experience of being human -- i.e. if you want to write erotica -- you'll have to have more motivation than mere horniness.

We read porn for entertainment. To whack off. We read erotica for the same reason we read literature. To be entertained and to learn something we didn't know before. To gain insight and wisdom.

But this issue isn't just true of character motivation. It's also true of all insights an author brings to his telling of a story, the depth of a story; its third dimension. Character motivation is basically character psychology or depth of insight into a character. Porn is notable for its shallowness and superficiality, which is why it gets no respect. We've noted before that porn is easy to write because it's basically descriptive prose, not analytic. If you can describe two people fucking, you can write porn, and that's what most people do. Writing erotica takes analytic skill, the ability to analyze what things mean, and that's something not all people have, and so erotica's harder to write.

I think most writers are hard-pressed to tie sexuality to any non-sexual feelings other than love, so erotica is almost always a love story and love is the main motivation, and that's too bad. It doesn't have to be. Sex infuses everything, from ideas of self to concepts of religion and everything in between. The whole universe is saturated in sex and the erotic is always with us, always. There's a huge area of sexual feelings out there waiting to be explored. The things people do sexually are expressions of inner mental states, whether the author realizes that or not as he's writing them, and it's the inner mental states that are really sexy.

Wow. Sometimes coming here is more educational than going to school. Now that I have a first mediocre attempt at a story under my belt, I've started another one. I really thought I had it all worked out, at least the characters. I wanted this to be a bit more complex, and I've batted them around with another writer, and this whole motivation thing is central. I admit it, I'm a huge sucker for romance. But I wanted them to come to that later, their motivations at first are more self-driven, personal needs, wounds, etc.

Well, that all seems simple, right? But, that is hard to write, not all of us can do it. I'm having the hardest time building the first sex scene. Getting inside their heads and knowing what they're thinking, well, actually, they aren't thinking it, it's underlying, hidden to them often, but I need to convey it, and it's proving to be impossible. How do I get them hot enough, horny enough and still show a motivation, something a little deeper, not just lust? It doesn't have to be huge, just a subtle tone, or whisper of thought, a mood almost, but it has to come through. Man. It's just not so easy. All this time I thought my inability to get it done was something else (personal) and it might be partly, but what you say here is huge and a real problem for me.

All that to say ... ummmm. [scratches chin] ... yeeaah ...