The Motivation of Happiness

When authors want to understand their characters, they usually ask the question, what is the character's motivation. There are a ton of answers that could come up, but they always boil down to the same thing: happiness.

There is a saying that "people don't do the same thing over and over unless they derive some sort of pleasure from it." So, logically, people do the things they do because it pleases them.

So after you find out what your character always does, find out why it makes them happy. Some characters are very transparent. They help people because the gratitude makes them happy. They work out because they love feeling healthy and looking good. It's fine for characters to be simplistic, but this sometimes leads to problems.

For example, some people love getting into arguments or they always sabotage their relationships. How can a person be happy by making themselves miserable? It's crazy, but it's also real. That's when you have to dig deeper. If a person gets into arguments, but always loses what are they really doing? Is it competition that makes them happy? Is it the attention they get from being a spectacle? Is it the fact that they get to be a victim and get people's pity when they lose? Any of it is possible.

Of course, the next question you should ask yourself is why these things make them happy. Maybe our self-destructive character has abandonment issues and needs the company. Maybe the person never had a mother and craves that nurturing pity. Maybe the person was the middle child and was just ignored all through childhood, thus desperately craving attention.

In the end, people are motivated to do what makes them happy, but motivation is the tip of the iceberg in understanding your character, not the end of the line.