Debra Dixon's Goal, Motivation and Conflict

I just had to ask someone the other day what GMC meant, because I had no idea what they were talking about.

it asked me not to give a character anything physically insurmountable

Because heaven knows no one ever has situations that simply must be coped with and aren't going to go away, because that's just silly and Everything Always Ends Well.

Feh.

My least favorite bit of advice is "What's your theme? You've got to have a premise!" "Uh, OK, my theme is life is hard." "All right, does each and every scene promote that theme?" "Look, I'm just trying to get the silly fool to go kiss the guy, OK? Higher truth is just going to have to wait a bit."

I know, Connie. Tell God that, right? She did not get that memo, obviously.

Liese, I love more than is probably healthy the line

all your emotion safely shuttered/behind that smile like missile silos

I just had to ask someone the other day what GMC meant, because I had no idea what they were talking about.

Glad to know I'm not the only one out there! I mean, I'm sure it's a fine book, helpful to more people than not, but it's not The Only True Way.

Though I do sometimes ask myself AFTER I've written a scene what a character's goal and motivation are, and if I'm doing enough to bring them out. It's just using GMC as a building block that bugs me, because it feels way too mechanical WRT the way I write.

There is no Only True Way. Anyone who tells you there is is selling you a bill of goods. There are methods for approaching the forbidding task of writing which some folks have developed which may be of use to you, or bits of them might be, or none of them at all. Really, look on writing books as your minions--they are there for you to use for your own purposes and only if you want to. If not, ignore them. They are there to do what you want, you are not there to do what they want.

Though I do sometimes ask myself AFTER I've written a scene what a character's goal and motivation are, and if I'm doing enough to bring them out.

wrod. The best advice I heard on the whole premise/goal thing was "Write the story in your head first, and odds are by the end of it you'll know what the underlying themes are."

Really? Why?

I dunno. I guess I can't quanitify the process in myself, and so I essentially fear that if I pull the skin back too much to look at the guts and understand "why" I do it that way, I won't be able to do it at all anymore. Afraid that if I look too deeply at the mystery, I will unravel it and lose what I had.

I do go to songwriting seminars, because mostly those are just songwriters whose material I deeply love humming bits of their work at me, and I find that part of the process intriguing and rewarding. I suppose in a sense I'm more secure in my songwriting and don't feel that I could lose what I do there, because I feel like I know what I'm doing. But I don't read books about it.

Liese, I love more than is probably healthy the line

Aww, good, Beverly. Thanks.

Do you think it flows better than the original version posted upthread? Are the additions/changes good? Also, is there a problem with the "smile is"/"sunglasses are" dichotomy? I could've gone "smiles are" but I stuck with the sibilance, and because I mean that one particular smile, not the all the smiles your face can smile.

Because heaven knows no one ever has situations that simply must be coped with and aren't going to go away, because that's just silly and Everything Always Ends Well.

Really. Though I do think the kernel of good advice within the bad would be, "don't give a character anything you won't be able to tell a story around." For example, if you want to make your heroine, a police officer, a single mother, it's better that her child is 12 and can be left alone for a few hours than that you stick her with a three-month-old she has to constantly find sitters for and who the reader's always worrying about.

Unless the story you need to tell is about a police officer with an infant child, of course.

I've never heard of GMC, and I'm not sure I want to.