Character motivations facing death?

Question

Would it be boring/unrealistic/silly/cliché if most characters only had this main motivation for most of a story: saving humanity/their country/their familly/themselves.

The setting is medieval fantasy, a war starts with an immortal being that cannot be reasoned with. It is like a genocide that only ends when the last human is dead, and the characters are aware of it. They know that in a few days, weeks or months at most they will all be dead. There is no way to survive this. How would people react after their world collapsed suddenly, facing certain death in a near future?

In my story some characters just give up and let themselves die. Some hide in small groups. And the main majority of the humans decide to stick together and fight, even though this is futile and that they are doomed. My main heroes are part of the group of characters which decided to hold on as long as possible. My problem is that I feel that they lack defining traits because they all have the same goal and the same motivation: they want to survive, they want to save the world. Money, power, revenge... none of those things matter anymore. It is all about surviving.

I have a pretty precise outline of the events from the beginning to the end of the story, and the actions of my heroes always seem logical, but what I feel I miss is character arcs/motivations. The differences between characters have been diminished because they are in a perpetual life-or-death situation. What they cared about before does not matter much anymore to them. They lack secondary motivations apart from saving themselves/the human world.

Would such a lack of secondary motivations be a problem and if yes, how to fix it?

Answer 1

People are complex. We always have more than one motivation. Always.

On the most basic level, your division into groups is correct. Some will just wait. Some will hide. Some will run. Some will kill themselves. Some will fight.

However, believing that this grouping is all there is to say about a character is way too simple.

Help or not. One important distinction is helpers vs selfers. Some people will help others, some will help themselves. All the groups above will contain both kinds. Actually, most characters will have both tendencies and act either way at different times.

Hope. You say that things are hopeless, and most of your characters will probably agree. But there is always some people who hope, who will try to instill hope in others.

Bargaining. Regardless of how pointless it is, some people will try to bargain with the immortal, try to reason with them, try to please them.

Infighting. If this society has had a "scapegoat minority", they are going to be blamed, regardless of how illogical or pointless it would be.

Leaders People like to feel important, they will try to become the leader of whatever group that are with. A group with two or more leader candidates has a problem. How much are each candidate willing to do to become the leader? People will differ.

Children Some children will be too young to understand what is going on. What will their parents tell them?

Split families One parent wants to hide. The other wants to run. Who gets to keep the children?

Religion This is going to bring out all the nutcases. And they will gain followers.

All these aspects affect most of the characters. Mix and match!

Answer 2

You are too focused on the here and now. The actions happening to your characters are important, sure. But what about their thoughts and feelings?

Are they scared to lose what they had before the conflicts? Are they angry that they are the only ones to fight while they see others just give up? Are they hopeful for a better future, or do they hope to get their old lives back?

Characters always have a secudairy motivation. If you haven't found them yet, dig deeper in their physche. Flesh out your characters more, they are not emotionless robots

Answer 3

At the core of every story, there is a moral choice. That is, a choice between values. Circumstances force the protagonist to the point where that choice must be faced and made and lived with. Such choices can obviously end well or badly, and can involve triumph or sacrifice or defeat for the main character. But always there is the choice to be faced.

But your scenario does not seem to leave a lot of room for a meaningful choice. Death is certain, not just for the character, but for everybody the character cares about. How can one have a choice of values in a situation in which all values are about to be extinguished?

Certainly, if you are going to find one in such a situation, you will have to look inward. Perhaps the protagonist has been feuding with his father and he decides to overcome his resentment, swallow his pride, and make peace before they both die. But if you want this to be a story, not merely a history of destruction or a nihilist character study, there needs to be that element of choice at the heart of the narrative.

To put it another way, all stories are in some sense redemptive. They are a rebellion against the apparent meaningless of the universe in which we are all bound to die and the material universe itself is doomed to burn out and fade to black. Stories assert that there is actually a shape and a purpose and a dignity in our lives and in the life of the universe. They stick a thumb in the eye of nihilism and despair and say, no, this all means something, it has purpose, it has value. All stories are a rage against the dying of the light, and since yours is a tale of the dying of the light, you will need to find that rage, that hope, that belief in order and meaning, if you want your reader to feel there is a story here worth reading.

Answer 4

At first I would say: You focus too much on your "almighty" knowledge.

Why should the people in your story believe, that the end is unavoidable? It is a matter of fact and part of the humanity, that Humans tend to have hope until everything is over. You have that on the streets everyday.

Some people ravage the streets, some commit suicide, some stick to their families ... and some refuse to give up hope. That is the same as with "Pandora's Box" in the greek mythology. Hope is a bittersweet feeling, that can be a cure and a curse at the same time.

Every person has a personal motivation and that is part of you as the author to describe. "Saving the humanity" is just a basic part of the "Hope" and reason for fighting. But why are your people doing this, instead of ravaging, raping, staying with the family, pray to god, etc. That is what drives to character and makes people to identify with the characters.

Character differences are not out of the way, just because a situation changes. In fact: Some of the differences can increase in such situations.

You see: There is a pretty wide area of emotions, character depths and conflicts that can arise around your characters anytime.

Answer 5

Yes, it is realistic. Other motivations may be out there, like mating and having children, acquiring wealth and/or fame, acquiring power -- but some of these are 'artificial' in the sense that early hunter-gatherers with our same mental capacity did not really have wealth or fame to acquire, they barely knew any strangers, and their lives were indeed focused on survival: Food, safety, and family. That is indeed where the human psyche should go (or revert to) in times of any apocalypse. Even sex, romance or having more children will take a back seat to avoiding death, starvation, enslavement by other humans, etc.

Life first. Fun second. I don't see a problem with that.

Answer 6

Maybe Legolas doesn't have any other motivation than saving his people, friends and defeating the evil. LOTR never really dove too deep into his motivations. What really defined his character was not what motivated him, but what he did. He is an Elf prince that befriended a Dwarf and fought with him side by side, almost as a brother. In a universe where these populations bear a deep-seated resentment towards each other due to past history, this makes the Legolas / Gimli friendship heavily significant and builds the character. Its not his MOTIVATION here, its his ACT.

Answer 7

Of course you can do it! You just need to develop your characters.

Take "The Lord of the Rings" as an example. Does the plot look familiar - "an immortal being that cannot be reasoned with"?

Primary motivation of the book's characters is to defeat the evil. But they are all real people (or hobbits, or elves, or dwarfs) with real secondary motivations. All people will die one day, but this doesn't stop us from living the rest of our lives the way we want (or see as necessary).

Answer 8

Self-preservation is an instinct we all understand, so that works. Readers will accept it. But it's ultimately self-focused if you leave it at that. Most people have more tangible reasons for why they want to survive, outside of fear for themselves:

• You don't want to say goodbye to the ones you love.
• You still have something to offer the world. Something is unfinished.
• You think there might be a chance. We haven't exhausted all options.

Each character might have a different motivation, so dig into those. That's where you'll find conflict: when one person decides to hoard food in case he miraculously makes it through, and another just wants to feed her family.

The question you need to ask each of your characters is this: what are you living for? Only in the face of death will they know the true answer.

Answer 9

Well, I'd say that if the character is human, saving humanity is kind of in their best interests.

It's not a motivation that's unique to him as a character, but it's certainly believable. If the villain is a threat to humanity, the hero knows he is, and the hero enjoys being alive, human, and amongst other humans, then sure, he'd be plenty motivated.

The issue you have to face then is why he's the hero and not, well, everyone else in the novel that happens to be human and enjoying life.

Answer 10

Surviving of humanity is the global goal that unites your characters, it's their common point. But it doesn't erase their personality, they still have their inner motivations.

Many other works have explored this path before. LOTR has already been mentioned. IMO Mass Effect 3 is a good example too. An immemorial race of bio-machines eradicate all form of advanced lives in the universe for hundreds of thousands of years. How could we stop them?

SPOILER ALERT (just in case)

Many refuse to accept the truth, as Joker said about the Citadel's news: The last Blasto on the box office, some gardening advises and, short news item: the great reapers' invasion has begun.

Some other tries to take advantage of the situation, such as Cerberus who tries to find a way to control the reapers, or leads a putsch against the council, or Wrex/Wrev who require a cure to the Genophage in exchange of his help.

Some others don't fully cooperate, like council members, who refuse to help other species until their own borders are secured. Or weapon dealers who refuse to sell weapons to police or army if they are not well paid.

Even within the people willing to fight, they are some dissensions: on the way to act, where to fight, how to prioritize … Some old rivalry or trivialities are hard to overcome, even in such extreme situations. Krogans have some difficult passives with Turians and Salarians to overcome in order to fight together.

The fight against global extinction is the global environment of your story, but every character has his/her own story.