- (G)oal. What the character wants and strives for to move the story forward. It must be difficult to achieve and come with its own inherent challenges and obstacles, and each choice and character change through the novel must make it harder or easier to attain that goal.
- (M)otivation. The logical, believable reason or reasons the character wants that goal more than anything else in the world and is willing to work toward it instead of giving up when the going gets tough.
- (C)onflict. The seemingly impossible obstacle or obstacles that will keep the character from attaining the goal until she has proven herself worthy through struggle and hard choices--and the way you keep your readers turning pages.
Ideally, GMC is both internal (emotional) and external (physical) for every character, which provides them with depth and believability. More ideally, the internal and external GMCs will oppose each other. And most ideally, the GMCs for your critical characters are also in opposition. Those last two steps ensure that your novel not only contains conflict, but natural tension on every page. But bear in mind that natural does not equate to realistic. To create tension, conflict in a novel must be magnified, just as characters must be larger than life.
Tension, according to literary agent and author Donald Maass, is what makes a novel breakout, what makes it sell. He explains it like this:
All of this comes down to opposition of one type or another:
- The character's external goal conflicts with her internal goal.
- Circumstances put two of her external goals in conflict with each other so she must choose between them.
- Another character she loves wants something that conflicts with her own goal.
- Attaining one suddenly changes circumstances and makes achieving the other impossible.
- Achieving one would have an impact on others her conscience would not allow.
Cinderella | INTERNAL | EXTERNAL |
GOAL | To escape her drab existence. | To go to the ball and have a chance to marry the prince. |
MOTIVATION |
| Marrying someone is her only option for escape. |
CONFLICT |
|
|
Stepmother | INTERNAL | EXTERNAL |
GOAL | To keep Cinderella from outshining her own daughters. | To prevent Cinderella from going to the ball. |
MOTIVATION |
| She and her daughters are blowing through money so fast she has to help them hook husbands quickly and she wants one of them to land the prince. |
CONFLICT |
|
|
Character X wants Goal because Motivation but Conflict.
That's the overall framework. To turn this into a story though, we need to add a few layers, things like plans and reactions and revised plans, and each plan should create a new opposing factor which will add a new complication. (For a complication worksheet, see here.) This creates a recursive chain:
Character X wants Goal because Motivation but Conflict so
New Micro-goal because New Micro-motivation but New Conflict so...
New Micro-goal because New Micro-motivation but New Conflict so...
The more interesting the GMC, the more interesting the character and the story. Obviously, the most fascinating GMC should belong to the main character, and based on the above, I'd much rather write about the wicked stepmother than Cinderella because she provides far more opportunities for tension.
To help find and focus the tension in a story or scene, tack an extra column on the right hand side of Debra Dixon's chart.
Stepmother | INTERNAL | EXTERNAL | TENSION |
GOAL | To keep Cinderella from being reintroduced to the society she should be part of. | To prevent Cinderella from going to the ball. | This opposes what Cinderella wants both internally and externally. |
MOTIVATION |
| She and her daughters are blowing through money so fast she has to help them hook husbands quickly and she wants one of them to land the prince. | There is a ticking clock on her goal, and there are consequences for her success that put constraints on how she will go about achieving the goal. At the same time, there are consequences for failure. This makes it clear she has to walk a knife edge all the way. |
CONFLICT |
|
| Attaining her goal will result in her losing what she loves. At the same time, the more overtly she acts against Cinderella, the more guilty she feels and the angrier she becomes, which she justifies so that she can act against Cinderella even more overtly and egregiously. Her behavior in turn empowers her daughters to also act against Cinderella. |
About the Author

LOVE how you broke this down. I think this is so useful to map out and see how the goals of the protag and antags should clash to give greater depth to the conflict!
ReplyDeleteAngela @ The Bookshelf Muse
This sums it up perfectly! Sometimes it's much harder outside of a graph though! Great post.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great post. I love how you used the example and the chart.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great post and I love the graphic organizer! GMC...I love it!
ReplyDeleteWow! Awesome post, Martina!!!
ReplyDeleteNow I want to read your Cinderella story from the stepmother's POV. ; )
I love how you broke this down. I'm so going to make sure I do this for my wip.
ReplyDeleteOh, charts, be still my heart! I love having things laid out neatly for me.
ReplyDeleteThe way you've set them up I'd prefer the stepmother's story but, really, neither! :P
I'm a Beauty and the Beast girl.
I still haven't found a copy of GMC to read and I really REALLY need to. :/
WOW. I can't love those charts more. Amazing Idea! Thanks so much!
ReplyDeleteI'm such a visual learner, the tables worked really well to get your point across. Loved it.
ReplyDeleteSomeone told me about eh GMC book, but I couldn't remember the author or find it. Now I can- yeah!1 Great post : )
ReplyDeleteAs usual, AWESOME post. Love how you break everything down into logical pieces. :D
ReplyDeleteWhoa, what a great service you've done for us with the info' in this post. Thank YOU!
ReplyDeleteI am SO copying this info in a Word document. Thanks, gals! Such basic stuff, and yet...sometimes easy to overlook while in the heat of writing.
ReplyDeleteOh yes, ps, I'd actually still rather read/write about Cinderella's motivations and story rather than the stepmother's!! I think readers like to identify with a main character who is the underdog, who has a romantic goal, etc. A mean and caustic MC is harder to identify with or read about. Though I suppose you could make the stepmother more identifiable if written right.
ReplyDeleteThanks, everyone for the kindness! Ara--I'd love to write this story, but I've got four stacked up ahead of it. Don't know how I'd do it for YA either. Oh, well. Carol, you're right. An unsympathetic mc is harder to write, but you have to make her sympathetic. I love a challenge, and that's one of the reasons I was drawn to her as I started doing her GMC.I can see glimpses of the vulnerability and devotion to her kids that could make it work.
ReplyDeleteMartina
What an awesome post! One for the bookmark. Thanks so much (and glad you're home safe and sound from your wild vacation)
ReplyDeleteFantastic! I really like the GMC!
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I missed this post yesterday (especially since it was emailed to me), but WOW! This is great!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI knew it, but thanks for the reminder. Perfect timing, too. :D
*runs off to analyze her outline*
What about the Prince's GMC? :)
ReplyDeleteThis is a very simple and very powerful way of defining both characters and plot. Thanks!
Oh, Martina, I love this. It's awesome. My last ms was a little bit pantsy, a little bit plotty, but I ended up more on the pantser side. Now, I don't have the framework I had ready made for my last ms. This time, it's all nebulous and jumbled in my head. Your table helps tremendously. Thank you!!!
ReplyDeleteOkay, I was slow to find this, but it's wonderful. THANK YOU!
ReplyDelete