Compelling characters have hand goals and heart goals

One of the more common storytelling concepts you'll see floating around writing craft spaces is "character wants vs needs". You'll often see this from the perspective of protagonists, who want some superficial goal at the start of the plot but need a different goal that they accomplish at the end of the plot. John Truby's screenwriting work is a commonly-cited reference point for this.

I like the concept, but I don't like this framing - mostly because it doesn't distinguish between the colloquial ways we use those words. A treasure-hunting adventurer doesn't need an emotional goal the same the way they need air to breathe or food to eat. They certainly don't need that lost treasure, no matter how dramatic they are. For me, the difference is not intuitive.

Framing wants and needs as a dichotomy is useful in contexts like musicals, where there are songs expressing characters' exact motivations. We can tell their actions support/sabotage their stated intentions. That's part of why musicals use images like sunlight and shadows as metaphors for progress towards a goal. But wants and needs are less clear in other storytelling mediums that are less obvious about character intentions. How does a character that doesn't use dialogue express a need? What happens when a character's needs are wrapped in a metaphor? Do wants and needs make sense if a character doesn't change, or a character's wants and needs aren't related to your themes?

So instead of “wants versus needs”, I personally find it more helpful for myself to frame these character motivations - desires that bring the character into the plot - as “hand goals versus heart goals”.

Hand goals are goals the character achieves with their hands, their physical actions in the plot. An adventurer looking for the lost treasure is a hand goal. Just like a character's "want", a hand goal is more immediately obvious and tangible to the adventurer. They're not necessarily easier for the character to accomplish, but they're more obvious.

Heart goals are goals the character achieves with their heart, their psychological or social actions in the plot. An adventurer learning to trust other people instead of doing everything himself is a heart goal. Just like a character's "need", a heart goal is less immediately obvious and less tangible to the adventurer.

Let's look at some core dramatic storytelling ideas through this lens:

1. Character Development

A character can’t get a heart goal with their hands - and they can't get a hand goal with their heart.

All the lost treasure in the world can't heal the adventurer's emotional baggage. And the adventurer could learn to trust people without any treasure. If the treasure hunter could solve all of their emotional baggage by finding lost treasure, he doesn't need to confront that baggage and become a heathier person. The adventurer can certainly think that this is possible, but it's not.

When a hand goal and a heart goal are not aligned, this creates drama. The adventurer betrays his allies but gets closer than ever to the treasure. Characters thought something would make them happy, but once they get it, they feel sadder than ever. He's achieved a hand goal but not a heart goal.

A villain might be in closer physical proximity to the treasure at the story's climax - or even throughout the plot - but they lack some psychological, social or moral quality, and this prevents them from accessing the full potential of the treasure. They're trying to brute-force a solution that requires bravery, compassion, cleverness or other heroic virtues. They're trying to get the heart goal with their hands.

And just because characters have goals doesn’t necessarily mean they have to accomplish those goals, either. But characters have to move through the plot to get what they want. When the character can't solve their problem right away, there is drama in finding out whether they can solve the problem or not.

2. Central Theme and Rising Action

Hand goals are flexible. Heart goals are consistent.

For me, stories feel satisfying when the hand goals and the heart goals are aligned. Character development happens when a character achieves their heart goal, especially when they willingly give up the more obvious hand goal to get their heart goal. Heart goals reflect some emotional turmoil that the hand goal can't resolve. So even if a character changes their immediate scene-to-scene task, that is not necessarily a sign that they have developed as a character yet - or at all.

An adventurer might search for one treasure at the start of the story and then a different treasure for the rest of the story. This does not mean they have more moral relatability, more emotional consistency or more clarity of purpose. Again, you can't solve one with the other.

On the other hand, the adventurer self-actualizes by learning to trust other people, and now the material problem of finding the lost treasure becomes trivial in comparison. But the material problem still exists. The character still has to solve it. Again, if self-actualizing alone solves the material problem, why is there a material problem in the first place? The adventurer doesn't need to trust other people to confront the bad guy, but they can't beat the bad guy without trusting other people.

As an extended example: The adventurer has scenes where they gather parts of a scattered treasure, find small pieces of information that lead to a greater understanding of the mystery, fight smaller and weaker bad guys before beating the boss. Each given scene has different hand goals. But along the way, the adventurer gets a clue from a side character's insight, makes an escape because the side character clears a path, beats the boss because the side character distracted him for a moment. The action of a given scene reflects the hand goals. The overall changes in the adventurer's relationship with the side character reflect the heart goals.

Heroes and villains have heart goals, qualities of their lives they want to change through the plot. That's why you dedicate so much time and focus to those goals. Hand goals might change from scene to scene, but heart goals follow the character throughout the story (even if the character doesn't realize it at first). Drama comes from what characters are willing - and not willing - to do. So heart goals usually reflect your story’s central themes.

3. Foil Relationships

Hand goals are sharable. Heart goals are unique.

Often, the hero and the villain have the same hand goals and different heart goals. The adventurer and his rival both want the treasure. But they want it for different reasons. They often have similar skills/professions but use different methods of getting the treasure to reflect this. They go through similar trials and tribulations. But they came to different conclusions about what those trials mean.

Most side characters have hand goals in a given scene but no heart goals. Random Soldier Number 5 has to protect the king, but the audience doesn't (read: isn't supposed to) care what he thinks about the matter in the same way they care about the hero.

An adventurer meets allies who help him find the treasure, but they can be more compelling when they have unique motivations for entering this plot. The allies might be fanboys or want the treasure for themselves or have any number of other reasons not in common with the adventurer. But if the allies all want the same treasure for the same reasons, they feel like copycats.

I hope this can clarify the different ways character motivations inform your story's structure. Thinking of these different concepts as variations of each other helps me make a story more cohesive. So, the next time you get stumped about your character making choices and changing throughout the plot: is your character following their hands? Or their heart?