Excerpt from Chapter 7 of Eliza Knight's EDIT YOUR BOOK IN A MONTH..............GMC (Goals, Motivation & Conflict)

Welcome back!

Today is the final day of excerpts for EDIT YOUR BOOK IN A MONTH, that I’m posting on Chicks of Characterization. If you want to read more, take your chances on Friday, I will be giving away copies, or you can purchase the e-book on Amazon, and coming in the next week, the print copy.

Excerpt from Chapter Seven, Edit Your Book in a Month © Eliza Knight

GMC (Goals, Motivation, Conflict) is integral to each and every character of a story and without it can leave your story weak, your character’s without empathy from the reader, and can result in not only a rejection from an editor/agent, but bad reviews, and loss of an audience.

In order for your book to contain credibility and acceptance, your characters have to be well fleshed out. They have to pop, they have to be realistic and believable—even if you write paranormal/science fiction—your reader has to believe that the characters could be real in the world you’ve built. Without a goal, your character is going nowhere. Without motivation behind the goal, the goal is considered frivolous. Without conflict, there is nothing to inhibit your character from meeting out their goals, and hence not enough “meat” to sustain a story.
We’re going to break down each of the three mega parts of a character’s GMC.

Goal: What does the hero/heroine/villain/secondary character(s) want? What is the character striving for?

Example from my novella, Her Captain Returns:
Hero: Return to England to take his seat in parliament and beget an heir.

Heroine: To keep her heart from being broken by the man she married and hasn’t seen in eight years, whom she also happened to presume, was dead.

See you tomorrow!

Happy writing and editing!

Eliza

E-book buy link: Amazon
http://www.elizaknight.com/
http://www.authormichellebrandon.com/
http://historyundressed.blogspot.com/