How (Not) to Write Motivation, Complexity & Mental Health | Storytelling Theory

So what we learned is that this guy doesn't know anything about people.

This is so important because as an actor this is the first step in figuring out your character

Any mental illness is still specific to a person. One depressed person might lash out at other, another might become demure.

"your life doesn't have cliches and formulas" and that's supposed to be a bad thing?

r/iamverysmart just feed me normative slop

Strangely, I learned this from playing the sims.
In the sims, I like storytelling, I like putting my sims through stuff and seeing how they turn out, like a science experiment. But I was too caught up with making my sims realistic, with only doing what I think my sim would actually do. And I got bored, because normal people are not very exciting. Eventually, I had this revelation, that I’m not supposed to do what I think they would do, I’m supposed to do what I would like to see them do. that changed everything. And that applies to storytelling. Don’t have your characters react realistically to everything, have them act plausibly. don’t make them do something completely out of character, but it’s okay if a real person probably wouldn’t make the same decision in the same circumstance. Cause they’re not real people.

what da dog symbolising

FLINGFLONG

I have a character that I am currently writing about that actually doesn't have an image of herself - and exactly that's her motivation. Due to plot reasons that aren't important here, she loses her memory before we meet her. She doesn't know who she is, the reader doesn't, and no one within the story does either. Now was I writing a story about a healthy relationship, she would gain that self image through new experiences and learning about herself - in my story, she instead develops an unhealthy and very anxious attachment to the protagonist, and starts defining herself via their relationship.
This is a very niche reference, but the approach reminds me of "The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals", which is special in the sense that it's a musical that specifically does NOT have an "I want" song. Building your characters motivation around the absence of something commonly there.

Dude I love you content but for someone who’s mother language isn’t English 😅 sometimes I’m having really hard time understanding

I love how this ties into what Trey Parker and Matt Stone say about writing stories. If the points between plot events are not connected by causality, then you don’t have a story. It should never be “and then” it should always be “therefore” or “but.” Same thing with character motivations.

A very well written character is better than a human being. Beyond condensing the 1% of life that's interesting into a written work that's interesting, you can easily do with a character what you can't easily do with a person: get them to admit they're wrong or that something is wrong and it's on them to fix it. But a good writer is needed to do this as most writers treat their characters as self-inserts, purely because they don't have the perception needed to look beyond themselves. So naturally, the character's fundamentally good. It's just chic now to give characters one or many of the cliched flaws that plague youth fiction or Tumblr:
Orphan/bad parents
-Plain but secretly special
-Highly manageable mental health or cognitive disorder
-Edgy but always morally confined to what is acceptable in 21st century America, really bad at being romantic

The pseudo-depth is there for people who don't know what they're doing and aren't actually all that capable. They look for tips and tricks and formula to make the arts work and it's such a frustration to find good writing discourse because most of it is there to help average or below average writers figure out the basics, the things which used to be implicit and naturally understood because writing used to be a respected talent rather than a hobby that unskilled people try to turn into a profession for the social clout and what they perceive to be as the ease of work.

Good writing is not easy. It's so much simpler to be a grocery bagger or a shelf stocker. The great writers of the 50s and 60s like Rod Serling, Isaac Asimov, Stan Lee were men who either participated in WW2, had strong educational backgrounds (back when it wasn't watered down) or both. They had a wealth of experiences in their lives before going into writing and 98% of the amateurs have nothing resembling that. I'd be very interested to see books by Iraq and Afghanistan War vets.

The issues that arise when people try to write and fail to understand motivations is simple. Human beings are infinite in their complexities, but the same is true of snowflakes and rocks. Infinite uniqueness is not inherently interesting or compelling. Most people aren't just boring, but banal. That's the nature of being a social creature and having to survive within any kind of organized society and being subject to peer pressure. The guy who can say anything interesting is almost certainly the crazy old man who lives outside of town, away from everyone else. Because most people are so milquetoast and safe, they have nothing of value to say, but are so encouraged to speak by Western messaging that the market is saturated with mediocrity. I can't tell you how many books I've looked at on Amazon preview just to find myself rereading the first paragraph because the prose is subpar. God help any kind of coherent messaging or themes in the plot.

Your videos are literally on repeat for me

I've been very appreciative of your Videos. I'm currently writing a story for a game and it's something I've wanted to do for a while. Because of that I feel like I trap my own story in itself and leave less room for change and growth just because of certain story beats that I want. I've changed it quite a bit from the original idea but it still has the same theme and atmosphere.

My antagonist in the story is a Psycho mass murderer and I was having trouble finding the Why for their motivation, I thought about a sad back story or mental illness but then I thought what if there wasn't a back story they just like doing it. I think for me at least this character motivation definitely opens up more possibilities and consistency than if I were to have tried to give the character redeeming qualities.

I used to want to make my characters realistic like actual humans so bad boy am i glad i grew out of that phase. the thing that helped me the most was boiling down a character to one sentence alone that describe the character at their core.

I’m saying it again you sound so much like Adam Scott from parks n rec

YO! GOOD TO SEE YOU IN MY HOME COUNTRY! KIA ORA MATE!

The art piece at the end is lovely

I think that its not as much as that "our lives are boring" as it is the fact that there are many stories in our lives and focusing on all of them at once is just too much and may easily lose focus. It's theoretically possible but a purpose of a story isn't to make someone literally live someone else's life, it's to tell a main simple message --- usually the simpler, the more clear and impactful it will be if written correctly
I personally do like to think of my characters as people in a way, it helps me connect to them and truly get to know what they do and like, but when it comes to actually putting stuff on paper, I put in the parts of their lives that matter to the general theme, which I think this video encapsulates perfectly
If you want a multi-faceted character, you CAN do that but you need to know what the purpose of said character is in your story at the very core (In this case, as stated, it is the conflict between humility and shallow success)
Rearranging stuff and connecting it is exactly the key. The way I like to think about it is that the story and characters already ARE there, it's less so about me making the story from beginning to end as it is me slowly putting pieces into their correct spots and drawing lines between them until I solve what it was always trying to be.

I don't wanna ponder the mysteries of the universe anymore.

How could "characters aren't people" be controversial? It's objectively true!

I think that one of the purposes of storytelling is to distill the chaos of life into manageable pieces which allows us to focus on and deal with our problems one at a time.

"Don't get stuck in And-Land!"

thanks, i needed this. my stuff was all over the place, maybe now i can connect things

Your advice is so down to earth and makes so much sense storytelling-wise. Thank you sm for this video! People get really upset when you say characters aren't real people, but it's so true. Characters are questions, not people, as I like to say😂 it's time for me to give my MC a ruthless look under the microscope! ✨️ ty again !!

Thanks so much for this video. I really needed it 😅 It’s a relief to hear that I don’t in fact need to, nor should I, attempt the impossible task of making my characters as complicated as real people, and I’ll still be able to write deep, nuanced characters that feel real.

This is absolutely fantastic, thank you!

Any given human is uninterresting 99% of the time

Not me tho, im build different.

I just wanted to say if you like him you'll like Abbie Emmons

On deleting old videos: I guess I am in the minority in liking to see the change and development that people go through, but that's an interesting reason. ❤️

"You can't arc your way out of a medical disorder"
I mean, you kinda can with some of them.
According to harvard professor judith herman in her book "trauma and recovery the aftermath of violence" basically THE book on post trauma, ptsd heals "only in the context of interpersonal relationships" and occurs in 3 stages of: acquisition of an unconditionally safe social environment, reacquisition of memory and consequential mourning of everyone and everything lost in the incident, and then embracement of resulting ability to be enthusiastic about goals in life again.

"That's not how depression works"
It... kinda IS.
You can absolutely have depression and a single problem with your self perception hammered into you that makes the depression unworkable, and rather than turning tail and giving up on the story as a whole because "depression would make you feel bad even after you made that revelation", you write ABOUT depression doing exactly that and present it as a new challenge. These problems CAN and DO just swipe people without being their sole problem in life, and overcoming them can be just as much a matter of seperating the things plaguing oneself from their identity and realizing that they're not fundamentally broken in an unfixable way and that the thing hurting them can be narrowed down and fought like hell, or at least weakened, because it was never a fault with your existence as a whole.

An important addition if you want to write mental health. Relpases after a lesson is learnt.

If a character got over their fear of death. Great. Their comfortable with it for ages.

Until.

Their friend is killed.

Their emotionally volotile and in the fight against the killer. They fear death again.

They havent lost their growth. Their just in a vulnerable state.

This works best in non standard narritive progressions and longform media. Media that has the time to explore more events and hence explore different aspects of the same idea in each of them

bojack doesnt do the fixing thing with its characters

During a large portion of the video my brain was just SCREAMING "OMORI" (as much of a broken record as this makes me seem probably) especially during the "depressed isolated protagonist" part, because unlike the stories that you describe the ENTIRE STORY of the game revolves around the main character slowly dealing with the root causes for his incredible trauma and resulting depression, and the stakes feel so much higher in most other stories because it is VERY POSSIBLE that he does not succeed in overcoming his trauma, which has disastrous results.

You know, most people myself included, don't have good role models. We didn't have one or the other parent or their families are too busy just making bare minimum that they can't guide you through life. So they stick you in front of the TV, stick you in front of characters and they become your family. To these people, Characters are people, cuz that's who they've spent time with. This video did in the end help me put some of my own thoughts on my stories and characters into perspective, I know what these characters think about themselves, but being told, by literally anyone, that this is an important step in writing characters makes me feel more confident in my efforts.

but isn't chaning purpose is risky thing? Let's assume a character have purpose of A and B. if "and" is bad, we can connect it like "he wants to do A because of B". But what if B fails later and character wants to do A still anyway?

While writing this comment, I found a solution. There can be purpose C. "Character wants to do A to achieve B. Later he fails B. But he kept doing A but this time to achieve C (revenge plan etc.)". This is interesting solution for my case but if anyone else have another solution in mind, I like to hear.

You just helped me speedrun creating a compelling story 😂

Best mental health movie: Keane . Worst Mental Health Awareness Campaign Disguised As A Movie: Joker

I get what you are saying, but the problem is fiction is part of reality. Ppl learn about life through through fiction. Positive representation has proven positive effects, and the same is true with the latter. Mental health is an area with a ton of misinformation and confusion, and making the only stories be about ppl who have problems overcome them or succumb to them lines up with ideas that mentally ill ppl arent working hard enough to solve their problems. Mentally ill ppl shout be able to see themselves represented and not have it be either a woe is me oscar bait exploration or fantatical cures and descents into maddness. So many harmful tropes are used to make narratives more efficient, making better stories. Racist tropes give easy understanding to the role of a character, that doesn't mean you should use them.

I'd say Scott Pilgrim Versus the world does the idea of loneliness well, the fact with that the theme is a running course through the entire story and not just main driver but it's a driving theme in the entire story from beginning to end. It does the idea of tackling the complexities mostly well because it's not tackling everything at once but rather through parts of the story at a time.

Oh brother, this guy stinks!

You bring up an interesting idea at the video's start. and the truth is that in my personal opinion a small look into the constant 24/7 thoughts and actions may of a real person could be far more compelling than any TV show. While it is true that a character is not real person, they should be as similar to one as possible if your writing a character driven work. This may be worse for plot and 3 act structure and even a driving motive, but it would dive far more into a real glimpse at the human condition, which should be purpose of any character driven work in my opinion over having a good "plot" or "ark". The easiest way to do this is a well done self insert, which conveys a small slice of your self out to the world. But you could also do this with an entirely fictional character, just try to make them as nuanced and contradictory and human as you can, if done well it would be a thousand times more compelling in my opinion than a "well made" character that works well for plot. Despite my disagreement with your thesis i still find your videos interesting and well made.

That comment at the beginning is utterly baffling to me. It’s living rent free in my skull. “Craftsmen have supplanted artists”?

My brother in Christ what the fuck do you think a craftsman does?

It makes me wonder what he thinks of smiley-boy stretch hat from One Piece and his "character development". It seems to perfectly align and also completely turn this concept on its head. God I love One Piece.

Eeeeehh? I disagree with the whole characters aren't human thing. A character is a representation of a person in a world you make the rules of, a character is a human in the narrative of this world, the fact that this comes from a mind limits how deep that they can go. The main thing between characters and people is that you only see a certain amount of their life, so they can't have a non interesting part of their life be a focal point because it makes it difficult to see them as a friend (people need to know how someone is interesting to find them compelling and that's why characters are hard)

But i did arc myself out of depression. I was given SSRIs, but refused to take them, got a girlfriend and a new hobby, and became happy. You can arc yourself out of depression. "It doesn't work like that" is just something flawed experts say, because their institutions taught them how ot works.

Thank you for the visuals. More helpful than almost any video I've found on the subject

Those reasons for why a character is depressed hit way to fucking close to home I habe feelings of all of those get the hell out of my head lol.

As a ut/dr fan my delusional self disagrees