Free Getting Into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn From Actors by Brandilyn Collins

reaction is to fight it. To say, “No matter what the doctors tell me, no matter how little chance I have, I will beat this illness.” The person envisions himself going around the wall of cancer and getting back on his path.
    In the same way your protagonist is on his path of life. He has goals he wants to achieve in his normal world. Then an unexpected event occurs—the inciting incident—that knocks him off that path. At this point his Desire is formed. He will spend the rest of the book dealing with that incident and subsequent conflicts, always with the intent to get back on the path that leads to obtainment of his Desire.
     
    Example of Distancing
     
    Let’s look again toSteinbeck’s The Pearl . When Kino finds the “greatest pearl in the world,” his Desire is formed: “I want to sell this pearl for its full value so that I can raise my family out of poverty.”
    Remember our discussion about how specific Kino’s Desire is. He doesn’t want to just sell the pearl for some fast money. He wants to sell it at its full value. And the goal of selling the pearl is to raise his family from poverty. Kino dreams of providing his son with the kind of life Kino himself had never enjoyed. When Steinbeck created Kino with this specific Desire, he set the character on an inevitable course he will doggedly pursue even as one conflict after another arises.
     
Kino finds himself in danger because others want to steal the pearl. In trying to protect the pearl he loses his house and fishing boat. Now he really has to sell the pearl, because they’ve lost what little they had. He can’t even make a menial living without his boat. But his wife begins to tell Kino they should throw the pearl back into the sea. It’s bringing them nothing but evil. Kino cannot listen. He remains obsessed with selling the pearl.
Next, he finds that he can sell the pearl, but for far less than its real value, for would-be buyers want to cheat him. (See how this specific part of his Desire leads to further conflict?) So he must set out on a journey with his wife and child to the capital, where he can find a proper buyer. But the journey will place not only himself but also his wife and child in danger from those who would steal the pearl.
 
    Making that journey is the kind of choice that, at the beginning of the story, Kino would never have even considered. His end goal is to give his son a better life. Now he’s putting that same son in danger? Why does he do this? Why doesn’t Kino listen to his wife when she continues to say the pearl is bringing evil? Because of his very specific, very strong two-pronged Desire, which propels him through Steinbeck’s tragic story. The fact that the second prong of Kino’s Desire focuses on bettering his family sets up the book’s irony. His very obsession to richly provide for them by selling the pearl for its full value leads him to make poor choices he otherwise would never have made. By this point in the story readers can see the foolishness of Kino’s choices, even though he, driven by his Desire, cannot. At the same time, his poor choices are believable. Why? Because Steinbeck took the time at the beginning of the story to set Kino’s Desire so strongly in place that all he can think of, despite conflict after worsening conflict, is to get back on his path of providing a better life for his son. And to do that he has to sell the pearl. Readers can understand Kino’s motivation. They may not agree with what he does, but they understand why he does it. It’s part of the human condition. Sometimes we’re so blinded by what we want, we can’t see that our desire is ruining us.
    Also—remember my earlier point regarding how the second prong, if focused on a good cause, can keep your character from seeming selfish and shallow? That’s at play here. Imagine if the second prong was all about Kino. If he was single—no wife, no child—and all he wanted was wealth for himself. Or worse, if he had