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Act I: Character Motivations & A Devil called Marketing

2026/05/21 How-To Storywriting

Who decides what's Tried-&-True?

A lot of folks who discuss storywriting for content will tell you that your protagonist must have a Want & a Need. That your character requires an aim they are chasing & a conflicting higher purpose. I find that often this advice is offered because it gives the writer a practical short hand for their story's themes & morals. It frames a character's journey as merely the discarding of some false part of the self.

But, I've always felt like that idea was contrived. That maybe this "Want vs Need" dichotomy was some hand-me-down sound bite that had lost touch with it's original use. Not every story is about reinventing yourself or unlearning a flaw, after all. Sometimes, what a person wants & what a person needs are more complicated, more subjective. So, what's the real purpose of this technique? What function does it fulfill in storywriting?

Audience Expectations

Weebs pick what they watch for specific reasons. Maybe they like a particular genre, maybe the style of an anime captures their imagination, or maybe a character simply really speaks to them. Whatever drew them in, when they first decide to sit down & commit to the first few episodes, they have an idea in their mind of what the story will be about. These may take the form of concrete details they are excited about, or a vague feeling that elicits a quiet curiosity from them. At this stage, the viewer has both their own unique understanding of what the show is & expectations as to how it will unfold. These expectations aren't demands, but simply an extension of how they believe their current understanding of the show behaves. What they believe the rules of engagement are for this particular genre or these character architypes.

So, where did they get this "Understanding"? How did these ideas take root in their mind? An easy answer might be the promotional art, with its ability to telegraph the genre, the style, the cast, and more. Or maybe, its the descriptive blurb (Otherwise known as the Logline), that directly states what the show is about. It might also be that the anime-fan in question has already looked up the show, has already consumed some of the promotional videos & fan-snippets. Collectively, all these avenues create an impression on to the mind of the potential viewer & persuades them that this piece of media aligns with their tastes. It elicits a desire to seek out more.

Once the episode begins, the viewer will find out fairly quickly if their own understanding holds up to the real thing. Their curiosity finds resolve & our weeb will decide if they wish to watch the episode all the way to the end or close the tab right then & there. And, while an insecure writer may be sweating their palms right now, thinking about the possibility of someone walking away from their story right at the start, it is imperative that you understand this is not something you, the writer, needs to worry about. It is not your job to get people in seats, to get fans to buy into a product. That is the marketer's role. Your job, as the writer, is to get the people already engaged to buy into the hero's heart. To buy into the story itself & not the product.

The role of an introduction is to establish the building blocks of a story. An experienced writer will make those blocks as inticing as can be, but the raw ingrediants of an introduction are inherently a bit simple, a bit boring. This is normal. This is expected, as the role of these pieces are to communicate clearly, to set the scene. Anyone trying to set up a flashy introduction is only using tricks, smoke & mirrors, to create this specticle, as the viewer has no context for what is happening. They are a blank slate of hanging expectations & limited patience. They need those questions resolved, & that requires clarity on the writer's part. In other words, the writer is picking up where the marketer left off, and the role of the introduction is to help the audience member transition from the role of a buyer at the end of a sales funnel to that of an art-enthusiast. To the role of a weeb!

Yes, an experienced writer will adapt elements of their story & their intro to market trends. Yes, independant creators need to act as both writer & marketer. But, and this is important, you must know where the role of one ends & where the role of the other starts. Yes, their roles overlap. Yes, one will affect the other. But, you must know where to draw the line, or else you will find yourself unable to sleep at night worrying about things that have nothing to do with writing instead of trailblazing in the awesome world of storytelling!

The Catalyst

The introduction of a story confirms, resolves, the questions that the marketer put into the mind of the viewer. Setting, genre, cast, style, all these boilerplate elements get presented, along with, if the writer has done their job, a few unexpected details that establish the stakes. In other words, the consequences that would occur if there were a system failure in the established status quo.

And a system failure does happen. The status quo does change. You might have heard your english teacher tell you that this section of the story goes by the name of "Catalyst", the event that kick starts the story. And, eventually the catalyst cascades down into the protagonist's life, changing their own status quo as well. Putting them in a position they are not used to being in, desirable or not. But, this does not surprise our viewer. Not one bit. See, our viewer knows this story beat from the promotional material they consumed before sitting down to watch the show. The poster sorta told them what the cast would look like around the start of the 2nd act, and the logline told them what the main conflict would be... Which means, the catalyst, despite being at the tail-end of the first act, is still within the part of the story where the jobs of the marketer & the writer overlap. Or should I say, this is where the overlap between both roles end.

See, here is where things begin to shift gears. The promotional material might have informed our otaku about the initial conflict, about the core plot, but this is where the set-up ends. Our protagonist must decide what they will do now, how they will initially react to their life being up-ended, and this is an element of the story that no marketing piece has revealed, or frankly, has the power to. Anything past the Catalyst is beyond the scope of the marketer. Yes, they may use snippets to showcase exciting set-pieces later in the show. Yes, they may even depict the protagonist's emotional state to use empathy to draw in the viewer. (Kingdom Hearts' marketing material leans on this technique.) But, it is not the same experience as that of a viewer who has watched your first act all the way through & has seen our hero witness their life change, now sitting at a crossroads, deciding what they will do next.

In a sense, this is where the true story begins, where the real writing starts! We are no longer establishing genre stables & conveying world-building tidbits. This is where we stop engaging with our viewer on a marketing level & start engaging with them on a narrative level! This is where your grit as a writer gets tested. Where you tell us who your main character is, what they care about, what worries them, & what lengths they are willing to go.

The Want-vs-Need's short-comings

Let's return to our initial concept of the "Want" vs "Need" for a minute. With everything we've discussed, what new understanding can we glean from this idea? Well, at first glance, the Want-vs-Need answers the question we just posed: "What will the protagonist do now that they have to adapt?" They have things they want, but the Catalyst has also exposed some glaring issues, not just in the world, but in the protagonist's behavior that they must resolve if they wish to grow. It immediately creates conflict, not external conflict, but a conflict of interest within the main character. It makes them dynamic, it gives them push-and-pull.

And, while I am skeptical of this technique, this is not a bad thing. One could write an amazing story with a very compelling protagonist using the Want-vs-Need model. I want to make it clear that I have nothing against the method itself, simply that in writing circles we discuss this concept like it is an absolute objective necessity to all good story & I simply believe that this is not the case. That yes, a main character needs to have desires & goals, but that these are not the same thing as simple Wants-and-Needs, and that this idea is a red herring, that sometimes this piece of advice causes more harm than good, especially to young writers who are still finding their footing.

What I find particularly interesting about the Want-vs-Need model is that the want is always objective, it is always something the main character is actively seeking in the material world, but that the need is normally pretty subjective, often debatable. It has always felt to me like a character will tell the world what they want & that the author will come down from the heavens and exclaim: "No, what you really need is this other thing!" with every side character mirroring that same idea, begging the main character to change their ways. This form of story telling feels very parabolic to me. Like the author is trying to wack the audience over the head with some moral lesson.

What do you do if your protagonist is pursuing the right goals, but just doesn't know how to get there? Or what if your hero knows they were walking the wrong path, but you want to tell a story about them struggling to find what exactly the right path for them might be now? The want-vs-need model does not allow for open-ended moral questions. More over, it forces the character to start in opposition to the main themes of your story. I've also always felt like characters who are disenfranchised, I mean truly at their lowest-low, will typically only have room for survival in their life. That desires & personal-growth all feel frivolous compared to eating, sleeping, avoiding danger, & finding shelter.

The Wound

Back to our anime-watching weeb. They've just watched through most of the first act. They might have even come to understand who the main character was in their day-to-day life before the catalyst messed things up for them. Very often the initial catalyst will say just as much about a story's themes as a character's motivations. After all, whatever system failure caused the catalyst to happen might have been showing signs of decay even before it all went to hell. Signs that the protagonist may or may not have noticed... or chosen to ignore.

Typically, the reason why a protagonist may ignore such signs would be due to their "Wound", otherwise known as "The Hero's Ghost". An event in the protagonist's past that caused them to internalized a flawed value or an unhealthy survival mechanism. This technique serves a duel function as it is both the reason why the hero chooses to avoid there deeper needs, & is the reason why we root for them to overcome themselves. It makes their character flaws understandable & human. And, in a sense, gives the pursuit for self-actualization stakes, a cost.

The hero's ghost is the reason why the protagonist thinks of themself & their relationship to the world the way they do. It has crystalized their identity in its current state & acts as a sort of "2nd Catalyst From The Past". And, while I'm critical of Want-vs-Need, I think the "Hero's Wound" holds up to scrutiny.

Even if your character hasn't experienced a horrible tragedy, chances are they forged there identity through the events of the past & at least one thematically relevent & potentially negative experience will have shaped them that way. It doesn't always have to be a wound or a ghost, sometimes it can be something like shame or misplaced happiness, something they don't want to lose. All that matters is that it has allowed them to lie to themselves & define themselves in the guise of a persona, a false-self which this new catalyst will challenge. Well, at least that's the way prescribed by the Want-vs-Need model.

Adaptive Behaviors

See, the theory behind this type of compensatory behavior belongs to a psychologist named Alfred Adler. To give a brief biopic of the guy, Adler came into the early psychology movement between Freud & Jung's time, some even suggesting Jung took influence from him. Adler is a strange figure because the strength of his theory & his lack of upperclass connections caused a lot of his ideas to spread through psychology circles & common parlance without much attribution back to him. Meaning, everyone knows what an inferiority complex is, & yet few know that idea comes from good-ol' Alfred.

Adler departs from Freud's libido model to instead focus on goals, what he labels as the three life-tasks: Community, Career, & Love. A person's ability to meet those challenges along with early childhood experiences shape their goals & lifestyle. Adler believed that individuals unable to meet what he called their Self-Ideal would use coping or safeguarding behaviors to deal with this inferiority.

A person coping with a lack that they believe can be overcome will use a problem-solving approach, such as a student who struggles with math & decides to regularly pull allnighters to improve. A person coping with a lack that they can not overcome will instead use a compensatory approach, the way a blind person may be unable to read & so learns braille instead. On the other hand, individuals who rely on safeguarding behaviors attempt to trick others & themselves into thinking that outside factors prevent them from achieving their goals, through conscious or unconscious means. These safeguarding behaviors could look like someone who vainly uses excuses to push their responsibilities onto others. However, it can also look like the more understandable case of a disruptive youth who learned early in childhood that his parents stop arguing when he causes trouble.

This line between individuals who use Coping & those who use Safeguarding is where we find the source of the Want-vs-Need model. The habit of writers who take Safeguarding characters & unravel them until they learn a more productive approach has shaped the way we teach storywriting. However, not every story needs to be like this. Overcompensation, Unhealthy or unattainable self-ideals, coping behaviors that come at a cost too high, these are all stories that diverge from the classic Want-vs-Need model that are worth narrativizing.

Adler's practises were well regarded by most, including his patients. His encouraging & non-judgemental approach to psychology helped many move from a state of hopeless helplessness into that of motivated problem-solver ready to retake control of their life. We owe much to this practical man. So, I encourage you to dig more into his theories & into Individual Psychology, if you wish to learn more on character writing.

Addendum: Kill The Artist In Your Mind

I wrote this entry because, after many years of studying storywriting, I became increasingly frustrated with how sound-bitey a lot of the advice thrown around was. I don't know how many books & videos I've read that talk about character arcs in this equally formulaic yet wishy-washy fashion. Like, the instructions to the recipe are all there, but no one knows which dish were cooking, so the chef is too scared to give you advice on which ingrediants to pick & why.

Pardon the unfiltered cynical rant here but frankly, I think the people who write self-help books on writing might just be bad at understanding human beings. Like the marketing world & the writing world spent too much time together & now everyone's forgotten what writing untainted by capitalistic-anxiety looks & feels like. Like, storytelling has all been reduced to character IPs with relatable traits & marketable trauma that they overcome in order to become some ideal corporate america can sell back to you in your personal consumer choices.

I see way too many people, individuals who vocally hate capitalism & how modern technocratic life feels like, who find themselves frozen, ABSOLUTELY PARALYZED, by the pressures of algorithms & marketability & what will do numbers. People who love art, who want nothing but to create to their hearts desires, untethered & unfiltered, and yet have found this anxiety worm its way in the center of their priorities. Let this thing that they don't even like rewrite the rules of their artistic ambitions. Why? Why did we let them do that to our art?

We need to break away from all that noise. To get moving again. Make shit. Make garbage. Write your own theories, bring your own perspective. Make your own stories. Make them good, make them bad. Just finish them.

Kill the artist in your mind.

The version of yourself they marketed to you.

Embrace being a loser,
Being a nobody.


Let the art speak for itself.