Big wants, little wants

What does your hero want?

This is the core question of storytelling, but writers don’t always find it easy to answer. 

What do any of us want? To be happy, or happier. To love and be loved. To achieve some particular goal that has meaning to us. (Whether this goal is an admirable one depends a bit on the person wanting, of course!)

Put it all together and we all basically seek to live a life that feels like it matters, to avoid suffering and to experience contentment, achievement, and connection along the way. 

So: If we all want some version of same things, what is it that makes our hero’s wants story-worthy? How do we use these wants to shape our plot, not only on a book-length level, but scene by scene?

What I want today is to talk about wants as they pertain to your storytelling! There are big wants and little wants, and they are (or should be) pulsing on every page you write.