Writing popular fiction

and threatened enough—a realistic character motivated only by curiosity will call it quits. In that case, the next source of motivation nicely complements curiosity.
    Self-preservation
. When we nose into affairs meant to be kept secret, we court emotional and physical disaster. A genre novel hero courts it more than most. His curiosity often propels him into a fight for his life, usually against the corrupt forces toward whom his inquisitiveness was first directed. A warning: Don't force your character to endure such extended peaks of punishment that the reader's suspension of disbelief is destroyed. In real life, a man will only endure so much pain and exhaustion before surrendering. If you must, for excitement, put your protagonist to horrendous affliction, give him a goal to supplement self-preservation and thereby add believability to his stamina. If
his life
and
the life of the woman he loves depends on his staying one step ahead of the enemy, you'll have more leeway in making him surmount the largest obstacles.
    Greed
. This is usually not a hero's motivation, though it can be if—as in the suspense novels of Dan Marlowe and Donald E. Westlake—the hero is a bandit. It is excellent motivation for antagonists if it is supplemented with other motives to keep it from seeming cartoon-like.
    Self-discovery
. This is an acceptable motivation for a category hero, though the writer must not get bogged down in long paragraphs of character analysis and lose the storyline in the process. The hero should only uncover truths about himself through his reaction to plot developments, not through any long, detailed soul-searching.
    Duty
. In Shakespeare's day, duty was a valid motive for a writer's characters but is now dated. The masses no longer blindly give their loyalty to king and state. It is not sufficient, for example, to establish that your detective or secret agent is investigating the case because it is his job. The reader finds little empathy or escape in the exploits of a man just doing his job. Your protagonist must have a reason for his actions aside from the fact he's paid for them. Why is he a spy or detective? What is there about him that makes him want to do these things, what need is satisfied? Therein lies your
real
motivation.
    Revenge
. This was also a Shakespearean tool—Hamlet was motivated by revenge—but is also dated. In Shakespeare's time, it was often necessary that a family revenge the murder of one of its own because little organized authority existed to handle such things. A novel set in the last sixty years, however, will deal with a social background in which society's revenge has replaced the family's revenge. Most people are content to allow established police and judicial systems to take care of their own revenge. If this is your motivation for a present-day hero, he must be one of three things: (1) mentally or emotionally unstable and blinded to rational procedure, (2) seeking revenge for some matter that does not fall under the jurisdiction of elected authority, (3) a member of a racial or occupational or religious minority who cannot expect justice at the hands of the regular officials. Aside from the Western (set temporally and geographically in a place where law and order were not reliable) or historical novel, revenge must be used only as a prop to more acceptable motives.
    Of course, in almost every story, a combination of two or more of these motivations is necessary to produce a well-rounded hero and a well-rounded villain. In a Gothic, for example, the heroine is likely to be motivated by curiosity, love, and self-preservation, as in
A Darker Heritage
by Gerda Ann Cerra or
Shadow of the Lynx
, the best-selling Gothic by Victoria Holt, or in Anne McCaffrey's excellent
The Mark of Merlin
.
    Thus far, we've listed the kinds of motivation you have to choose from, but how do you decide which motivations best fit your characters and story? There is only one rule of thumb: no character should be motivated by something which is at odds with his basic personality. For example, your hero, if he were to be admirable, could hardly be motivated by an insatiable greed for power and wealth. And your antagonist, if he is to be a fearsome character, should not be motivated by great, enduring love for the heroine.
    Okay. A strong plot, hero, and believable motivation have been covered; only two more qualities are essential to the success of the category novel.

FOUR: A GREAT DEAL OF