Here’s 97 different character motivations you can use for anything from your hero, side-characters, villain, or even to craft smaller subplots. Save this post for later!

1. Saving a family member from capture
2. Saving a sibling from disease
3. Saving a pet from danger
4. Saving the world from ruin
5. Saving a friend from heartbreak
6. Saving the town from financial ruin
7. Saving friends from dangerous deadly situations
8. Saving a love interest from dying
9. Saving themselves in a dangerous world
10. Saving a community from falling apart
11. Saving a child from a potentially dangerous circumstance
12. Saving a place or location from evil forces
13. Saving a ghost from limbo
14. Overcoming a phobia
15. Overcoming an addiction
16. Overcoming marital struggles
17. Moving on from loss
18. Finding a significant other
19. Finding a new family (not blood-related)
20. Finding true biological family
21. Finding out an old secret
22. Finding a way home
23. Reconnecting with long-lost friends
24. Getting out of a dark state of mind
25. Finding peace in life
26. Beating a disease
27. Beating an arch nemesis
28. Forming a peaceful community
29. Transforming a location
30. Bringing someone back to life
31. Winning a competition
32. Going on an adventure
33. Getting a dream job
34. Keeping a secret
35. Escaping a location of capture
36. Proving a moral point
37. Proving a political point
38. Winning a political campaign
39. Betray someone
40. Ruin someone’s life
41. Find a suspect or killer
42. Find the answer to a mystery
43. Discover ancient sites & secret histories
44. Perform a successful ritual
45. Summon the dead
46. Save a country from dictatorship
47. Become the most powerful in a community
48. Outshine a family member in business success
49. Prove someone wrong
50. Win prize money to help someone in need
51. Get revenge on someone who wronged them
52. Find the person who wronged them
53. Develop significant scientific progress
54. Gain respect from family
55. Get over an ex-lover
56. Move on from a painful death
57. Keep their community alive
58. Lead their community
59. Heal people in need
60. Preserve a species (animal, alien, plant…)
61. Discover new world
62. Get recognition for hard work
63. Become famous
64. Get rich to prove themselves to people who doubted them
65. Break a long tradition
66. Challenge the status quo of a community
67. Defeat a magical nemesis
68. Take over a location to rule
69. Find out truth behind old legends
70. Help someone get over their struggles
71. Prove their moral values
72. Prove their worth to an external party
73. Become a supernatural creature
74. Keep something from falling into the wrong hands
75. Protect the only person they care about
76. Start a revolution
77. Invent new technology
78. Invent a new weapon
79. Win a war
80. Fit in with a community
81. Atone for past sins
82. Give top-secret information to an enemy as revenge
83. Kill an ex-lovers current partner
84. Reinvent themselves
85. Raise a strong child
86. Make it to a location in a strict time period
87. Find faith
88. Find enlightenment
89. Find out more about the afterlife
90. Confess love to a friend
91. Solve a moral dilemma
92. Have a child of their own
93. Avoid being alone
94. Run away from past struggles
95. Reinvent themselves as a new person
96. Impress a colleague or boss
97. Avoid a fight or war breaking out

1. Teaching them how to hold a weapon properly by standing behind them and guiding their hands, when you notice that their face has turned red
2. Saying something flirty mid-fight which catches them off guard, giving you the perfect oppurtunity to strike
3. Somehow, their training session turns into a full on tickle fight
4. They wince in pain and you frantically start apologizing. As you get closer to check for any injuries, they attack suddenly, calling you out for falling for such an old trick
5. Or they do end up actually getting injured, so you clean off their wounds
6. You want to ask them out after a match, but you keep getting nervous and postponing it, and they're confused as to why you keep coming back eventhough they've defeated you everytime
7. Their weapon gets damaged after a fight, so you make them a new one.
8. Finding it difficult to focus because this is the first time you've seen them with their hair tied up
9. You aren't well, but you don't want to skip training and make them worry, so you continue on as usual, thinking it's not that serious. But that's proven wrong when you faint right in front of them mid-fight
10. They've been avoiding you a lot, and after every training session, they leave immediatly without saying a word. One day you decide to pin them to ground during a fight and ask what's wrong

Dialogue:

1. "You've gotten better!" || "Tsk, can't say the same about you"
2. "I think that's enough for one day"
3. "...can you get off me" || "S-sorry"
4. "You hold it like this and- why are your hands trembling?"
5. "I really look forward to our next match!"
6. "Oh god- I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to hit you that hard-"
7. "Didn't know you liked being pinned to the ground this much"
8. "Is that all you got?"
9. "I won't go easy on you" || "I don't want you to"
10. "Let's do it again!" || "Hell no. If we train any longer I'm going to pass out"

1. Make your reader root for your main character(s). Make your character stretch out their arm toward their goal, as far as they can to reach, until their fingertips barely brush it. Make your character want something so much that your reader wants it, too.
2. When your character trips and stumbles and stops to question themselves, the readers will hold their breath.
3. Push your character to their very limit, and then a little further.
4. When your character hits the bottom, they should scrape themselves back together and get back up. Give readers a reason to believe in your character.
5. If your character is challenging your plot, your plot should challenge your character.
6. Leave a trail of intrigue, of questions, of “what if?” and “what next?”
7. If a character loses something (a battle, an important memento, part of themselves), they must eventually gain something in equal exchange, whether for good or bad.
8. Raise the stakes. Then raise them higher.
9. Don’t feel pressured to kill a character (especially simply to generate emotional appeal). A character death should serve the plot, not the shock factor. Like anything else in your story, only do it if it must be done and there’s no other way around it.
10. What’s the worst that can happen? Make it happen. Just make sure that the reader never loses hope.

Just buried my face in my hands to muffle the cackling coming from my cubicle. This is one of the best things I’ve ever seen. He looks so damn drunkenly pleased with himself.