Wants vs. needs

in the last video we talked about the difference between internal and external features let's ignore external or physical features for a moment and zoom in on the mind of a character one powerful way to think about this is to ask yourself a question what is this character want it's important to understand what a character once because it informs your story if you don't really know what they start out wanting it it's hard to take them somewhere on a journey and that's what stories are all about when you pick a movie any one of your favorite movies you can actually probably kind of like skip to the part where the character says I want to do this I want to be champion you know I want to be king I want to be the greatest chef in the world characters get to have that goal and they will work every day every second of the day in their story to make that happen once drive a character to act a character might want something and do everything to get it needs are the things we need to do or learn in order to grow or succeed in life for example a character might learn that they need to share what they desire in order to be fulfilled or happy the distinction between what a character wants and what they need is important when you're building a character have those things we want oh man I love that that new car or I'd really like da man I love a VR machine that'd be so cool but what I need is probably to feed my family and what I need is probably to have good relationships and things like that often times I think needs or something that we don't like admitting it's due eating your vegetables you want to just go for those tweets the things that that make life easier but we have to sometimes do those things that we don't want to do and in the end it makes for a full course meal for going with the food analogy and I think in a character is important to have those needs and even have those needs sometimes conflict with a lot because it makes our character stronger and makes the path to go through trials that turn them into a more well-rounded character so woody in Toy Story for example he wants to be Andy's favorite toy and stay that way and he needs to learn to share to share his friendship and to not have to always be the best sometimes a character might want something in the beginning and then there need completely comes out of the realization they may have along the way in the case of Sulley he wants to rise up in the organization you know just like everyone wants to be you want to be promoted to be the top in your profession internally there we throw a monkey wrench in his plans in the form of Boo something that he doesn't want to take care of but because this little girl actually depends on him is at odds with what his main goal is if he gets exposed after we have a human child that career path that he wants gets destroyed it disappears so the thing that he values that he says he wants and the thing that he has to take care of right now are going to destroy each other his heart actually softens because he starts to care about boo more than he cares about his career in fact he doesn't care at all about his career anymore and he will choose where he needs in his life is connection a connection to another person he wants boo in his life so I think that oftentimes your want can be some of the entertainment of the story but the need is going to be that emotional heart that really makes people remember the film when they come out of the theater and four years later in the next exercise you'll have a chance to think a little more about the wants and needs of some characters you know as well as ones you want to create