‘Fears vs. Desires’ Is a Lie—And It’s Killing Your Story

fear versus desires was never the full picture to begin with not only is it oversimplified but it's actively misleading and that's why so many writers end up with characters that all sound the same arcs that either feel rushed or stuck in place and conflicts that are supposed to escalate but instead you're stuck writing the same argument in three different ways but here's the thing best-selling authors and top screenwriters they're not using fears versus desires at all they're using something far more powerful an actual equation the kind that creates pounding internal tension and makes readers physically

unable to put the book down now I know what you might be thinking an equation that sounds way too complicated and he might just take the magic out of writing maybe until you learn that at the heart of it what makes it all clicks into one place is something called the common denominator and once you figure it out for your story it works for all your characters not just your protagonist not just your antagonist all of them and when you see how this work in actual stories like the one I'm about to show you you

realize something this isn't just a better framework it's what makes great story feel inevitable like every character's action couldn't have happened any other way because that's the real power of this equation it reveals the hidden connections that make your story impossible to put down so let me show you how it works before we dive in you might be wondering who am I and what right do I even have to tell you how to write your story well I started as a storytelling coach back in 2018 and over the years I've developed storytelling Frameworks designed to

help help aspiring authors like you break through creative blocks generate unique ideas and ultimately unlock the full potential of your novel and that's exactly what I share here on this channel because sometimes all you need is a fresh perspective on storytelling to take your story to the next level this video is part five of our ongoing series on storytelling but if you're new here don't worry you can watch this one as a standalone and if you're enjoying this series so far hit the like button to let your algorithm know that you would like more storytelling

content in your feed and it would also help the channel so I would really appreciate it and subscribe if you haven't already now I could pull example from a dozen different books and movies to show you how the internal conflict equation works but instead of bouncing between multiple stories I want to focus on one a show that just doesn't use internal conflict but thrives on it a master class so to speak in character-driven storytelling I'm talking about de to me now if you haven't watched it don't worry you don't need to to understand how this

equation works I'll give you just enough context to make sure that everything clicks so at its score that to me is a story about grief how we process it how we avoid it and how it shapes the choices that we make it follows two women Jen and Judy who despite their opposite personalities form an intense complicated friendship in the wake of personal loss now just a heads up I'm going to have to give you my spoilers but nothing beyond episode one or so so Jen is the protagonist she is a NOS real estate agent and

mother of two and her life is turned upside down when her husband is killed in a hit and run consumed by anger and grief she latches onto one thing that feels like control finding out who's responsible Judy on the other hand is what I call a key character a direct reflection of Jen's internal conflict she's warm empathetic almost too eager to help she meets Jen at a grief support group claiming that she's mourning the loss of her fan but Judy isn't really who she says she is her fiance is very much alive but she is

still still grieving she's grieving something she can't even bring herself to say out loud her miscarriages but her grief isn't the only thing that brought her to that specific support group because Judy was in the car the night of the Hidden run with her fiance and instead of coming forward she helped cover it up and now she's crippled with guilt and trying to befriend Chen this turned their relationship into a ticking Time Bomb because every moment of their friendship is built on a lie now here's the thing the most powerful story is don't just focus

on the prot IST internal conflict so in this case Jens they create a web of internal conflicts all tied to the same Core theme and psychological struggle and that is why every major character in De timy is dealing with the same fundamental issue this is what I call the common denominator the elements that will be common to all your main plot characters internal conflict this common denominator is made up of two distinct components and the first one is called the moral need now is the moral need the theme of your story kind of although not

quite and I'll explain a moral need isn't just a lesson a character learns it's a universal truth that they struggle with throughout the story and they struggle with it because at the start of a story characters aren't ready to accept this truth we'll get to why in a minute instead they're stuck in destructive patterns that keep them from moving forward and in debt to me while the theme is grief and friendship the moral need is this Griff should not be moved on from but moved forward with because if it isn't if it is left unresolved

your grief will cause harm to yourself and to the people around you we see that moral need in debt to me through two radically different reactions to grief on one hand Jen externalizes her grief through anger she's the kind of character that lashes out pushes people away and clings to Vengeance because it feels like control well maybe if you found the guy I wouldn't have to stretch who we yelling at now cops wonderful but in doing so she damages her relationship with her sons and isolates herself from the people who care about her on the

other hand Judy internalizes her grief and she does it through self-sacrifice she tries to atone by overgiving and putting others needs above her own but by doing so she traps people in situation that never asked to be part of keeping her stuck in a cycle of dishonesty and guilt and as the story unfolds we see how every major character in De to me is facing their own version of this struggle the kids the mother-in-law Judy's fiance and how their unresolved grief leads to harm for themselves and for others so when you craft this first component

ask yourself what universal truth are your main plot characters resisting at the start of the story because once you figure that out every component of your internal conflict equation will start falling into place now if the moral need is the lesson that your characters need to learn why don't you just learn it why do they keep making choices that only make things worse that's where the second component of the common denominator comes in the psychological need the psychological need it's What's blocking your main plot characters from learning the moral need and just like the moral

need it must be common to all your characters but be careful here a psychological need is not to be confused with a character flaw or a fidal flaw because these are unique to each character and they are not the reason they resist change and I know that this clashes with what you've been told before that must writing advice out there will tell you that a character's fatal flow is is what prevents them from understanding the theme and therefore from learning the moral need but not quite because at the end of the day a fatal flow

is the individual expression of a common unfulfilled psychological need and we'll look at that timy to explain this further now I'm not saying that your characters shouldn't have fatal flow because they should their fatal flow will ultimately shape and color how that common psychological need will manifest specifically for them and that's why we craft different fatal flows along with different backstories and and personal ghosts to differentiate them but again character flaws are not part of the internal conflict they're more like expressions of it hence on the surface of the story that helps reader understand the

deeper component of the internal conflict at play and of what the story truly is about if you approach a psychological need like a federal flow you'll start crafting different psychological needs for all your characters your story will lose its focus and it simply won't work okay so now that we've established that in order for a story to work all main plot characters must struggle with the same psychological need let's look at that Timmy for both Jen and Judy that common psychological need is this to confront their own guilt both Jen and Judy resist the moral

need and struggle with grief but what keeps them stuck is their inability to confront their guilt on one hand Jen refuses to confront her own guilt over the night her husband died later in the story we learn that she actually blames herself for pushing him out of the door that night after they had a fight and instead of grieving she projects her guilt outward channeling it into rage on the other hand Judy refuses to confront her own guilt over the HD and run but also the guilt she feels over her miscarriages because she blames herself

for failing to build a family with her fiance and as long as they hold on to that psychological need to not confront their guilt they will resist the moral need to move forward with their grief so ask yourself what unresolved emotional wound keeps your main plot characters from learning their moral needs need because this emotional wound this psychological need isn't just what keeps them stuck it's what fuel the remaining components of their internal conflict equation now that we've set up the common denominator what will be common to all your characters we can talk about what

actually creates the unique push and pull Dynamics inside each character individually within each of your characters there should be two forces pulling them in opposite directions and these two forces must be equally strong but completely incompatible these forces are what I call the conflicting Desires in real life we don't just want one thing we want multiple things all at once even if sometimes they kind of contradict each other and crafting conflicting desires for your characters will not only make them feel more real to your readers but it will also decrease the chances that they are

acting out of character if you've ever given your novel to Beta readers chances are they have highlighted certain passages where certain of your characters were acting out of characters but that doesn't mean that you need to change what they were doing in that scene in fact when that happens it is usually your characters telling you that they are a little bit more complex than you initially thought they were that they have conflicting desires that you now need to expose early on in the story now here's the key conflicting desires don't just come out of nowhere

as I said they must stem from the psychological need because when a character has two Inc compatible desires rooted in their deepest psychological wounds they won't just act irrationally for the sake of drama they'll act in character even when they seem to contradict themselves and this is why characters can act in ways that seem self-destructive even irrational because every choice they make is a tug-of war between these two desires because they believe they can have both except they won so ask yourself what are the two opposing desires that trap your characters pulling them in contradictory

directions and how do they stem from the psychological need now let's look at that to me Jen is trapped between two forces since her kids lost their dad her desire to be a good mother is even stronger she wants to protect them be their Rock and keep them safe but at the same time she is consumed by the desire to get Justice for her husband she has to find out who killed him no matter the cost at first these might seem completely unrelated but they are definitely not because they both stem from Jen's psychological need

the thing that keeps her stuck her unresolved guilt over the night he died she wants to be a better mother because she feels like she's already failed them by having pushed their out out of the house that night and deep down she believes that if she had done things differently it would still be alive and her obsession with getting Justice for her husband isn't really about Justice it's an attempt at undoing the guilt of that Knight and this is where her conflicting desires Collide because in her pursu of Justice she does the exact opposite of

protecting her kids she lets the people responsible for the hit and run move into their home every step she takes towards fulfilling one desire actively destroy the other and then there's Judy she wants to be there for Jen to help her grieve to be her friend to fix the damage she caused but she also wants to protect her fiance and for that she needs to keep the truth buried to hide what really happened the night of the Hidden run and just like Jen these desires aren't random or unrelated they are fueled by her psychological need

because for Judy this isn't about protecting her fiance it's about the fact that she blames herself for her miscarriages so she convinces herself that she can have both that she can help to grieve without telling her the truth but every act of kindness she offers only deepens the LIE now here's where things get even more Tangled because these conflicting desires don't just trap characters individually they are in direct opposition to each other and in debt to me Jen is desperate to uncover the truth and Judy is desperate to bury it and that's what makes their

relationship feel like a ticking time bumb every moment of friendship between them is built on something that is fundamentally unsustainable and here's the irony both of them think that if they can just find a way to fulfill both their conflicting desires they will find peace and they're so delusional they even think they know the way and it is that delusion that creates the last missing component of the internal conflict equation the fixations a character doesn't just sit there Frozen in in decision they try and attempt to reconcile their own conflicting desires by chasing the few

things they believe will ungo their inner mess something external something that feels like a solution something that gives them a sense of control even if it's leading them straight into disaster because as long as they're chasing it they don't have to stop and ask is this really going to fix what's broken inside me the fixations are the things that character actively pursues throughout the plug it's what drives their action and it's what makes the story move forward now is it what people commonly call a goal or an objective yes but again not really by calling

it a goal you're taking the risk to disconnect it from the inner Journey plus characters usually have two fixation a major one and a minor one this is to mirror how we as human often focus on both big life altering Solutions and small immediate distractions to avoid deeper problems so with each fixations the belief that these will help them finally reconcile their conflicting desires except it won't because what they truly need isn't an external solution it is the internal transformation that comes from understanding the moral need and healing their psychological need but of course to

get there things need to happen in debt to me Jen's conflicting desires have trapped her in a paradox she wants to be a good mother but she also wants Justice for her husband so she fixates on something major something she believes will reconcile these two desires finding out who killed the father of her son in her mind she'll be a better mother for it and she'll get Justice for her husband jackpot and on top of things it also happened to be the perfect distractions for her to avoid confronting her own psychological need her guilt about

that night but here's where the ironi kicks in again because this fixation doesn't resolve her conflicting desires at all if anything it fuels them the deeper she digs into the investigation the more she neglects her kids the more she pushes people away and the more she spirals into self-destruction then we have the minor fixation the one immediate quick win that your character could get and in Deb to me Jen's minor fixation is getting the mayor to install a stop sign in her street she feels that a stop sign could have prevented the accident that night

and it's one step closer to keeping her kids safe that minor fixations keep them feeling in control when they don't seem to be making any substantial progress on their major fixation and then there's Judy her conflicting desires have also created an impossible situation she wants to protect a fiance and keep the truth buried but she also wants to help Jen grieve so she convinces herself that there is a way to have both and the way to have both is to be Jen's best friend because in her mind if she can just be there for Jen

if she can just be the perfect friend then maybe she can erase the damage she caused maybe she can fix things without ever telling the truth because by being her friend she can make sure that Jen never finds out the truth but just like Jen these fixations don't resolve her conflicting desires they trap her in a cycle of deception ion every time she converts Jen every time that she helps her through her grief she's still hiding the truth from Jen making the inevitable Fallout even worse she thinks she's making things right but what she's really

doing is delaying the moment where she'll have to face the truth and just like their conflicting desires their fixations the major and the minor one don't just trap the characters individually they are in direct opposition to each other Jen's entire major fixation is to find out who's responsible for the hit and run and Judy entire fixation is to bury that truth so every moment that they spend together every step forward that they take is leading them towards an explosion that neither of them is prepared for because at the end of the day the fixations are

a trap they create the illusion of progress while keeping them stuck because it was never the real solution so how do you apply this to your own characters ask yourself this what is the one major fixation your character believes will reconcile both their conflicting desires the one thing that is Out Of Reach hard to make progress on but allows them to avoid confronting their psychological and moral need then what is the one thing they're chasing that would feel like a quick win at reconciling their conflicting desires because that's the key the fixations aren't just what

moves the plot forward they are the illusion of resolution the things keeping your characters from facing the real truth and if you craft them right they will be the very things that will keep your readers turning Pages now if your right in a series of books fixations work a little bit different for the first installment of the series your protagonist will actually chase the minor fixation first then the major one each designed with a specific purpose in mind first having your protagonist chase the minor fixation will introduce your readers to the world of your story

and the major fixation which comes later will be more focused on the plot and will lead to its resolution take Harry Potter and the philosopher stones for example in the first book Harry and has two distinct fixations the first one the minor fixation is to win the house cup it's the very fixation that introduces the readers to the world of awards the rules of magic quid it Etc it's more than a simple goal or objective Because deep down he believes that it is the one thing that will reconcile his conflicting desires turn his place at

award and know who it truly is the second one the major fixation which emerges later in the story is to find the philosopher stone which leads directly to the resolution of the plot if you're planning a series structuring your protagonist fixations this way having the minor fixation first to introduce the world of your story and then later on the major fixations will create a natural progression in their Journey while keeping your readers engage through it all okay so now that I've clarified this let's move to how and when your characters are supposed to resolve their

internal conflict equation at some point your characters have to face reality and that moment the moment where they real realize that their fixations both minor and major were never the answer is called the aha moment and it happens during the moment of Crisis and contemplation of the grand finale if you're wondering what these are I made a whole video on story structure so make sure to check it out afterwards there will be a link in the description down below if we take de to me for Jen it's the realization that finding who's responsible won't erase

the guilt or make her a better mother for Judy it's the realization that helping Jen without being truthful won't relieve her from the burden of her guilt in order for your characters to reach that point and finally resolve their internal conflict equation they must first realize that their fixations were just distractions to then be hit by the sudden realization of their own psychological need and once they're aware their conflicting desires will naturally lose their power leaving room for them to finally understand the moral need it's like removing the blur on the equation one component at

a time as you must know by now resolving an internal conflict is not about reconciling fears versus desires it's uncovering layer by layer the very nature of Being Human there's a reason why not every story becomes a bestseller and limiting internal conflict to fears versus desires is one of them and once you've nailed the internal conflict equation your story will have a core of emotional depth that will keep your readers emotionally hooked until the very last page now here's the thing writing his story can be pretty lonely and while knowing the theory is helpful sometime

you just need a friend to help you and make it work that's why I'm building a private Community where I'll help you directly with your stories if you want to be the first to know when it opens just scan this QR code or use the first link in the description to join the newsletter and if you're just chilling today if you just want to watch more videos and feel inspired then I think you will really like this video I hope that you really enjoyed this one that you feel empowered to unlock the full potential of

your story I'm Julian melet thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one