Let’s say we decide to go the Want route with our protagonist. Please remember that it’s not enough to describe a character’s Want or to have said character (or some other) articulate the Want. Description and articulations rarely have much impact on a reader no matter how artfully done or how often you repeat it, and when rendered in these registers Wants tend to be almost instantly forgettable.
Yep, I started noticing right away in films or books when a new plot development is pending, because there's something that's being thwarted. At first, that is. The funny thing is, I've started to see that in real life happening, too, or at least to make me think: is this proposal I'm refusing now meant to come back further down the road? But then, I'll know -- as we do, as readers, too -- if that refusal was simply because the time wasn't ripe yet, or if the idea was just nonsense to begin with. But a book being a deliberate story, unlike life, you got to trust the author that they're not bringing up dead-end little twists just to pass the time...
Yep, I started noticing right away in films or books when a new plot development is pending, because there's something that's being thwarted. At first, that is. The funny thing is, I've started to see that in real life happening, too, or at least to make me think: is this proposal I'm refusing now meant to come back further down the road? But then, I'll know -- as we do, as readers, too -- if that refusal was simply because the time wasn't ripe yet, or if the idea was just nonsense to begin with. But a book being a deliberate story, unlike life, you got to trust the author that they're not bringing up dead-end little twists just to pass the time...