From: mdhangton@gmail.com   
      
   On Monday, November 10, 2014 12:38:13 PM UTC-5, J.Pascal wrote:   
   > On Monday, November 10, 2014 7:53:48 AM UTC-7, William Vetter wrote:   
   > > On Sunday, November 9, 2014 1:42:53 AM UTC-5, J.Pascal wrote:   
   > > > So... I did nothing today, but I was thinking that I should open one of   
   my working files and plunge into an action scene that I figured out comes   
   next, pulls my people into the fray in a way they can't avoid because I'd been   
   trying to figure out    
   why they would start hunting monsters instead of just go home.  The "but why   
   me?" question seems to be an important one and "because the author wants you   
   to" might be the real answer but there has to be a plot answer too, so, I'd   
   *found* the plot answer..   
   .   
   > >    
   > > You're making me think about character motivations.  In The Scarlet   
   Pimpernel, young British gentry smuggle French aristocrats across the Channel   
   apparently for sport, perhaps for the same reason they terrorize foxes, or at   
   least, that's the only    
   explanation ever given   
   > > .   
   >    
   > Doing something for sport or on a dare or just to prove you can is great   
   motivation... but only for characters where that makes sense.  Revenge is a   
   great motivator but only if that makes sense.    
      
   It's also well-used.  You killed my brother.  You killed my Kung Fu master.   
      
   >"It seemed like a good idea at the time" is fine motivation, too.  As is   
   trying to impress the guy or impress the girl.  Or being drunk.  One of my   
   favorite Georgette Heyer romances the guy does what he does (mostly) because   
   he was very very drunk.   
      
   "Being drunk" is not a motivation for say, grabbing a woman's boob.  It is a   
   mental state where a person cannot regulate a primal desire that is, for   
   certain, there.  The husband of a woman I knew was a stroke patient.  He was a   
   quite conservative person,   
    but she told me a story where he turned to a nurse and said, "How about some   
   sex?"  (The nurse laughed.)  The reason was that the part of his brain that   
   regulated some of his behaviors was dead.   
   >    
   > "Oooooo, Monsters!  Lets go hunt them." is also fine.  It just depends on if   
   your characters would react that way or not.     
   >    
   Last night, I watched a movie named The Monument Men.  It's very easy to   
   accept these guys wanting to recover art from Nazis before Nazis burn it all,   
   even if all characters didn't derive from some profession involved with art.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)