When writing a story, the protagonist has to have a goal. There needs to be something specific the character is working towards so he has a sense of agency. What you often don’t hear, though, is that your protagonist needs more than one goal. Today, we’re going to look at layering goals so there is always a sense of agency in every part of your book.
Layers of Goals
When writing a story, there should be one big goal the protagonist is chasing until the end. However, you have to layer in smaller goals throughout the series to give the readers a sense of progress and accomplishment. Let’s look at the different levels of goals, from smallest to biggest, and how to use them.
Immediate Goal
Immediate goals are the “next step” goals. They are the smallest and most basic goals in a story. They can be: find keys, get into a specific room, or make someone smile. There will be multiple of these in any scene, and they should be easy goals to accomplish, making the reader feel like there is forward momentum in the story.
Scene Goal
Every scene should have an overarching goal. The scene arc starts when it’s introduced and ends when the goal is either achieved or lost. These make every scene feel important. Some examples are getting security codes, finding a lost dog, or going on a date.
Sequence Goal
Sequence goals stretch over multiple scenes and are usually big plot points in a story. Robbing a vault, identifying a traitor, or planning a wedding. These goals all take several steps to achieve, and they are usually shown over a sequence of scenes.
Book Goal
Book goal refers to the overall goal for the entire book. Is the protagonist trying to get revenge on an enemy? Wanting to get his girl back? Trying to solve a murder mystery? These are overall plot goals for books. All the other levels of goals are stepping blocks in the plan to achieve this goal.
Series Goal
Now, if you write a series, you will also need an overarching series goal. This is the endgame of the entire story. Each book will need to accomplish a goal that gets them closer to the series goal (which is usually the last book’s goal). Examples could be saving a kingdom, stopping a serial killer, or settling a couple down with a family.
Example
Let’s take a quick look at how layering goals works in a story. I’m going to start at the top and work my way down the layers of goals. Let’s say we have a series goal of stopping a villain’s evil plan. For a trilogy, we have three book goals. Book one’s goal could be to figure out the villain’s identity. Book two would be to discover his evil plan. Then book three would be to stop the plan.
Stepping down a layer, we have sequence goals. Focusing on book one, we are trying to discover the villain’s identity. A couple sequence goals could be to look for clues at the last place the villain attacked, find one of the villain’s accomplices, and lure the villain into a trap to confirm his identity.
Moving down another layer of goals, we can set some scene goals. Let’s work on our sequence goal of examining the last place the villain was seen. A few scene goals might be to infiltrate the police headquarters and find out the location, then interview anyone in the area, and sneak into the crime scene to search for clues.
For immediate goals, let’s look at infiltrating the police station. They will need to get a police uniform, create a fake badge, make a distraction to pull an officer from his desk, hack into the computer, and get the location. All of these happen in the same scene, leading to the success or failure of reaching the scene goal (to infiltrate the police station).
Final Thoughts
Your protagonist must have a main goal, and everything he does must be in service of reaching that goal. But only referencing a big goal will make it feel unattainable. Plus, if the main goal isn’t achieved for three books, the reader may feel frustrated by the lack of progress. That is why it’s important to layer these different levels of goals throughout the story to give the sense of moving toward (or away from) the overall goal. If you layer the goals well, they should all work together to achieve the protagonist’s main goal.
Thanks for reading!
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