Is one better than the other? I know that most people will not understand what I mean by this since I’m more than likely not using the proper technical term, so I’ll give examples for clarity.
What I mean by Evolving Goal is a story where the goal changes throughout the story. The character consistently reaches/fails to reach their goals which leads to new ones being created. In this sense, the end goal of the character is not in mind from the beginning of the novel, and evolves as the story goes on. These stories For example (a very basic and awful one at that), MC is tasked with slaying a dragon, said dragon turns out to be trying to help people, MC realizes the people giving them the task are the “true” antagonists, after killing them they realize that the people he killed weren’t the ones pulling the strings and were being deceived themselves, MC redeems themselves with the help of the dragon by killing the people pulling the strings. An actual series example would be ASOIAF.
What I mean by Static Goal is a story where the MC has an end goal in sight by the beginning of the novel and they have to go through numerous hurdles to get there. For example, protagonist wants to kill antagonist that murdered their family, protagonist must acquire training to be able to fight, protagonist must retrieve a legendary sword to kill the antagonist, protagonist kills the antagonist. A series example would be the Six of Crows duology.
The reason why I ask this is I seen a YouTube video a while back that detailed how books with static goals are lazy/basic storytelling, and since then I’ve been trying to contour my outlines towards having static goals. What I realized the more novels I read, is that an equal amount of great fantasy novels have the “static goal” structure as do the “evolving goal” structure. Although I’m no literary professor or expert, what I take away from the novels I’ve read is that many stories with “evolving goal” structure are more heavily focused on plot (something to be expected considering a lot of the goal’s evolutions rely on plot twists) whereas many stories with “static goal” structure are more heavily focused on character progression. But that’s aside from the argument that there is no such thing as plot-focused and character-focused novels, which is a different argument entirely.
I’ve seen a lot of knowledgeable writers here, what are your takes on this? Is one better than the other? Is there an actual difference? Do you have a preference?
What I mean by Evolving Goal is a story where the goal changes throughout the story. The character consistently reaches/fails to reach their goals which leads to new ones being created. In this sense, the end goal of the character is not in mind from the beginning of the novel, and evolves as the story goes on. These stories For example (a very basic and awful one at that), MC is tasked with slaying a dragon, said dragon turns out to be trying to help people, MC realizes the people giving them the task are the “true” antagonists, after killing them they realize that the people he killed weren’t the ones pulling the strings and were being deceived themselves, MC redeems themselves with the help of the dragon by killing the people pulling the strings. An actual series example would be ASOIAF.
What I mean by Static Goal is a story where the MC has an end goal in sight by the beginning of the novel and they have to go through numerous hurdles to get there. For example, protagonist wants to kill antagonist that murdered their family, protagonist must acquire training to be able to fight, protagonist must retrieve a legendary sword to kill the antagonist, protagonist kills the antagonist. A series example would be the Six of Crows duology.
The reason why I ask this is I seen a YouTube video a while back that detailed how books with static goals are lazy/basic storytelling, and since then I’ve been trying to contour my outlines towards having static goals. What I realized the more novels I read, is that an equal amount of great fantasy novels have the “static goal” structure as do the “evolving goal” structure. Although I’m no literary professor or expert, what I take away from the novels I’ve read is that many stories with “evolving goal” structure are more heavily focused on plot (something to be expected considering a lot of the goal’s evolutions rely on plot twists) whereas many stories with “static goal” structure are more heavily focused on character progression. But that’s aside from the argument that there is no such thing as plot-focused and character-focused novels, which is a different argument entirely.
I’ve seen a lot of knowledgeable writers here, what are your takes on this? Is one better than the other? Is there an actual difference? Do you have a preference?