As a writer you know the secret motivations of all your characters. You know the twists and turns and tumbles that are coming for your characters. Sometimes the reader will know these too but the most important question is: does your character know?

Only today did the truth of this really sink in. I made the mistake in Family Trust and my muse learnt from that and asked the right question during prep work on Happiness Matters. That's when I woke up to the truth of it.

In Family Trust I knew the motivation of my antagonist and my protagonist didn't. Good start. I needed tension between my antagonist and my protagonist but I didn't grow the tension in the story. Right from the beginning my protagonist was suspicious of the antagonist yet she had no reason to be, except that I knew she would be if she knew what the antagonist was up to. But she didn't! She should have complete trust in the antagonist at this point and that simple change made it easy for the antagonist to trick her into doing what she wanted. I had previously struggled with how the antagonist would trick her and it had always seemed very forced. This was why.

In Happiness Matters I had begun the Character Pre-Plan module of Think Sideways Lesson 7. One of the key questions was what your characte would sacrifice anything to gain. My protagonist needs to find her place in the world. As the writer I need to know what her place in the world is. This is her destination, her happily ever after. Perhaps more importantly I need to know what she thinks her place in the world is. The bigger the gap between the two the longer the journey my protagonist will have to take. This is a whole area of conflict and character change that I can tap into.

If you need to know something for your story remember to ask yourself what your characters know or what they think they know as the truth.