Inner Drives: How to Write and Create Characters Using the Eight Classic Centers of Motivation

Wow. This is a great screenwriting book -- but it's so much more. Not only does it give you a better understanding of character, but it gives you a better understanding of human nature! Pamela Jaye Smith has written one of the most intelligent, thought-provoking, and in-depth explanations and explorations on the key motivational centers of human beings. You won't ust learn how to build better characters, you'll discover how to develop your own character. No kidding. This is not just a manual for better writing -- it's a manual for better living! Buy it. Devour it. Apply it. And read it again...and again...

There are some basic principles to writing good characters into novels and dramas and with them the aspiring screenwriter or novelist can produce powerful, three-dimension figures. Inner Drives: How To Write & Create Characters Using The Eight Classic Centers Of Motivation surveys these principles from the world of mythology, using plenty of examples teamed with exercises to help writers structure characters, devise subplots, make logical connections and more. Chapters discuss 'inner drive centers', link art and writing to New Age concepts, and survey archetypes and classic examples.

From Braveheart to brain research, mystery schools to the martial arts, Poltergeist to prana, Pamela Jaye Smith's book INNER DRIVES distills a wealth of information in a way that makes the archetypal dimensions readable and accessible. Her writing style is exciting and delightful. I commend her work. Jeanne Martin, Ph.D., Mythologist

In "Inner Drives," Pamela Jaye Smith mines ancient wisdom and compellingly offers up a system of concepts about human motivation that is as valid today as it was thousands of years ago. These astute insights into human character are wonderfully useful tools for today's storytellers, a category which includes not only writers, but also directors, actors, and designers. These concepts can be (and have already been) put to work in any type of narrative, be it a screenplay, a novel, a theatre piece, an opera, or a short story. I believe this system would also be a useful asset in documentary projects, and it will undoubtedly work in my own field of Digital Storytelling... the use of interactive digital media to tell new kinds of dramatic narratives. In fact, Ms. Smith offers up a number of examples from video games. The system Ms. Smith describes is based on the Eight Classic Centers of Motivation. In Sanskrit, these centers are called the chakras, but other cultures have other names for them. I was amazed to learn how many peoples throughout the world and in different time periods came up with the same general system to understand human nature. She makes a thoroughly convincing case for the universality of this system, and its fundamental accuracy, based as it is on human physiology. For those of us who are writers, this classic system can be used to answer the a question we are always asking ourselves: "What makes this particular character tick?" This system gives us the God-like power of creating lifelike characters who seem to feel, think and breathe. And we can also use it to populate entire casts of characters -- ones destined to hate each other, to become allies, or to fall in love. The book abounds with concrete illustrations of characters drawn from various narrative works, familiar characters like Scarlett O'Hara, Rocky and Stanley Kowalski, as well as real people like Charles Manson and Napolean Bonaparte. The examples help make what might at first seem to be an abstract approach to character develpment extremely understandable and usable. I believe "Inner Drives" is an exciting new way to approach characters and is a wonderful addition to every working writer's library, although as Ms. Smith makes clear, it is not a new system at all, but one that is extremely old.

Pamela Jaye Smith is one of the world's leading experts on contemporary application of myth, particularly as applied to screenwriting and story. Inner Drives is an important, valuable new approach that enables writers to approach plot and characters from a new perspective that just happens to be built upon models that are thousands of years old. The book uses the term Inner drives to describe what I think of as the Chakra energy system, but there are many terms that have been used to describe the different levels of energy, of consciousness that range from the most basic physical through to the most mystical and transcendant. Pamela takes you through the different levels and helps you to see how you can use changes in them to reflect changes in your characters. This is the real deal, the stuff that myths, heroes, and the most powerful stories are made of. As organizer of the Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story, it's my job to know the leaders in the world of story. Pamela is a rock solid expert whose extraordinary breadth of knowledge is only exceeded by her vision. Inner Drives is a gift that weaves together her knowledge and vision. If you liked Chris Vogler's Writer's Journey and/or James Bonnet's Stealing Fire From the Gods, then you'll surely want to order this book right away. It delivers a lot more than its modest title promises.