What Is The Character's Dream?

I worked on two screenplays and two novels with private students today. In all four cases, the two biggest challenges for the writers were:

1) The stakes weren't high enough.

2) The main character was too passive.

To solve these problems, I suggested that they ask themselves the first of The Four Magic Questions of Screenwriting:

What is the character's dream?

In Up In The Air, the answer might be to get 10 million flyer miles.

In An Education, it might be: To find out what I really want from life.

Now try it for your main character and see what you get.

Good luck and happy writing.