At the start of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, our hero tells us exactly what he wants:
“This is my ninth sick day this semester. If I go for ten, I’m probably going to have to barf up a lung. So, I absolutely MUST MAKE THIS ONE COUNT.”
At the start of Casino Royale, M reads Bond the riot act:
“You stormed into an embassy! You violated the only absolutely inviolable rule of international relationships! And why? So you could kill a nobody! … We are trying to find out how an entire network of terrorist groups is financed and you give us one bombmaker!”
Ferris wants a day off. James Bond wants to stop a terrorist network. But you could do this all day:
Tony Soprano wants to be the man he’s pretending to be.
She-Hulk wants to be a lawyer.
Walter White wants to protect his family.
Frodo wants to protect the Shire.
Daenerys wants the Iron Throne.
Every great story — whether on page, stage or screen — is powered by the quest for something. The want is the engine. Without it, there’s no story. Just description. Just a world sitting still.
But here’s what most people miss: there are two kinds of wants, and they work differently.
There’s the want for something new. Acquisition. Ferris wants his day. Bond wants to stop the terrorists. These are forward-looking wants. You pursue them into a future you haven’t experienced yet. The stronger the want, the more risk a character will take to achieve it. The more story you get.
Then there’s the want for something lost. Restoration. The return of what was taken. Frodo wants to protect the Shire the way it was. Carl wants to recapture the life he imagined with Ellie. These wants have a different flavour — there’s grief underneath them. There’s the pain of absence. And that changes everything. Restoration stories often hit deeper because they’re not just about winning. They’re about recovering what matters.
In either case, the want is the story engine. And here’s what makes it powerful in business: the clearer you make your want — the clearer you are about what you’re pursuing — the stronger the foundation your entire story will have.
When I stepped back from my agency in 2016, I wanted to write a novel. But that was only part of it. I wanted to prove something to myself. I wanted to know if I was more than the business I’d built. I wanted to escape the identity I’d been wearing for fifteen years. All of that was underneath the surface want.
The more specific you can be about what you actually want — not the polished version, but the real one — the more your audience will feel the tension of pursuing it. Because want creates necessity. It creates stakes. A character who casually wants something is boring. A character who desperately, specifically, must achieve something — that’s a story worth following.
This is why clarity of want is directly proportional to story strength. The fuzzier your want, the weaker the story. The sharper your want — the more specific, the more urgent, the more personal — the more grip your story has.
The want is where all the power comes from.