It's a question I've often been asked by students and writers. What drives a character? How do I motivate my character to drive a plot? The answer lies somewhere in your design of the character, defining his or her personal history, defining their wants and needs, and then placing them into a plot that challenges and contradicts everything in their daily existence. Roger Thornhill, in NORTH BY NORTHWEST, is a reasonably happy, dull, middle-aged ad executive who, mistaken for a fictional American spy, is marked for assassination. The plot thickens when he's set-up to be accused of murder. An ordinary man in a desperate situation, an innocent man accused, but how does the plot change him? How is he put to the test? What drives a good story? Plot or character? What drives your script?
Screenwriting : If Characters Drive Plots, What Drives Characters? by Andrew Pritzker
If Characters Drive Plots, What Drives Characters?
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Humans are driven by two equally powerful yet opposing forces. "Desire" and "Fear of Loss". Those are the two constant drivers behind everything we do. When I say everything...I really mean everything.
I've heard this quote attributed to Stephen King: "Create sympathy for the characters, then let the monsters loose."
Carefully watch films that you respect for tiny details of character established early, best done visually, which are not only consistent with but suggest the path which the character will choose later as the difficulties pile up. Example - Bogart as Ric in Casablanca. What's the first image in which he appears? He's working on a a chess problem. Given that he owns a 'saloon', there are countless possible first images from which the writers chose this particular one. He might have been drinking with customers, schmooozing them. No, he doesn't do that. He might have been playing cards. Whatever. No. He sits in the middle of a crowded noisy room working on a chess problem. So what do we get from that? It suggests that he's a thinker, somebody who analyses. And later on he will do more of that in ways which are crucial to the plot. (He might have been working on the chess problem in his quiet private office. No. he's right out front where the action is keeping a close eye on his business. That tells us more about him.) And of course, very early, he says 'I stick my neck out for nobody' which suggests that he'll be independent. (Later, he does stick his neck out for the right person(s) but by then the story and his character has been developed in ways through which we fully accept this apparent change in him.) Start with details, visual if possible, which show character in a single moment. It will pay off in your scripts. (And I bet you can do this kind of analysis for Roger Thornhill and NBNW to see how it works well there.)