Motivating a Dragon

As part of my revision of Dragon, I had to find a better motivation for my antagonist.

First, some background: Dragon Pendant is set in a gate world. On one side of any of the gates is Earth, mostly like it is today. On the other side, a world of magic that includes elves and dragons. Due to the magical nature of the gates, they are monitored by the elves. The dragons are mostly restricted to the magical realm, primarily due to their misbehavior early on. For some reason the elves thought that having dragons rampaging through a then-unprotected population of humans wasn’t a good idea. Ok, you’re caught up.

Now on to the antagonist. She’s a black dragon, and while not all of them deserve their reputation for evil, she definitely earns hers. I have her going to great lengths to get herself to Earth. The original reasoning I gave her was simple: you told me not to go, so I will, just to prove that I can. Once there, she starts building her hoard of antique weaponry, mostly through theft.

This was not a sufficient motivation for one of my First Readers. I’ve taken the time to consider her comments and realized that it might not be enough for other readers. So instead of just building a hoard (which she’s still going to do), she’s going to be developing herself as a major crime boss of the city. Now we don’t just have the nose-thumbing reason, we have the more traditional money/power reason as well.

I know it’s not a groundbreaking motivation, but it fits the character and the story well. And that’s my primary goal.