On the bus this morning I watched the people around me.  What were they doing, as they waited for their stop?

One young woman puzzled over a crossword.  Another read a book.  A third scanned the news on her phone.  A short-haired man watched a video on his phone, while a gray-haired guy in a blue shell jacket squinted at the newspaper.

We do these things because we want to do them, of course, but why do we want to do them?  What hungers do we have that a crossword puzzle could sate?  As a writer, I find this question fascinating, because characters are defined (in part) by their needs.  Writing is on some level a game of hunger: moving and balancing needs, one with the other, to build tension and create story.

Here are notes for a list of hungers:

1. For the Answer – the hunger to find some concrete answer to some concrete question.  This is related to the next hunger, but distinct from it.
2. For the Question – the hunger to be confronted with some situation so baffling that even its outlines seem mysterious.  Some mysteries (like fair-rules stories) cater to the hunger for the Answer, some to the hunger for the Question (The Big Sleep).
3. For Victory – the hunger to beat something – anything.  Mario Brothers.  Basketball.  The stock market.
4. For Challenge – the hunger for something so big and overwhelming that victory, if possible at all, would be miraculous.  I Wanna Be The Guy.  Nintendo-hard video games.  Running a marathon.
5. For Agency – the hunger to do something that affects the world, whether or not it involves Winning.  Cooking a good meal.  Tapping on a cell phone to make the screen change.
6. For Sensation – the hunger to be affected by the world.  Climbing a mountain for the view.  Stargazing.  Hearing a symphony.
7. For Story – the hunger for a narrative, whether in history, your life, or fiction.
8. For Companionship – the hunger to feel as though we are part of a group.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, obviously, and many of the hungers run into one another.  Some people do science to find Answers, some to find Questions, some because they like watching chemicals change color (Agency), and some because they want to be part of the great sweeping narrative of history.  Some people read the news because they want to put a story to the world, some because they want Answers, others because the act of flipping pages or clicking on a scroll bar makes them feel they have control over the world.

Can you think of any hungers I’ve missed?   I’m hoping to get a model with more fine gradations than Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  Anything deeper?