Pursuit of a compelling desire

Australia-based blog The Story Department has a guest post from Michael Hauge on character desire and making an emotional impact with characters in pursuit of a compelling desire. Hauge writes:

For my entire career as a screenwriting instructor, author and consultant, I have held a single guiding principle: the essential component of all successful movies is the hero’s pursuit of a compelling desire.

This sounds simple but is more difficult to do well in practice, especially for writers who approach the task with overall plot structure in mind.