It’s important undoubtedly to determine what your character is going for, trying for, attempting to do in each scene. The all-essential objective. The mission. The want the need that thing I must have cannot leave the room without and am fighting for.
But it’s just as useful and necessary and important to consider the doubts and uncertainties that plague a character and persist throughout the story. Doubts provide the possibility for failure in a scene, provide obstacles throughout the action of the play, and make the character’s journey much more interesting, much more inspiring.
Everyone suffers at some time from the point of view, “Who am I to get what I desire?” We question that we deserve to succeed, that we have the ability — the skill and talent. If we consider that doubt is a big part of a character’s journey, it can excite our imaginations and our personal responses to the circumstances of the story and propel us into action. It can provide the actor with his or her own idiosyncratic hook into the story.