There are 'innate' motivations and 'plot-based' motivations, really. Plot-based motives will shift as a reaction to plot and other people's motives. An innate motive might fuel plot motives, but it's less likely to change. For instance, a character's innate motives might be 'adhere to the truth'. Most of his plot motivations will be influenced by that innate motivation.
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📖 Notes & analysis
This works because readers trust characters who have a fixed center, even as circumstances change around them. Plot motives answer "what do I want right now," but innate motives answer "who am I," and that second answer is what makes a character feel real rather than reactive. Try this: give your protagonist an innate motive like "protect the vulnerable," then let plot motives shift wildly around it — infiltrate the enemy camp, betray a friend, refuse a reward — each choice still traceable back to that root. The caution is rigidity mistaken for consistency. If every decision loudly announces the innate motive, characters become slogans instead of people. Let the connection stay implicit sometimes. The truth-teller can lie once, badly, and still be the truth-teller — the strain itself proves the innate motive is real.
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