The Essence of Your Story

A common problem that occurs when writing a book or screenplay is that it loses focus. There are interesting subplots, and interesting side journeys, and after awhile it's hard to know what to pay attention to. Yes, ever since Tolkien published Lord of the Rings I know many writers want to do this sort of complex world-building, but frankly I haven't seen too many of these epics actually being published. Heck, even Peter Jackson found he had to cut A LOT of Tolkien's material in order to get a comprehensible story line -- and his movie masterpiece trilogy is still 9 + hours long.

It's worse if you're not even trying to branch your story out in 32,853,02 directions.

I'd like to propose a few easy questions for you to answer about your story, that should be able to focus you in to get your story started with minimal trauma. If you can answer these questions, you've got the spine of your story. For every event or character that you want to add, simply ask yourself if it's consistent with what you've already laid out here. If it is, go for it. If not, get rid of it. This includes things like subplots: the subplot should either be adding a component that is necessary for the story usually at the finish, or following a mirror character where the character wants the same thing as the protagonist, but answers the question in a different way. I have more details in my article on subplots HERE.

Ready? Here are a few questions to help you get at the essence of your story:

1. Who is your MAIN CHARACTER?

2. What external problem does your main character want to solve in the story? This is his OUTER GOAL. For example, he may want to win the big football game, or make a million dollars, or find a girlfriend.

3. Who or what is the chief OBSTACLE to your protagonist's achieving his outer goal?

4. What horrible things will happen if the protagonist cannot achieve his outer goal? This is the STAKES of your story.

5. What is your main character's HIDDEN NEED? This is a lack within your main character that he must solve before he can be happy. For example, he may need to forgive someone, or he may need to become courageous, or he may need to learn not to be selfish.

5. In one sentence, describe what your story is about.

These questions may be easy, or may take some thought. If you're having trouble, simply list, say, 10 or 20 stupid answers to the question. Then just pick one of these answers and see if you can fit it in; if you can't, choose another. Free-write your ideas so that you can tell a quick outline of your story in a paragraph or so. Figure out the captivating kernel of your story, whether character, plot twist, or something else. I have a small tutorial on my website HERE that writers have found helpful to organize their ideas.

Once you've got the basic direction of your story, you'll find it's much easier to start planning or writing (if you're an SOTPer -- a seat-of-the-pants writer).

Designing the Story's Plot

The plot describes the outward shape of your story. This is what people usually think of for a “story,” and what they will describe to you when you ask what a book or film is about. Unlike nonfiction in which you clearly present the material without leaving hanging questions, in fiction you should always have at least one, preferably many, intriguing bits and uncertainties throughout. The reader or viewer will eagerly continue to discover the answers to these points.

There are three large components of the plot that move it forward:

1. Story Goal and Story Question

Before you start writing, you need to know your STORY GOAL, which is the thing that your protagonist wants to accomplish during the course of your story. This goal needs to be something unequivocal, something that clearly is attained, or not, by the end of the story. Whether this goal is attained or not becomes the STORY QUESTION.

For example, in Lion King, Simba is the young (lion) heir to the throne when Scar engineers Simba’s father’s death to seize control. The story goal is for Simba to regain ownership of the kingdom. Failure occurs if Scar remains in control. The story question is: will Simba become king?

In The Count of Monte Cristo, Edmond is falsely imprisoned, then escapes and gains an enormous fortune. The story goal is that he wishes to take revenge on those who stole his youth, his career, and his fiancé. Failure occurs if the wrong doers get away with a great evil. The story question is: Will Edmond be able to suitably punish the guilty (without losing his integrity)?

In The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo is a hobbit who comes into possession of the One Ring, which is the focus for evil power and greatly desired by many. The story goal is that Frodo must destroy this ring. Failure occurs if the ring is not destroyed. The story question is: Will Frodo be able to destroy the One Ring?

2. Stakes

You also need to decide why this story goal is so important to your protagonist. If it isn’t important, he could just go home and eat dinner instead of knock his socks off to achieve. What horrible things might happen if the story goal isn’t achieved?

For example, in The Lion King if Simba does not become king, Scar will govern as a tyrant, and irrevocably ruin the Pridelands and let the hyenas take control.

In The Count of Monte Cristo if Edmond cannot wreak an appropriate revenge, great evil will go unpunished.

In The Fellowship of the Ring, if Frodo fails to destroy the One Ring, Middle Earth will fall into chaos and horror under Sauron’s dominion.

3. Obstacles

If your protagonist can simply go and achieve the story goal, there is no story. All stories need multiple obstacles, both internal and external, that hold the protagonist back from getting what he wants. An important rule for writing is to NEVER MAKE IT EASY ON YOUR HERO.

For example, in Lion King Simba is a little cub who runs away when his father is killed. He must grow up, learn that he needs to fight for his kingdom, then battle hyenas and ultimately Scar. Internally he must overcome feelings of guilt and inadequacy.

In The Count of Monte Cristo Edmond must learn to live alone in prison, then to escape, then to find the men responsible to wreak his revenge. His revenges are elaborate and full of twists. Internally Edmond copes with rage, power, and losing and gaining love. He also grapples with the role of mercy mixed with justice.

In The Fellowship of the Rings Frodo must make his way past the Nasgul and fights Orcs, rough terrain, Gollum, and other varied creatures and problems. Internally he finds carrying the Ring of Power an almost unbearable burden.

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There is obviously much more to a plot than just these three plot components. However, if you don’t get these right, you won’t HAVE a story!

Writing the Novel Opening

My theory is that most people would prefer to read an exciting book that's poorly written, rather than a book with flawless and subtle writing that doesn't have anything going on. IDEAS are more important than PRESENTATION.

However, in many manuscripts that I've critiqued, and even some published books, while there may be a lot of action at the start I find that I can't identify WHAT IS THE POINT. I'm just watching a bunch of characters doing something. They're obviously very intent about whatever's going on, often with some explosions or characters having terse conversations about "just how critical this is," but for the life of me I can't figure out why. Who are these people? What is at stake? Why should I care?

It's important to remember that the reader doesn't understand your story at all. You need to give him information that HE will find interesting -- if he doesn't already know that the Qarkles (who invaded planet Xonia 5000 years ago) have suddenly contracted a deadly illness so that the Rebel Nymorgs can take over, he won't understand why your hero is poised to take command. Even if you explain this in 3 succinct backstory paragraphs, your reader isn't going to care. Who the heck ever heard of Xonia anyway?

As a writer, you must intrigue your reader right off the bat. He's probably not going to stay with you for more than a few pages unless you can do that. Here are some ideas for opening a novel:

* Only include information that is ESSENTIAL for understanding the immediate events happening right now. Trust me, no one cares about your backstory.

* Don't flip between characters. Identify ONE who your reader will be following. Along those lines, don't put too many characters in, especially in the earlier scenes.

* Open with an intriguing situation that sparks reader curiosity.

* Create an immediate external goal that the reader will be sympathetic to. For better results, add in a ticking clock.

* Make the protagonist's motivation understandable to the reader.

* For goodness' sake, don't open your first chapter with your character drinking tea and thinking about what has just happened to her!

* One of my favorite techniques for opening a book is using a first sentence full of irony or suggestive of an intriguing character or situation. Here are a few as selected by the American Book Review:

Call me Ishmael. - Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. - Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa)

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. - George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

I am an invisible man. - Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. —Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925; trans. Breon Mitchell)

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. —Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)

This is the saddest story I have ever heard. - Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915)

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. - Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850)

One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary. - Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)

It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. - Paul Auster, City of Glass (1985)

124 was spiteful. - Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)

Mother died today. - Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942; trans. Stuart Gilbert)

Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu. - Ha Jin, Waiting (1999)

Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. "Stop!" cried the groaning old man at last, "Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree." - Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans (1925)

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. - Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

All this happened, more or less. - Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

They shoot the white girl first. - Toni Morrison, Paradise (1998)

The moment one learns English, complications set in. - Felipe Alfau, Chromos (1990)

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. - Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome (1911)

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. - C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952) (my personal favorite)

It was the day my grandmother exploded. - Iain M. Banks, The Crow Road (1992)

It was a pleasure to burn. - Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street. - David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress (1988)

It was love at first sight. - Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)

Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person. - Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups (2001)

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

You better not never tell nobody but God. - Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)

"To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die." - Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988)

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. - Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963)

If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog. - Saul Bellow, Herzog (1964)

Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up. - Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear it Away (1960)

When Dick Gibson was a little boy he was not Dick Gibson. - Stanley Elkin, The Dick Gibson Show (1971)

Hiram Clegg, together with his wife Emma and four friends of the faith from Randolph Junction, were summoned by the Spirit and Mrs. Clara Collins, widow of the beloved Nazarene preacher Ely Collins, to West Condon on the weekend of the eighteenth and nineteenth of April, there to await the End of the World. - Robert Coover, The Origin of the Brunists (1966)

"Take my camel, dear," said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass. - Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond (1956)

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. - L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between (1953)

Justice? - You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law. - William Gaddis, A Frolic of His Own (1994)

Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash. - J. G. Ballard, Crash (1973)

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. - Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle (1948)

"When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing." - Katherine Dunn, Geek Love (1983)

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon. - James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss (1978)

It was just noon that Sunday morning when the sheriff reached the jail with Lucas Beauchamp though the whole town (the whole county too for that matter) had known since the night before that Lucas had killed a white man. - William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust (1948)

I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot," or "That Claudius," or "Claudius the Stammerer," or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius," am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the "golden predicament" from which I have never since become disentangled. - Robert Graves, I, Claudius (1934)

Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women. - Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (1990)

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. - Raphael Sabatini, Scaramouche (1921)

Psychics can see the color of time it's blue. - Ronald Sukenick, Blown Away (1986)

In the town, there were two mutes and they were always together. - Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)

Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. - Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye (1988)

High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English Literature approached each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour. - David Lodge, Changing Places (1975)

Writing Subplots

There are two main purposes for subplots:

1. to assist with the denouement of the climax – the subplot provides some mechanism of the story that is necessary for the Story Question to be successfully resolved.

2. to highlight the moral struggle that the protagonist undergoes. The subplot main character struggles with the same moral problem, but answers it in a different way.

I found that in most “popular” or “mainstream” novels and movies, there were usually five general story lines:

A line – Story Question; external story
B line – Protagonist’s “hidden need”; internal story
C line – antagonist story line
D line –additional external story line
E line – additional internal story line

Story lines focus on the different constellations of characters, whereas subplots describe story events. Therefore, you can have more than one subplot in the C, D and E story lines, although one is often sufficient. I advise caution, since too many subplots easily muddy the forward thrust of the story.

Each subplot story line, especially on the E line, should ideally progress through the following stages of a Story (from John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story). Remember that, for the subplot, the SP main character should struggle with the same issue as your protagonist but answer it in a different way. For example, in Lord of the Rings, Smeagle/Gollum mirrors Frodo, and Boromere mirrors Aragorn.

Stage 1: Weakness, Problem, and Need

Your SP main character has a weakness within himself of which he’s not aware at the beginning of the story. The weakness is MORAL (it hurts others) as well as PSYCHOLOGICAL (it hurts the character). Your SP main character also has a story problem stemming from this weakness. Finally, he has a need to solve this weakness.

Example: My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Toula’s WEAKNESS: she doesn’t appreciate her family, although her family desperately wants her to join with them and are sad that she pulls away.

Toula’s PROBLEM: she wants to be seen as an individual, but her family holds to her so tightly that she will *never* be free.

Toula’s NEED: she must learn to be proud to be part of her Greek family as well as to be an individual.

Stage 2: Desire

Your SP main character has an outward desire, the story question of the subplot.

Example: My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Toula’s DESIRE: she wants to fall in love and get married.

Stage 3: Opponent

The opponent is the character who is competing with the SP protagonist for the same goal.

Example: My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Toula’s GOAL: she wants to be an individual, separate from her family.
Family’s GOAL: they want Toula to be part of the family.

Stage 4: Plan

Your SP main character must have at least a vague idea, or maybe a more detailed plan, of how he plans to fight the opponent to gain his desire.

Example: My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Toula’s PLAN: she will keep dating Ian, whether or not the family approves.

Stage 5: Battle

Your SP main character and opponent battle for supremacy . This is a punch-counterpunch series of actions.

Example: My Big Fat Greek Wedding

BATTLE: Toula’s family tries a number of tactics to get her to separate from Ian: forbidding her to see him, using guilt, and introducing her to more *suitable* men. Once they realize that she’s going to marry Ian despite their best efforts, they take over control of the wedding plans. Toula continuously battles for her identity apart from the family.

Stage 6: Self-Revelation

After a great deal of painful struggle, your SP main character realizes and solves his need that you identified in Stage 1. Don’t make this revelation too easy or too obvious (don’t have your character come out and say it!), or your story will fall flat. Instead, demonstrate how this need has been solved.

Example: My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Toula is depressed the night before her wedding because she realizes she will never be free of her family. Her grandmother enters the room and shows Toula a picture of herself as a bride, then gives Toula the wedding crown that she wore. Toula suddenly realizes that her family’s inclusiveness is a good thing, full of rich history, identity, and love. Toula is speechless as she hugs her grandmother.

Stage 7: New Equilibrium

Your SP main character has solved his need, or else lost his opportunity to solve it. Desire (Stage 2) is gone so that he simply will continue to live his life at a higher (or lower) level than before.

Example: My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Toula celebrates the wedding reception with Ian and her family. Toula’s father gets up and makes a joke that although the two families are different, they are in fact now unified. Toula and Ian are then shown six years later walking with their own little daughter to Greek school. Toula tells the daughter that she can marry anyone she wants.

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copyright 2009 by Amy Deardon. All rights reserved.