Whenever I set out to write a story, there are a few ways I’ve found to ensure my story is great. You can use these for your writing to ensure your story is compelling and a real page-turner.
Whether you’re staring at a blank page wondering how to turn your idea into a great story, or you want to edit your first draft so your story is as awesome as it can be, these key components of all great stories are sure to keep you on track to writing something truly amazing.
Characters
As readers, we engage with the story and everything that happens in it through the perspective of the characters. They are the access points for the reader to engage with the story, the vehicle that takes them through the plot, and the lens that informs how they experience the story.
Readers will only connect to a story if they can connect to the characters. The story’s plot, conflict, and world will only matter to your reader as much as they matter to the characters.
No matter what the narrative point of view is–1st person, third person omniscient, or anything in between–readers will view the events of your story through the perspective of the characters’ experiences.
So, readers must connect to your characters, especially your main character, but that doesn’t mean that every character has to be completely likable or have a carbon copy of your reader’s thoughts, perspectives, and experiences.
There are many ways to write characters that draw your readers into your story. But two of the most impactful ways are to give your characters strong wants and needs.
Giving your characters a want gives them a goal that the reader can invest in. Whether they are rooting for or against a character, readers should still care whether or not the character is successful.
A reader doesn’t need to relate to a character’s wants or goals if they are already invested in that character. Instead, their investment in the character’s wants is based on how the pursuit and the outcome of those wants and goals will affect the character.
Giving a character a need allows the reader to connect to the character on a more personal level. A need is an internal lesson that the character has to learn throughout the story. A good character need is widely relatable, while a want might be more story-specific.
A character’s need is often explored in their internal conflict (we’ll get into this more in a bit.) This is what propels character growth. It isn’t typically discovered and overcome by the character overnight. A character might not even realize what they need at the start of the story. However, if they are to find true happiness and fulfillment by the end of the story, that character needs to find and accept their need.
That being said, there’s nothing in the rules that says a character has to fulfill their need by the end of the story. In fact, you can create a negative character arc by having a character refuse their need, whether it be in pursuit of their goal or out of fear of change or vulnerability. For example, a character on the path of revenge might need to learn forgiveness but if they do not learn their lesson, their revenge can consume them.
On a more positive note, let’s look at an example from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker wants to leave his home planet of Tatooine and train to be a Jedi. An admiral goal that we as the audience can root for, but not something that’s all that relatable.
His need, however, is to let go of his doubts and fears that lead to darker thoughts and to allow himself to hope even when the odds are against him. This is something we can all relate to by pulling upon our own experiences with negativity and the importance of hope.
Image from Star wars episode IV: A new hope (1977)
Conflict
Conflict is the result of opposing forces clashing. This struggle is what makes a story interesting. When a reader is given the opportunity to question who will be successful in a conflict, they become more invested int the story’s outcome. Which side will win the struggle? How will they achieve this success or failure? What will be the consequences of that success or failure?
Example:
If a story is about a teenager walking down the hall at school, that’s not particularly interesting. But if the story tells you that the teenager was being chased down the hall by their bully, suddenly that’s a lot more interesting.
Clashing goals: The opposing forces are the teenager (main character) and their bully. They are clashing because their goals are in opposition. The teenager wants to get away without suffering any damage from the bully, and the bully wants to catch them to inflict damage.
Intrigue: will the character get away? How will they escape?
Conflict can be two-sided, but it doesn’t always have to be. It can be found between any number of people or groups or even within a single character.
The scale of the conflicts can depend on the story being told and the genre it’s in. The main conflict in a contemporary romance short story might be between two people, while the main conflict in an epic high-fantasy novel might be between many different people with opposing goals and positions. The main conflict in a more introspective story might be the main character’s struggle in choosing between their own inharmonious goals.
A well-written story can have many varied conflicts within the story in addition to the main conflict. The different relationships and challenges they face along the way are all opportunities to bring interest and depth into the story. Those varying conflicts should also have a range of intensity and significance to the characters.
I like to categorize conflict into 3 major categories: external, internal, and philosophical.
External conflicts are between your characters and the obstacles they face as they pursue their wants and goals.
Internal conflicts are between your characters’ needs (or the lessons they need to learn) and the lies/misbeliefs they have about the nature of their world.
Philosophical conflicts are between differing or opposing morals and values.
Worldbuilding
No story exists in a vacuum. It’s important to consider the context of a story, specifically its worldbuilding. While worldbuilding can include the setting of a story, it has a broader scope.The backstory, the cultural, political, and technological environment, and more all blending together to create an immersive and logical context for the world of a story. Worldbuilding can (if used effectively) deepen the immersive experience for your readers and help your story come alive.
Worldbuilding provides necessary context for a story, so writers need to be intentional about what information is shared. When adding worldbuilding details ask yourself what importance this detail adds to the narrative. Does the reader knowing this detail make the story better? If the worldbuilding detail you’ve added is solely included because it’s interesting (to you), but doesn’t objectively serve the story, consider taking it out. You might have to kill a few of your darlings.
Adding too many worldbuilding details in your story can overload your reader with too much information, and the important details your reader needs to know can just get lost in it all. This is a pitfall that can often be found in sci-fi and fantasy stories where the world of the story is new and so different from our own, but any story can fall victim. Beware the author who desperately wants to include every detail they’ve ever thought up about their world at the expense of the story they’re telling.
On the other hand, the problem of too little detail given to the reader can be just as bad. You don’t want your readers working double time to fill in the blanks in the worldbuilding of your story that should have been included in your writing. This is a mistake that can easily be made in something like a contemporary story where the characters are living in a world that is very similar to our own. But you still have an opportunity to add context to your story.
How does the setting’s geography or weather affect your characters and how they move about? What social histories can affect the relationships between characters? What key locations does the reader need to know and what significance do they have to your story? All of these things can add appropriate context and help orient your reader, even if the setting at first seems mundane.
EXAMPLE:
As he walked down the path, the forest floor beneath his feet was rich and spongy due to the incredible biodiversity of the area.
This would be too much worldbuilding if the reader only needs to know that this character is walking from one place to another.
This would be too little worldbuilding if the reader needs to know that the rich soil and biodiversity created a strong agricultural economy, especially compared to less fertile lands nearby, therefore leading to a concentration of economic and political power. (Of course, this is only one sentence and you can always build in those details with more writing, but if they were never included, then the worldbuilding could be insufficient).
This would be the wrong worldbuilding details if the reader would be better served knowing that the path the character is walking down was known for thieves and ambushes instead of the level of biodiversity.
Plot & Story Structure
Simply put, the plot is the sequence of events that happen in a story. It might sound like common sense that a story needs to have a plot, but sometimes the plots of our stories can get away from us or die off halfway through.
Have you ever started a story with an idea and by the end of writing your story (if you make it to the end) you realize the story has gone completely off the rails? Maybe the subplots have ballooned so much that they overshadow the main plot. Or there are plot threads that never seem to get tied up. If so, trust me, you are not alone. I’ve been there and I’ve read plenty of stories like this too. It can be frustrating to have literally lost the plot, but luckily there are tools to help guide your writing.
A story structure is a framework that helps to organize a story. It details key moments in the story’s plot and marks when they should happen in a narrative. Story structures can help move your story along in a satisfying and well-paced way that works with your reader’s expectations of a well-written story while still leaving plenty of room for new ideas and originality. If your story incorporates sub plots or multiple plot lines, a clearer structure for the overall story can make it easier to weave all of those storylines together.
If you’re worried that using a story structure will make your story boring or predictable don’t! There’s a saying that there are no new stories, just the same stories told in new ways. And while I do think there is some truth to that I prefer to think of it like this:
A story structure is like a skeleton. It holds up the story’s form and certain parts of the story that perform specific functions are attached to the structure in specific places. But just like nearly every human on this planet has a skeleton that is relatively similar to everyone else’s, we still manage to have 8 billion unique people on Earth.
If you’re a plotter like me and like to plan out your story before you start writing, story structures are your bread and butter. But even pantsers and free-writers can benefit from story structures too. You can use a loose framework of beats you know your story will hit as you’re writing your first draft, or reference a story structure during editing to refine the narrative and perfect the pacing.
There are a variety of story structures out there that can help all kinds of writers. Some commonly used story structures are:
- The Three-Act Story Structure
- The Hero’s Journey (and its simplified version: Dan Harmon’s Story Circle)
- Freytag’s Pyramid
- Christopher Booker’s Seven Story Archetypes
- The Five-Act Story Structure
- The Fichtean Curve
Some structures guide how stories in specific genres typically are mapped out. Thrillers, mysteries, romances, horror, and adventures, nearly every genre has an established structure and associated story beats that are the signature of stories in those categories.
If your story seems off or something just isn’t working consider if these 4 elements can help improve your writing. Strong characters, conflicts, worldbuilding, and structure are a sure-fire way to have an engaging and well-written story.