What Stories Are & Why We Need to Write Them ✍️

For the past five years I’ve been working on a book about writing stories that will be published later this year. In it, I’ve included what I think writers need to know to tell powerful, deep, resonant stories. I’ve organized the material around the five aspects of writing that story-makers need to master: Structure, Character, Theme, Plot, and Scenes.

Here’s why:

Structure contains and organizes the story, and its limits ("freedom within limits") contribute to all the other elements.

Character is the enlivening heart of any story, its main focus, and this main character is the guide, avatar, and/or projected pseudo-self through whom the reader gets to live and learn vicariously.

Theme infuses the story with meaning—a resonant message—that’s conveyed through the character’s interactions with plot situations (including other characters).

Plot is what the character does and doesn’t do in the face of inner and outer conflict generated by an inciting incident that sets up a story problem and a story question.

Scenes express all of the above through “showing” the character in action: dealing with conflict, expressing/repressing feelings, making choices under pressure, trying/failing/getting to achieve a story-worthy goal.

What is a story-worthy goal?

I once heard this clear-eyed yet unusual definition of happiness: Happiness consists of the overcoming of obstacles on the way to a goal of one’s own choosing. Swap out happiness for story and you’ve a pretty good definition for a story arc. In stories, characters are faced with situations and must choose a way to respond. Their ultimate, unconscious desire always relates to happiness—their version of it—so how they choose to respond to the story problems will include a specific, concrete goal that represents their version of happiness. As they head toward that goal, obstacles ensue. That’s storytelling in a nutshell (easier said than done, I know).

I’ve spent a lifetime figuring this stuff out through trial and error an study and it’s still hard. But so worth it. Because stories carry us away, in the best sense. They reveal, inform, inspire, and delight. They help make life bearable, manageable, acceptable, and, when their alchemy is right, they can contribute to change and evolution on a personal level and even a societal scale.

Stories can: heal, guide, expose, educate, enlighten, encourage, aid, direct, repel, activate, support, comfort, motivate, and so much more. They help us overcome the obstacles on the way to the goals of our own choosing.

Stories help us navigate our life situations. They help us grow and evolve in a life, and world, full of change. A human lifetime is finite, and the world goes on without us after we’ve gone; we’re all too aware of this. Many stories deal directly and indirectly with the ramifications of this existential awareness.

At some point, most of us encounter an internal question: is such a life, with its accompanying awareness, a gift or a curse? Your thoughts and beliefs about this will affect how you behave and the choices you make in your life. Writers usually take their worries and questions to the page, and this is how stories are conceived.

The book I've written isn’t a story itself, rather it’s about how to write stories. It’s the guidebook I wish I’d had thirty years ago. Toni Morrison said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” I wrote my book because I believe stories—especially in the forms of novels, screenplays, and memoirs—are the biggest magic we have as humans.

When my book comes out, I hope it will be a useful companion to help you write the stories you care about. But in the meantime, keep doing just that. Write what you want to read. Teach what you want to learn. Tell the stories you wish someone had once told you.

“Story is a yearning meeting an obstacle.”

~Robert Olen Butler ~

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

~ Joan Didion ~

Your Character's Degree of Change: Evolution or Transformation?

Story is about change, be it big or small, and it’s usually the main character who embodies this change—she lives through it and dramatizes it by experiencing challenges and setbacks, successes and failures, blind spots and insights.

But how much will your character change? A little or a lot? Does she grow to such a degree that by the end of the story she has a completely different personality? Or has she expanded her perception in a minor way, yet remains essentially herself?

Change that occurs through learning and maturing unfolds as a progressive evolution—the character becomes a better version of herself. But sometimes the change is a transformation—the character appears to become a different version of herself.

Atticus Finch, in To Kill a Mockingbird, grows in understanding of his peers, society, and justice, but he doesn’t fundamentally change his beliefs or modes of operating in the world. Scrooge, in A Christmas Carol, changes completely.

In Groundhog Day, Phil Connors is a different person at the end of the story compared to the beginning. Like Scrooge, he grows so much over the course of the story that, by the end, he is a changed man.

If your character’s degree of change is small or medium, think of your character being on a journey of evolution. If it’s a large change, which involves a fundamental shift in perspective, consider the character undergoing a journey of transformation.

Character arcs involving transformation usually deal with the uncovering and dealing with an old, deep wound. This healing often includes some kind of personal redemption for the character.

Most transformation stories bring up the past, but not all do. Scrooge and Phil Connors go through similar transformations in personality, but in A Christmas Carol, we gain insight into Scrooge’s deep wounds when the ghost of Christmas past visits, whereas we don’t go into Phil’s past at all.

Evolution arcs tend to address what appears to be a “lack of maturity.” It’s as if something is missing in the character’s awareness and the story encourages the kind of growth and change that can fulfill this lack, usually by learning new things, stretching beyond personal limitations, and confronting past mistakes.

In Casablanca, Ilsa learns to integrate the free spirit she was in Paris with the self who is both responsible for and devoted to revolutionary causes with her husband, Lazlo. When we first meet Isla she has separated these two aspects of self, and the story provides the opportunity to bring them together.

Rick’s arc involves a greater degree of change that leads to his transformation. He was heartbroken by Ilsa’s disappearance in Paris and he has held onto his anger and a belief that she’d never really loved him. This wound makes him callow and self serving, but when it’s healed—when he understands Ilsa really did love him—his personality and behavior change significantly. He seems like a different person at the end.

Transforming characters do evolve as they change in big ways, while evolving characters change in smaller yet important ways without undergoing a full transformation.

Each story, and each character, is unique, and so the degree of change will be particular to your character and story situation. Once you determine the degree of change your character undergoes, evolution or transformation, you will be clearer about your overall deep story design.

A character undergoing a personal change is what’s most satisfying to readers. It doesn’t always matter whether the change is small or large, so long as there is a shift of some kind.

Writing Story Characters

Story characters are like you and me. They have foibles and flaws, hopes and dreams, and histories full of sweet memories as well unhealed wounds. As a writer, you may base some of your characters partially on yourself or people you know. You may give one character your own childhood (perhaps growing up on a farm), add to that your cousin’s flaws (maybe an excessive thirst for bourbon) and weave in your mother’s hopes (maybe to win the lottery and finally gain the respect of friends and neighbors).

Soon you’re on the way to developing a character you’d like to follow around for a bit, see what happens to them, watch them struggle and change, succeed and fail, be overcome by a tragic fate, or fulfill some unexpected destiny.

Although we like to mythologize how our characters ‘take over’ and lead us hither and yon, ultimately, as the writer, it will be your job to decide where this character will lead you, what will happen to them, which struggles they will face and how they will change because of those struggles, what exactly will they fail or succeed at, and whether or not they meet a happy end or a tragic one.

Yes, you can let the character take the reins, at least for a while (and on rare occasions for an entire manuscript) but at some point it’s likely you will have to rein in your unbridled creativity and shape a story to suit your character and a character to suit your story.

You’ll need to ask yourself questions such as: Is this character believable, interesting, worthy of curiosity and care? Which situations best reveal this character? What type of change or growth is relevant for this character? How might this character impact readers?

You might wait to answer these questions until you’ve already written a full, character-led draft, or you might find yourself stumbling part way through a draft, unsure of which direction to go, and be forced to stop until you have some answers, or you might begin your story making process by asking these questions right at the outset.

How you approach your character’s development is integral to your story’s design. Well-crafted characters can almost (but not quite) write our stories for us when we understand their deepest motivations and their stages of development throughout the narrative arc.

There is no wrong way to develop your character but it can be most satisfying, and efficient, to develop your character in connection with your story’s structure. Or, if you’re not even sure which story your character should take part in, a deeper exploration of your character’s true nature will begin to inspire the shape of a story.