Guide: How to Give Your Story a Purpose

writing-questions-answered:

Anonymous asked: Hi! I’m writing novel and I’m having a really hard time figuring out filler events. I’ve got basic things that happen but nothing is really that exciting, to be honest. It’s just basic interactions with a group of around ten people. I guess I’m not really sure what my point of the novel is and I know I want it to mean something more than an abstract representation of who I am.

Well, you never want to have “filler events” in a novel, because all they do is waste time, and readers don’t like to have their time wasted.

Instead, do this:

1. Choose a conflict for your story.

Conflict is the engine which drives the story forward. Without it you have a flat story. It sounds complicated, but conflict is just the struggle that the story is all about. The conflict of Harry Potter series was the struggle to defeat Voldemort. The conflict of The Hunger Games series was the struggle to defeat the Capitol (first by winning The Hunger Games, then by winning the rebellion.) And the conflict of The Lord of the Rings series was the struggle to destroy the One Ring and bring peace to the land. But a conflict doesn’t have to be so grand–it can be as simple as the struggle to survive your senior year of high school, the struggle to make friends in a new town, or the struggle to win the heart of the cute guy who runs the yogurt stand near your work. Whatever you choose, this struggle–this conflict–will fill out your story and give it the point that it’s currently missing.

2. Choose a goal for your characters.

Conflict is the struggle itself, but the goal is the point the characters are struggling toward. In The Hunger Games, Katniss wasn’t really looking to defeat the Capitol so much as she just wanted to survive. It just so happened that in order to do that, she had to thwart and then defeat the Capitol. If your conflict is the struggle to survive the last year of high school, the goal the character is struggling toward might be to get good grades and stay out of trouble. The goal is tied to the main conflict but is more personal to the character.

3. Figure out your character’s motivation.

Motivation drives the character through the struggle, toward the goal. It’s the reason that they want to win the struggle. It’s why they do everything that they do. Why did Katniss want to survive? Because she wanted to take care of her loved ones. Why does your character want to get good grades and stay out of trouble all year? Maybe success means parental permission to backpack across Europe over the summer. Once you choose your character’s motivation, your character’s actions will make more sense.

4. Decide on an antagonist.  

You can’t have a struggle without an opposing force. If you had a tug o’ war with people on only one end of the rope, they would pull the rope and instantly win. They would have nothing to struggle against, and it would be boring. But if you put people on the other end of the rope, pulling with all of their might, now the people on the other end of the rope have something to struggle against. The antagonist is the person, people, thing, things on the opposite end of the rope. Every time your character starts to gain ground in the tug o’war struggle of your story, it’s the antagonist’s job to yank hard on that rope and cause your protagonist to lose ground. The motivation provides the pull from the character’s end, the antagonist provides the pull form the opposite end. 

The antagonist can be a super villain, it could be a well-meaning but overstrict parent, it could be bullies, a catastrophic weather event, an evil dystopian government–whatever you want. And it doesn’t have to be something bad. It just has to be something which, for whatever reason, creates obstacles to whatever goal your character is trying to reach.

5. Choose obstacles.

Once you’ve settled on your antagonist (or antagonists if you have more than one), you need to figure out what obstacles will best stand in your protagonist’s way. You should choose some they can tackle easily, and some that will throw them off their game. Sometimes they will fail and come back at it a second time and triumph. If your antagonist is a strict teacher, perhaps the first obstacle is a pop quiz which your character aces without batting an eyelash. But maybe the next obstacle is a group assignment–which is bad news for your character who doesn’t play well with others. The group assignment goes south and results in a D grade for the character. So, the character has to figure out how to tackle that bad grade and bring it up. Perhaps they choose to do extra credit which fails to get the grade up above a C. This is an “all is lost” moment for the character, but then maybe they do something great in class and the teacher awards them with more extra credit, which brings their grade up to a B. Your protagonist is ready to pack their bags from Europe when they find out that the final exam will account for a whopping 75% of their grade–mom and dad require all A’s for the trip to be a go… can your character do it? The uncertainty as your character attacks each obstacle is part of what keeps the reader turning pages.

When you’ve done all of the above, you’ll find that your story comes together much easier and that you suddenly have much more to write about. This is just the tip of the iceberg, but it’s enough to get your story to a much better place. 🙂