In a post on Writer Unboxed, Susan DeFreitas examines the difference between a good story and a story that makes sense. Your story might have everything going for it, but if your characters make choices or take actions that don’t make logical sense, your reader is likely to bail.
A strong protagonist goal is key to avoiding logical errors, DeFreistas says. A strong goal ties together your plot, character arc, setting, and other elements. The goal describes what your story is about and contributes to narrative drive. It also helps your reader connect to your protagonist and story.
When you choose your main character’s goal, you need to have a strong understanding of why. Your higher order goal is what your hero will try to achieve throughout the novel. While your hero will encounter obstacles and setbacks, he shouldn’t deviate from the goal without good reason. Choices and actions that seem to pull the character away from the main story goal will seem illogical unless you can explain it.
Your lower-order goals are the small steps your hero takes to achieve the main goal. If your character is trying to get from Point A to Z, then the lower order goals are steps B – Y. Of course, your hero should encounter challenges and possible failure points at each step, but he should never forget why each of these steps is so important.
That doesn’t mean your protagonist can’t change goals. Maybe they were chasing the wrong goal from the beginning, and something more important appears to them through the events of the novel. However, you need to communicate this change clearly. You need to show why the first important goal is now subordinate to the new goal, and why this new goal is so compelling. If either is unclear to the reader, you’ve missed some logical steps in your story progression.
Secondary characters can be another trouble spot. When you want to create obstacles for your protagonist, it’s easy to create supporting characters who create difficulty without any logical reason. Your readers should be able to discern a reason behind your supporting characters’ actions. Otherwise, your supporting characters will feel like plot devices, not actual people. Worse, your readers might pick a different reason than the one you had in mind, and find themselves in an entirely different story than the one you’re writing.
Finally, what happens in your story world has to make logical sense, too. When your protagonist achieves success, it has to feel realistic and earned. Success shouldn’t come out of the blue. If someone is impressed by your hero’s actions or talent, you need to show why. What made your hero stand out? What caught the other person’s attention and why? If you don’t explain this well, your hero’s achievement will come across as a deus ex machina, a plot contrivance rather than big success.
