There’s a simple test for determining the strength of your story. If your story unfolds as a series of events – this happens, then this happens, then that happens – you’re not quite there. if you have established connections between your events – this happens because that happened – you have a better foundations.
In a post on Jane Friedman’s blog, Susan DeFrietas says this causality is what makes a story a story. At the heart of that connection is your protagonist’s inner problem. “The adaptive purpose stories serve is to provide us with inside intel—insight into the minds of others, and insight into our minds, the better with which to achieve health, happiness, and better relationships with others,” DeFriestas writers. “It’s the presence of an internal problem, at the outset of the story, that whispers a promise to the reader’s subconscious mind: This story is going to reveal the solution to that problem. In other words, This is a real story.”
As a book coach, DeFrietas finds that many writers struggle with introducing this internal problem, which some refer to as the protagonist’s wound or ghost. She suggests the following strategies:
- Establish the problem early. “Whatever your protagonist’s internal issue is, you can’t reveal it later on in the story, because it’s a key part of what sucks the reader in, on both a conscious and unconscious level,” DeFreitas explains.
- Show how the problem creates trouble for your protagonist. “One of the most important elements of the protagonist’s internal issue is that it’s something they are unaware of when the story opens,” DeFrietas says. “You reveal that issue by showing us the way, at the beginning of the novel, it’s creating trouble in the protagonist’s life.”
- Show how the problem gets in the hero’s way. Whatever the problem is, it keeps your protagonist from reaching their goal. It’s a stumbling block or might even be a brick wall. Your character might turn down opportunities to achieve their goal, fail to see them, or even actively chase them off. “And you can bet that your reader will be leaning forward in her chair at this point, rooting for the protagonist to figure out how she’s been standing in her own way, confront her internal issue, and change” before it’s too late, DeFreitas says.
