7 Essential Elements of a Story

I attended the Nebraska Writers Guild Spring Conference this weekend (although it could have been called Winter Conference, as it was 14 degrees with snow. Hence the “Nebraska” part of “Nebraska Writers Guild”) and had a great time, as always.

They brought in several high profile speakers and agents, and today I wanted to share and discuss something I learned from one of them, script consultant and film producer, Barri Evins. Her presentation was titled Story Essentials – What Every Story Needs to Succeed and in it she listed her 7 Essential Elements of a Story.

I thought it would be fun to give my take on them. So here goes…

1. The Hero

Your protagonist (obviously). But the thing is, you can’t throw just anybody into this role. You need the character to be both relatable and realistic. It’s so important to create a character your reader can invest in, otherwise they will lose interest and stop reading. (Unless the reader is me, and the character is named Roland. I still let King drag me through seven books of that series.)

It’s also worth mentioning, that regular book worms can spot a Mary Sue a mile away, so keep your Mary Sues out of your book.

2. The Flaw

I hated Hulk Hogan in the 80s and was never a big Superman fan. This is because even at a young age, I knew that “perfect” people made boring protagonists. (Okay, to be fair, at that age, the word protagonist would have had as much meaning as precocious, but you get what I’m saying.)

Anyhow, your character needs an Achilles’ heel. A weakness that the villain can exploit. Something that puts the protagonist at a disadvantages and gives that person an obstacle to overcome. Luke Skywalker let his emotions control him. Indiana Jones was afraid of snakes. Jason Vorhees was afraid of water (at least in Freddy vs. Jason).

3. The Goal

This one isn’t as easy as it seems. It sounds easy: “What does the protagonist want?” but how many times have you written a story where you have a character, a bunch of stuff happens, and then it ends, but you never actually asked–and answered–that question. Be honest: We’ve all done this.

During Barri’s talk I wrote this in my notebook:

• What does your protagonist want?
• What will he (or she, obviously) give up to get it?
• What happens if he fails?

Now, I don’t know if that part was directly out of Barri’s mouth, or if it just kind of came to me while she was talking, but either way, I’ll be asking myself those three questions before I start writing a story from here on out.

4. The Conflict

The easiest way to sum this up is: What gets in your character’s way?

I know…we’ve all had English classes and we all know about the whole man vs. blah blah blah. What kind of conflict doesn’t matter one bit. Just find things–big things and little things–to throw at your character. Our real lives are full of conflict from the minute our alarm clock goes off in the morning (man vs. nature?) and even though we may write to escape the conflicts of real life, we need to incorporate all of them into our fiction.

Nothing is easy in the real world, so make sure nothing is easy in your fictional one.

5. Escalation

Now take those conflicts and step them up (and up and up). This part was actually one of the big points made that I had never heard of or thought about before. As your protagonist approaches the goal, your job as the writer is to escalate things. Increase the severity and frequency of obstacles and give your reader a sense of urgency as they follow your character to the very end.

6. Twist

When we read stories or watch movies, we are continuously guessing what comes next. A twist doesn’t have to be the big unexpected ending that no one saw coming. Twists should be used throughout your novel. Whenever you think a reader can easily guess what is coming next, throw in a twist to keep them guessing.

It is important to make sure that the twists are realistic and reasonable within the story. Test it. Read the scene again with the twist in mind. If it doesn’t seem like something that could happen in the context of the story, then it might not be the right twist.

7. Suspense (and tension)

I’ve written about suspense before, but it needs to be reiterated. Suspense isn’t about what’s happening; it’s about making the reader dread what might happen. The longer you can draw that out, the more suspense you can create.

Finally, I left myself a note during the presentation: Use this in your current WIP.

And I will. I’m looking over my outline now, and definitely see some placing where I can incorporate this stuff, and to me, that presentation alone was worth the price of admission.

I say this all the time, but if you’re a writer in Nebraska who hasn’t attended a writing conference before, you should definitely check out one of the Nebraska Writers Guild conferences. You won’t be disappointed.

How have you incorporated these elements of story-telling in your own writing? Leave a comment and let us know!