Wired for Story

in a story, what the reader feels is driven by what the protagonist feels.

Is something happening, beginning on the first page?

Elmore Leonard famously said that a story is real life with the boring parts left out.

Sara’s pains are coming ten minutes apart now. Every time one comes, she jolts herself against the side of the car, trying to disappear. Everything outside is whizzing past her from the car window because Jack, her father, is speeding, something she’s never seen him do before. Sara grips the armrest, her knuckles white. She presses her back against

“What happens” is the plot. “Someone” is the protagonist. The “goal” is what’s known as the story question. And “how he or she changes” is what the story itself is actually about.

In a story, plot-wise, what all other considerations bend to is the protagonist’s external goal. Sounds easy enough, until you add the fact that what her external goal bends to is her internal issue—the thing she struggles with that keeps her from easily achieving said goal without breaking a sweat. As we’ll see throughout, this internal struggle i

Is something at stake on the first page?

As John Irving once said, “Whenever possible, tell the whole story of the novel in the first sentence.”12

what is this thing called focus? It’s the synthesis of three elements that work in unison to create a story: the protagonist’s issue, the theme, and the plot.