What makes a story?
Stories are one of the earliest forms of communication developed by humankind (and possibly by other animals too, though we have no way of verifying it). For this reason, a good story tends to mirror human experience – not necessarily in its details, but in the most basic sense of structure.
Just like human experience, a good story is made up of thought, feeling and action. That is, there is a rational part to it, an emotional part and also a physical part.
This wisdom is pretty ancient and will seem quite obvious of we link it to a more technical approach to the question of what makes a story: Plot, Character and Description.
The plot is what happens in your story. It usually is a series of events that keeps the reader moving through the story. In a good story, these series of events have some sort of a causal connection (even if that cause is sheer serendipity) that makes it seem logical that the previous event could have led to the next.
The structure of a story
Stories – whether novels or short form, even non-fiction narratives – typically begin with what is known as inciting incident – the reason why the series of events that follows is important, either to the reader or the character in your story.
The inciting incident can be something completely unusual – like a surprise attack by an unknown alien civilization, or something that seems ordinary but is still a change from your character’s routine – like missing the train she takes daily to her workplace and, as a result, unexpectedly meeting a political talent scout who wants to make her run for elections. But something has to happen that does not happen every day.
The inciting incident then sets into motion a chain of events which lead all the way to the resolution – or the ending of the story. Typically, the resolution, as the very term implies, involves some sort solution to a problem (with the problem usually arising from the inciting incident). In this way, a resolution is more than a simple conclusion or ending – it is more of a satisfactory ending that offers a sense of emotional and rational closure to the reader’s journey through the world of the book.
What happens next, and then after that, all the way through to the end or resolution – that is the narrative arc of your story.
Difference between plot and narrative arc. Plot is sequence of events. Narrative arc is how you show the reader the sequence of events.
Motivation is what makes the reader want to find out why the events in your story are happening. Some stories tell us why right at the beginning. Others are more mysterious; they don’t tell us what is happening till the end. Either way, wanting to find out what happens and/or why keeps us reading.
When does your story start?
Clearly, inciting incident, plot and motivation are all important elements to get your story up and running. But they are not where your story really begins.
Stories truly begin when a reader begin to care about characters – the person or creature in the story through whose eyes the reader will experience the world of the story.
so to say, who about the things happening to them or why they are happening.
It is why your story exists. Because someone cares that it does.
4 Stories are made up of Conflicts/Contexts, Choices and Consequences.
This is actually another way of saying what you now know, that stories are made up mainly of characters, plot and descriptions.
I like this way of looking at it, mainly because it helps me connect characters, plot and descriptions without getting into the differences amongst the three. Rather, it helps me connect the three and keep the story moving forward.
What comes first – the plot or the characters?
The truth is, they are so intertwined that it does not matter. If you have characters who won’t let you sleep at night because you just have to find out what their story is, then you are in business.
You are also in business if you have a sense of something very important happening and cannot wait to get to know more about the people involved and affected by the situation.
But without characters, a plot is just a series of events.
It does not matter whether you begin with the why or the who, as long as you lead from one to the other.
6 Characters are the reason why we as readers care about the story, any story.
It helps to understand why, though, in order to construct compelling characters.
Most often, the reader makes a connect to a character because they see the people they are in them. Just as often, it is also because they see the people they are not – or don’t want to be — in them.
Characters, essentially are people readers know, in some way or the other, strangers they find strangely familiar without quite knowing why.
WRITE NOW
Describe a friend as you would to someone who has never met them.
Now go over your words.
How much of what you have said has to do with the person you have described? How much of it has to do with how you have felt, the things you have experienced in that relationship?
Your friend, like every character, is not just who they are but also a sum of the things they make you feel.
Characters are the bridge between the reader’s reality and the fictional world.
They are the key to making a reader believe the story world exists.
If a reader is emotionally invested enough in a character, if they care about your character enough, they will want to believe in the world in which your character exists, no matter how different it is from ours.