Story Design (Chapter 02): What is a story?

In order to make it easier to understand basic principles of story design, we will focus on more traditional, narrative kinds of stories in this series. Once you develop a strong, story design process of your own, you will be able to apply it to other formats and to stories of a more unconventional nature.

In order to understand how a good writer makes effective choices in designing an engaging, memorable, and satisfying story, it will be good to think about what constitutes a good/effective story in the first place.

Such a definition would have to apply to most stories, however told: linear, non-linear, narrative, abstract, experimental, and so on. This suggests that a proper understanding of story may go beyond the form itself. Perhaps it’s more closely related to the nature of human beings than to a theoretical perspective. Maybe.

For the sake of learning, let’s say very simply that a story is the depiction of a struggle.

In a good story, there is a main character who undergoes pain and suffering in an attempt to accomplish a goal that is personally meaningful.

If a main character is not actively pursuing an important goal, is not having difficulty in doing so, and is not making progress (however gradual) towards that goal, the reader will lose interest.

Another important thing about stories is that they don’t actually exist in physical reality. There are no actual characters or settings that we can touch or with whom we can truly interact in the course of the story.

Even a live performance, which makes use of physical space and live actors, is a fictional construct with which we are, for the most part, passively involved.

That’s because stories take place in our minds.

A story presents information for us to absorb and interpret, and from which we construct meaning, based upon our experience of life. Because of how we have developed as a species, we tend to perceive and respond to the world (and to stories) in somewhat predictable and logical ways, both as individuals and as members of a group.

In a good story, it’s important that this information be presented in a way that the intended reader will understand. It must be relevant to the reader’s life, and it must provide something of value to the reader, otherwise the reader will feel that it is a waste of time.

Effective stories are consciously designed to exploit our natural human tendencies, with the goal of engaging, surprising, entertaining us, and teaching us what it is to be human. Writers who are serious about creating good stories must be as interested in the nature of human beings as they are in the nature of stories.

In a good story, it’s essential that the reader feel a strong connection to the main character as well. It’s not absolutely necessary that the reader actually like the character, but she must care about what happens to him. Only in that way will she be able to empathize with his plight, because his struggle will be familiar to her in some way.

Once she feels empathy, she will want to continue reading in order to see how the story turns out. And to find out whether or not the character has what it takes to succeed. She does this partly for her own entertainment, but also, subconsciously, in order to learn something useful about struggle in her own life.

Regardless of how complex/convoluted or simple/straightforward a story may be, we humans tend to expect certain things to be present in stories that we read. Whether a result of conditioning or genetic inheritance (or both or something else), we want some familiarity, some connection to our own life experience, in order to get started.

There are many such things that we expect from the story experience, but there are a few that are particularly important when it comes to effective story design:

• Struggle. Struggle brings about suffering; suffering brings about compassion; compassion brings about empathy; empathy brings about engagement. Struggle is one of the things that makes a story more engaging for the reader.
• A main character. Someone to whom the reader can relate (though not necessarily someone whom the reader will like).
• A sudden, catastrophic event. This unexpected occurrence dramatically upsets the world of the main character, and forces him to begin the pursuit of his goal.
• Obstacles. Once the main character commits to this pursuit, a series of difficult challenges will arise. Each in turn will temporarily block the way, making the pursuit increasingly more difficult, and testing the main character’s mettle.
• The Climax. The main character’s effort to overcome the final, massive, seemingly insurmountable obstacle of the story is the climax. In a good story, it pushes the main character to his limit.
• The Story Theme. The story’s point-of-view about a particular aspect of life, it’s the philosophical perspective on which the design of the story is based.

For whatever reason, a story in which one or more of these things is not present (or adequately accounted for in some way) may be entertaining and exciting and even a popular favorite. But it will have difficulty in being as intellectually and emotionally satisfying as one that does.

You might not agree. Though I think you would be hard-pressed to name a great story you’ve read, one that you felt was powerful and moving and timeless, that did not contain all of these. (Go ahead, I’ll give you a minute…)

This story framework is familiar to us because it closely parallels our human experience of life: how we learn about it, how we cope with its challenges, how we improve our competence, and how we formulate personal meaning and purpose.

But a good writer also needs to understand how and why stories work on we humans as well. She needs to understand how humans perceive and interact and respond and eventually formulate an explanation of how the world works in order to make use of it in her stories.

Good story design takes both of these perspectives into account to create stories that connect strongly with the reader.

Keep following to find out how.