Write a Buildup to a Story
Whether you're writing a short story or a full-length novel, you have to be able to maintain enough momentum and garner enough curiosity and anxiety about "what happens next" to keep your readers enthusiastically turning the pages from start to finish. Here's what you need to know in order to prevent your audience from getting bored with your plot and characters and wandering off to someone else's book.
Instructions
1. Hit the ground running by throwing your protagonist into a bad situation by the end of your first chapter. If your story is in the format of a screenplay, this means that the conflict that will drive the action of the entire film needs to be presented to the audience no later than in the first 10 minutes.
2. Establish the external conflict and internal conflict early and simultaneously. The external conflict (known as the "A" line thread) represents the forces over which your protagonist has no control and which compel him to take a stand in order to reap a reward, escape a hostile environment or hatch a scheme of revenge against those who have wronged him. Examples: a natural disaster, an invasion by aliens, a foreclosure of the family farm, a rival who seeks to steal the love of his life. The internal conflict (known as the "B" line thread) represents the character's deepest fears and flaws that--up until this point--he has not wanted to confront and yet must now inevitably face in order to save the day. Example: The protagonist has a paralyzing fear of water because he was unable to save his little sister when she drowned. Unfortunately, the only way he can save his village from harm--and, thus, redeem himself--is to swim across the channel during a storm.
3. Use one- and two-syllable words in short sentences as opposed to three-syllable words in long sentences. A choppy, staccato delivery of narrative and dialogue creates a sense of urgency that, in turn, will make your reader feel much edgier about what's going on.
4. Embed foreshadowing early in your plot. The mention of a quirky village curse in the first chapter or a reference to the long-forgotten gates that were once built as a defense against the river spilling its banks will hover in your readers' minds and make them wonder whether the characters in the story will be able to remember these details and use them to their advantage before it's too late.
5. Make your characters fail. When things come too easily to the good guys in a book or a movie, an audience's empathy and attachment to them quickly wanes. By the third act of your project, the placement of your hero between a rock and a hard place needs to make your audience actually doubt that he can really carry off the biggest challenge of all (having already witnessed him crash and burn on challenges that were far less).
6. Orchestrate battles that involve worthy adversaries. In keeping with Step 5, a protagonist to whom every victory comes easily isn't going to be as watchable as one who tries as hard as he can but continues to stumble and lose ground. Nor will your readership or audience feel much angst if your villains are stereotypical dolts who are bad simply to be bad; their motivations must be as strong as those of the protagonist, and they also need to have just as much visibility in the story instead of just being talked about in conversations.
7. Sprinkle red herrings throughout your plot to keep the audience guessing. Agatha Christie did this frequently in her mystery stories.
8. Insert surprises. This is not to be confused with contrivances. Surprises often relate to the foreshadowing that was planted early in the book or have a connection to an obscure comment one of the characters made that no one--including the reader--paid much attention to at the time.
9. Reveal new layers of personality about your lead characters that either serve to explain how they got to this juncture or lead to speculation on how this new information will impact their ability to fall in love, escape danger or solve the crime.
10. Heighten the audience's expectations at every turn. Make them want to reach the forbidden castle, find the buried treasure or apprehend the villain just as much as the hero does. Use the "ticking clock" motif to keep reminding them that time is running out to rescue the princess, find a serum or save the planet from being hit by a gigantic meteor.
11. Use humor to lull your reader into a false sense of security, and then zap him with an even bigger problem, setback, monster or catastrophe.
Tags: your plot, about what, Buildup Story, conflict known, conflict known line, external conflict, feel much
