Category Archives: Novel Writing

Developing Your Story’s Goal

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Step 40

Developing Your Story’s Goal

Some novice writers become so wrapped up in interesting events and bits of action that they forget to have a central unifying goal that gives purpose to all the other events that take place. This creates a plot without a core.

But determining your story’s goal can be difficult, especially if your story is character oriented, and not really about a Grand Quest.

For example, in the movie “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” all the characters are struggling with their relationships and not working toward an apparent common purpose. There is a goal, however, and it is to find happiness in a relationship.

This type of goal is called a “Collective Goal” since it is not about trying to achieve the same thing, but the same kind of thing.

So don’t try to force some external, singular purpose on your story if it isn’t appropriate. But do find the common purpose in which all your characters share a critical interest.

Referring to your story synopsis, have you included a Goal in which all the characters are involved?

If so, describe it below in as much detail as readily comes to mind.

If not, consider your subject matter and the activities in which your characters engage. What singular achievement would affect them all for better or worse?

Storytelling Trick 2 – Red Herrings (Changing Importance)

Red herrings are designed to make something appear more or less important than it really is. Several good examples of this technique can be found in the motion picture The Fugitive. In one scene a police car flashes its lights and siren at Dr. Kimble, but only to tell him to move along. In another scene, Kimble is in his apartment when an entire battalion of police show up with sirens blazing and guns drawn. It turns out they were really after the son of his landlord and had no interest in him at all. Red herrings can inject storytelling tension where more structurally related weaving may be lethargic.

Read All 50 Storytelling Tricks

Storytelling Trick 1 – Building Size (Changing Scope)

 50 Sure-Fire Storytelling Tricks!

By Melanie Anne Phillips
Creator StoryWeaver, Co-creator Dramatica

Trick 1

 Building Size (Changing Scope)

This first technique holds audience interest by revealing the true size of something over the course of the story until it can be seen to be either larger or smaller than it originally appeared. This makes things appear to grow or diminish as the story unfolds.

Conspiracy stories are usually good examples of increasing scope, as only the tip of the iceberg first comes to light and the full extent is ultimately much bigger. The motion picture All The President’s Men illustrates this nicely. Stories about things being less extensive than they originally appear are not unlike The Wizard Of Oz in which a seemingly huge network of power turns out to be just one man behind a curtain.

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Your Unique Genre

Write Your Novel Step By Step (shadow)Your Unique Genre

(Steps 32-35)

In these steps you’ll identify as many genres as you can that have elements you’d like to include in your novel. You’ll list these elements and then draw upon them to fashion a unique genre for your story that reflects familiar aspects of overused genre formulas yet creates an individual identity and feel for your novel.

Read Steps 32-35

Your Thematic Message

Write Your Novel Step By Step (shadow)Your Thematic Message (Steps 29, 30, 31)

Your thematic message will explore a particular human quality such as greed, denial, or living in fantasy. The message need not be about something bad, but could be about the value of a positive quality. This value is usually wrapped around a personal issue expressed through your Main Character. In these steps, you’ll explore your Main Character’s personal issues and select one to be the focus of your novel’s message.

Read steps 28, 29, 30

Your Thematic Topic

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Step 27 – Your Thematic Topic

In this step, you’ll explore how a thematic topic provides the glue to hold your characters, plot and theme together.  Then, you’ll identify the best candidates for a thematic topic in the story materials you’ve developed so far and incorporate them into your novel.

 Read Step 27…

Indentifying Your Main Character

wp602ef169_06Identifying Your Main Character

The Main Character represents the reader’s position in the story, but this is not always the Protagonist. While in a football game the Protagonist may be the quarterback, a story could be told through the eyes of any of the players on the field. The Protagonist is defined as the character who is the prime mover of the effort to achieve the story goal logistically. The Main Character, however, is the character with whom the readers most identify and around whom the passion of the story seems to revolve. It is the Main Character who must grapple with a personal or moral issue and is the center of the story’s message.

In this step, even if you are already completely sure of who your main character is, you’ll examine each character and look at the story through his or her eyes to see if there might be an even stronger viewpoint from which your readers might experience your story first hand.

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Write Your Novel Step by Step (22) – Your Characters’ Points of View

Write Your Novel Step By Step (shadow)Step 22 Your Characters’ Points of View) is now available here.

You know how you see your story, but what does it look to your characters? In this step, you’ll have each of your characters write a paragraph in his or her own unique voice describing how your story looks from their point of view within it.