How to Write a Good Story in Five Steps
Key elements that make or break your script, whatever media you’re writing for
Being a development editor might not be an easy job, but it is a really, really fun one for sure. You get to read all kinds of stories, take them apart, and doctor them to make them a lot tighter in terms of structure and thus much more engaging in terms of character depth.
I won’t claim to be a master at this by any standard. I’ve been in this line of work for about six years now, but I still learn new things every day. This is a great thing. It only goes to show that storytelling really is a dynamic art, that it will pretty much never be set in stone. As new media and methods are discovered, as new consumption patterns become the norm, so too do new challenges of storytelling arise.
That being said, certain key elements can always be found in the best stories. Personally, I look for five. When these elements aren’t there, you pretty much won’t have a story. And if by some sheer luck your script gets accepted to be developed in whatever format, nobody — including yourself — will end up happy about it.
So what are these five key elements?
1. Theme
The most important element for a story to have is a theme. It’s basically the answer to the question: What is this story talking about?
It’s such a simple question, yet it’s surprising how many aspiring writers never think about this at all. Their “story” is nothing but a collection of tired tropes, Frankensteined together haphazardly with no clear intent.
The story may have a direction, say, the hero wants to defeat a bad guy. It may have an end goal, say, for the lead male to win the heart of the lead female. But it’s just going to feel very generic, if not all over the place, as you’d be busy trying to look for the next coolest thing you can do instead of really diving deep into your characters.
Thing is, you can’t explore characters without a theme. You can’t have a thread or metaphors. All you can do is to take one trope after another and hope each event is cool enough to get your audience moving to the next episode, and that somehow your story will eventually work out.
Spoiler alert: it won’t. No matter how exciting your world is, how captivating your premise is, how cool your visuals are, how engaging your first chapter is, your audience will end up leaving you since they won’t know where you’re steering the ship. And when readers are lost, anticipation — that key engine of storytelling — will be impossible.
So, before anything else: Find your theme.
2. Ghost
The best way to deliver a theme is to derive it into a ghost. A ghost is something in the character’s past that haunts her to this day, whether she realizes it or not. It’s the primary reason for a character to behave one way instead of the other.
Many people think of ghosts as coming from a tragic past. This is not necessarily the case. You can have characters who have led perfect lives, but are nonetheless haunted by very simple things: Their body image, their being single for years when all their friends are getting married, their anxieties of living in a big city.
Some great stories have been known to flip this around: The supporting characters all have much more tragic backstories than the hero, and the hero’s ghost is, paradoxically, her lack of one (thus usually leading to her feeling of helplessness that she couldn’t do more for her friends, that she’s not special, that she doesn’t deserve her role, etc). I call this catalyst heroes, but that’s another topic entirely.
Comedies do not necessarily require ghosts, but you will recongnize that the best and most memorable comedies have them. The best moments from The Simpsons, for example, deal with ghosts of familial issues. (And, consequentially, their fall in the later seasons can be argued to be caused by the disappearance of these ghosts.)
The point is, the next question you need to answer after finding your theme is this: How does this issue personally affect your hero’s behavior?
3. Identity
The ghost’s primary job is to have a backbone for your hero’s behavior. But the manifestation of this behavior usually accumulate as the hero’s identity.
The identity, in this context, is the protective mask that the hero has put on to deal with her ghost without really dealing with it. It’s a form of protection, self-defense, escapism. It’s the layers of excuses that the hero has convinced herself to be true so that she doesn’t need to confront her ghost.
When introduced, your hero will always have an identity. This identity is what the hero believes herself to be, and what the world around her also believes her to be. Mostly, the audience would know, however, that she’s not happy, or at least not fully herself in that identity.
This identity can be of a higher nature, e.g. a world-renowned music prodigy — in which case the essence would have to explore things outside of this perfect image — or of a lower nature, e.g. a young person with a dead-end job — in which case the essence would have to explore the reasons why she’s stuck there.
Either way, throughout the course of the story, this identity has to be dismantled in order for the hero to become a truer version of herself. This is what is called the essence.
4. Essence
If identity is a hero’s defensive mask, essence is the hero’s true self, fully embracing her raison d’etre and living her full life in accordance to her passions and desires, running around with a genuine smile.
The hero’s essence needs to be a crystallization of the end goal of your theme. If your theme is about letting go, then your hero’s essence need to be the version of her that has managed to let go. If your theme is about dealing with loss, your hero’s essence can only be achived when she has dealt with that loss.
The essence is the version of the hero that will ultimately achive the end goal of your story: Defeat the Big Bad, win the love interest, or whatever it might be. As long as the hero is stuck to her identity due to fear, she will never achieve this goal. The Big Bad will win, the love interest will never find out about her true self, and so on.
Often, somewhere nearing the climax, the hero will suffer a great blow that will cause her to retreat into her identity, almost shutting down her essence completely.
Showing her essence from the beginning, and finally pushing her toward this essence in her lowest, most self-doubting point, is her reflection.
5. Reflection
The reflection can be the hero’s best friend, mentor, love interest, rival, or any other character that push the hero toward her true essence. The approach can be friendly, or it can be hostile. In any case, this is a character whose primary task is to remind the hero that her fears are causing her to put on a mask and comprise with her own unhappiness.
Some stories do not have reflection characters who stay, but rather have reflection events with what otherwise can be throwaway characters. This is fine, too, especially when you have solitary heroes with plenty of inner monologues and self-realization moments. Either way, the hero will most likely require a mirror to face her own fears and tear down her own identity to reach her essence. This mirror needs to be solid and believable, established from the beginning of your story.
Some stories place the second lead (e.g. the love interest) as the one having a larger, more complex ghost than the main lead, and the main lead serving as a reflection of said character to confront said ghost. This happens mostly in catalyst heroes, whose genuine kindness and optimism inspire courage the ones closest to her to find their true essence. When done well, this can make for truly inspiring stories and a perennially lovable main character.
The “kids with cute magical animal friends” trope often found in anime usually place the animal friends in this category, and jerk our tears hard as the main child characters find courage and confront their biggest fears because of this animal friend.
On the other hand, some of the best romantic comedies often place the main character in the reflection position, as the love interest (or interests, for harem comedies) develops from a romantic idol into a fully fleshed-out human being, tearing up hard as he opens up and gain courage to pursue his essence.
So there you have it: Five key elements of a good story that I, as an editor, always look for. No matter what media you’re writing for, these five will always be useful to keep in mind as you develop your characters and sharpen your key message. To recap:
- Decide on a theme, i.e. what you want to say through your story.
- Turn your theme into a ghost, i.e. something in your character’s past that affects her behavior and prevents her from living a fulfilled life.
- Flesh out her identity, i.e. the mask the character has built to escape this ghost without really dealing with it.
- Figure out her essence, i.e. what her true self is about if she did not have to construct that defensive identity wall.
- Construct reflection points, either through interactions with another character or through events that hold up a mirror to your hero.
(The acronym TIGER works well as a mnemonic, although the I and G are in reverse order. But hey, good reminder nonetheless!)
Themes and ghosts are very common elements in storytelling, and I would push for their utilization no matter what genre you’re writing for. It’s the staple of storytelling, whether you’re creating fiction or documentaries.
The last three elements, however, are only necessary if you wish to create stories with deep inner journeys and fleshed out characters. The terms are Michael Hauge’s, and I suggest you read more of his work to find out more.
If you’re writing action thrillers or detective fiction, however, sometimes your events are large and high-stakes enough, and your driving question is fascinating enough, that you don’t need much of an inner journey. This is fine, too, although chances are your story can always be improved with a solid inner journey.
In any case, I hope you’ve enjoyed this article. If you find it useful, share it with your aspiring writer friends!
