Elements That Make Up a Good Fiction Story

I believe in the power of story. And of course, in various cultures story tellers have held power; in Celtic communities, for instance, the Bard was second only to the Chief; consider the fact that the layout of a Bronze Age home gravitated around the centre where an elaborate chair was placed for the story teller; and witness the strength of the oral tradition, out of which Homer came with his tales of the Trojan war, and of the journeys of Odysseus.

Given that the secular gods of this society are celebrity and fame and wealth, it is hardly surprising that the story tellers have found themselves drawn in. And thus you have the cult of the celebrity bestselling novelist. Yes, sometimes our culture rewards a storyteller – but it is very uneven in the way it spreads its blessing. And beyond every famous successful writer there stand many others who are faithfully doing exactly the same thing – crafting stories.

So what are the elements of a good fiction story? Here are the five elements I believe are absolutely essential:

1) Characters that catch the reader's imagination - as in reality, so in fiction stories, individuals have a private and a public life. And it's the private life that yields the stories by which they live. Especially for a fiction writer, you cannot afford to present someone solely by how they behave in community, as they appear to other people. To me, the joy of fiction is that you are inside the characters, you feel how they feel, you experience life through their eyes, through their minds and hearts. We all have bright and dark areas in our characters. Our lives are a process of facing down our demons – archetypal story structure often includes dual characters like Spiderman & Peter Parker, or Superman & Clark Kent. Both these superheroes battle with the duality of dark and light in their characters. On one side is the bold, brilliant, public face; on the other side we find the quiet, the obscure, the vulnerable.

2) Archetypal theme – no matter how humble you think your story is, the fact remains, that in order to give the reader a strong experience, ultimately there has to be an archetypal theme behind it. This can be friendship, loyalty, love, betrayal, loss, redemption, grief, despair, fear – but all of these are archetypal, meaning they are profoundly part of human experience. The story can be light, humorous, hard-boiled, playful, serious, panoramic or any one of a number of different styles; but there will be an archetypal theme behind it. And then all is down to the author, as to which angle to take. Any originality a story has lies in the angle which the author takes.

3) Emotional charge – every successful story, even if it is pared-down in style, and doesn't ever describe the characters' feelings, as in Neil Gaiman's Coraline, or John Fowles' The Collector, carries its own emotional charge. This can come from the author's selection of events, and once again the angle the author chooses to take; the information the author decides to use, and the information the author keeps out of sight. If the story elicits a strong response from the reader, that story inevitably has "emotional charge".

4) Unexpected Turning Point – whether a story is a suspense, or a thriller, or a mystery, or any other genre, a powerful turning point is key. Of course this plays its part within classic story-stucture. This is why Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca is so universally loved. The turning point shocks. This has a lot to do with what is hidden from us, and what is revealed, during the progress of the story. The skilful withholding of information, the subtle drip-feeding of clues… all this plays its part in determining the effect that turning point will have on us.

5) X Factor – and then there is the final, unknown factor. This cannot be discounted. It evades the teachers of creative writing courses, the writers of "how-to" books; but it is there, undeniable. It has to do with the spirit behind the novel, and the spirit of the age in which the author writes, and the age in which the story is received. In Jane Austen's apparently simple romance novel about love, sex and money, Pride and Prejudice, we can analyse – and many have – but where exactly do we locate the X-factor? Yet it is there, mysterious, elusive, mercurial. Stories with X-factor have characters who haunt us, dilemmas we can relate to in every generation. Thomas Hardy's novel The Mayor of Casterbridge touches a deep nerve in human experience. You cannot chase X-factor. You have to work with your unconscious, be true to yourself, and let go.

I have loved many books in my life, but the ones that stand out for me have all the above five elements. Some have the power to shock and electrify the reader: authors such as Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene and Shusaku Endo. Others have characters that haunt you through the years: Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester, Cathy and Heathcliffe, Lizzy Bennett and Darcy, Pip and Estella; perhaps Bathsheba from Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd or Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, or Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray; or the master-criminal Count Fosco in Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, or maybe Dorothea in George Eliot's Middlemarch or Nicholas Darrow in Susan Howatch's Mystical Paths.

And I also favour authors who are witty, perceptive and brilliantly funny – like P.G. Wodehouse, Tom Sharpe, David Lodge, Jerome K. Jerome, Dodie Smith, Stella Gibbons and Jilly Cooper. I respond to authors whose work shows warmth and compassion, such as Katie Fforde and Joanna Trollope, or those who sail to the furthest reaches of the human psyche, such as Iris Murdoch or Susan Howatch. And among my most-loved books are those which tell of a small person harnessing the power of loyalty, friendship and love to overcome great odds – JK. Rowling's Harry Potter stories, Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, or C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I have marveled, too, at the imaginative fireworks in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.

Finally, as a postscript to this, I remember a line from Virginia Woolf's essay How Should One Read a Book? "I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgement dawns…The Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms, 'Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.'"

S.C. Skillman is the author of exciting new psychological thriller novel "Mystical Circles". The word "mystical" in the title is used ironically to mean "mysterious behaviour, events that keep you guessing, and people playing at cross purposes". Reviewers have enjoyed Skillman's "exploration of a community of complex characters who inhabit an eerie and atmospheric retreat" and have found it "a very entertaining read with plenty of action and sparky dialogue." If you are interested in people and their foibles you will enjoy this book. You can buy the novel on Amazon and through the Kindle Bookstore or visit the author's website to find out more. Click the secure payment gateway to buy a signed copy at http://www.scskillman.co.uk.