Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

by Lisa Cron

Stories allow us to simulate intense experiences without actually having to live through them.

A story is how what happens affects someone who is trying to achieve what turns out to be a difficult goal, and how he or she changes as a result.

Stories are about how we, rather than the world around us, change. They grab us only when they allow us to experience how it would feel to navigate the plot. Thus story, as we’ll see throughout, is an internal journey, not an external one.

What does your protagonist have to confront in order to solve the problem you’ve so cleverly set up for her?

Simply put, we are looking for a reason to care. So for a story to grab us, not only must something be happening, but also there must be a consequence we can anticipate.

here are the three basic things readers relentlessly hunt for as they read that first page: 1. Whose story is it? 2. What’s happening here? 3. What’s at stake?

“Joel Campbell, eleven years old at the time, began his descent into murder with a bus ride.”

So to take back some of that power, writers would do well to embrace this counterintuitive fact: the defining element of a story is something that has little to do with writing. Rather, it underlies the story itself and is what renowned linguist William Labov has dubbed “evaluation” because it allows readers to evaluate the meaning of the story’s events. Think of it as the “So what?” factor.

A story is designed, from beginning to end, to answer a single overarching question.

The story isn’t about whether or not the protagonist achieves her goal per se; it’s about what she has to overcome internally to do it. This is what drives the story forward. I call it the protagonist’s issue.

The second element, the theme, is what your story says about human nature.

What does the story tell us about what it means to be human? • What does it say about how humans react to circumstances beyond their control?

What is it I want my readers to walk away thinking about? What point does my story make? How do I want to change the way my reader sees the world?

That’s why in every scene you write, the protagonist must react in a way the reader can see and understand in the moment. This reaction must be specific, personal, and have an effect on whether the protagonist achieves her goal.

To sum up, when writing in the first person, it helps to keep these things in mind: • Every word the narrator says must in some way reflect his point of view. • The narrator never mentions anything that doesn’t affect him in some way. • The narrator draws a conclusion about everything he mentions. • The narrator is never neutral; he always has an agenda. • The narrator can never tell us what anyone else is thinking or feeling.

“I disagree with the advice ‘write about what you know.’ Write about what you need to know, in an effort to understand.”

Proust observed, “The only true voyage of discovery … would be not to visit strange lands but to possess [new] eyes.”

To create organic, compelling obstacles that work, you must make sure that everything your protagonist faces—beginning on page one—springs specifically from the problem she needs to solve, both internally and externally. This will help you avoid a very common pitfall: using a generic “bad situation” to create the protagonist’s goal.

Stories often begin at just that moment, as one of the protagonist’s long-held beliefs is about to be called into question.

That’s why, when writing your protagonist’s bio, the goal is to pinpoint two things: the event in his past that knocked his worldview out of alignment, triggering the internal issue that keeps him from achieving his goal; and the inception of his desire for the goal itself.

There are three main reasons for any sensory detail to be in a story: 1. It’s part of a cause-and-effect trajectory that relates to the plot—Lucy drinks the shake, she passes out. 2. It gives us insight into the character—Lucy’s an unapologetic hedonist headed for trouble. 3. It’s a metaphor—Lucy’s flavor choice represents how she sees the world.

What the protagonist believes is true versus what is actually true • What the protagonist wants versus what the protagonist actually has • What the protagonist wants versus what’s expected of her • The protagonist versus herself • The protagonist’s inner goal versus the protagonist’s external goal • The protagonist’s fear versus the protagonist’s goal (external, internal, or both) • The protagonist versus the antagonist • The antagonist versus mercy (or the appearance thereof)

In the same way, your goal is to be sure each individual scene effectively uses its specific “action, reaction, decision” to evoke maximum tension and to up the odds. At the beginning of the scene, it helps to ask yourself, What does my protagonist want to have happen during this scene? That established, ask yourself, “What is at stake here?” What will it cost her to get what she wants? Armed with this info, you’re ready to write the scene. When you finish it, before diving into the next scene, ask yourself these questions:

You might want to keep Samuel Johnson’s advice to writers tucked in the back of your mind as you slash and burn: “Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.”

Can you answer the “And so?” to everything in the story? Ask this question relentlessly, like a four-year-old, and the minute you can’t answer, know that you’re likely in the company of a darling, a digression, or something else likely to cause your story to go into free fall.

good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment.

But there’s a big difference between being poor and being broke, especially when back home, you’re rich.

Which brings us to the fabled Aesop, who said, “Men often bear little grievances with less courage than they do large misfortunes.”

And so, to both the writer and the protagonist, Plutarch offers this sage advice: “It must needs be that those who aim at great deeds should also suffer greatly.”15 Often in public.

Or, to put it a bit more philosophically, there’s Jung: “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

avidity

Good word

Which means, of course, that if the whole Swahili thing doesn’t come up again, it will turn into one of those lonely elephants, wandering the halls of the story, looking for something to do (damage, most likely).

“You know,” she says, “it doesn’t make sense to leave home to look for a home, to give up a life to find a new life, to say goodbye to friends you love just to find new friends.”