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

by Lisa Cron

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.

“What happens” is the plot. “Someone” is the protagonist. The “goal” is what’s known as the story question. And “how he or she changes” is what the story itself is actually about.

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.

As neuroscience reveals, what draws us into a story and keeps us there is the firing of our dopamine neurons, signaling that intriguing information is on its way.

It stands to reason, then, that something must be happening—beginning on the first page—that the protagonist is affected by. Something that gives us a glimpse of the “big picture.” As John Irving once said, “Whenever possible, tell the whole story of the novel in the first sentence.”12 Glib? Yeah, okay. But a worthy goal to shoot for.

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.

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.

MYTH: Adding External Problems Inherently Adds Drama to a Story REALITY: Adding External Problems Adds Drama Only If They’re Something the Protagonist Must Confront to Overcome Her Issue

The result is that writers craft plots in which these events occur rather than crafting protagonists whose internal progress depends on said events occurring. Such stories are written from the outside in: the writers throw dramatic obstacles in their protagonist’s path because the timeline tells them to rather than because they’re part of an organic, escalating scenario that forces the protagonist to confront her inner issue.

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.

Stories often begin at just that moment, as one of the protagonist’s long-held beliefs is about to be called into question. Sometimes that belief is what stands between her and something she really wants. Sometimes it’s what’s keeping her from doing the right thing. Sometimes it’s what she has to confront to get out of a bad situation before it’s too late. But make no mistake, it’s her struggle with this “internal issue” that drives the story forward.

In fact, the plot itself is cleverly constructed to systematically back her into a corner where she has no choice but to face it or fold up her tent and go home.