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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Lisa Cron
Read between
January 31 - March 13, 2019
situati...
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because a story’s yardstick mercilessly reveals those passages that don’t seem to add up at all, unmasking them as the one thing you want to banish from your story at all costs.
Will the protagonist achieve her goal? What will it cost her in the process? How will it change her in the end? What hooks us, and keeps us reading, is the
dopamine-fueled desire to know what happens next. Without that, nothing else matters.
Because, from the very first page, readers are dying to know what happens next. And
that’s what matters most.
learning to “write well” is not synonymous with learning to write a story. And of the two, writing well is secondary.
“So
what?”
Thus your first job is to zero in on the point your story is making.
A story is designed, from beginning to end, to answer a single overarching question.
As one editor put it, “If you can’t summarize your book in a few sentences, rewrite the book until you can.”
We have no idea who the protagonist is, so we have no way to gauge the relevance or meaning of anything that happens.
We know who the protagonist is, but she doesn’t seem to have a goal, so we don’t
know what the point is or where the story is going. • We know what the protagonist’s goal is, but have no clue what inner issue it forces him to deal with, so everything feels superficial and rather dull. • We know who the protagonist is and what both her goal and her issue are, but suddenly she gets what she wants, arbitrarily changes her mind, or gets hit by a bus, and now someone else seems to be the main character. • We’re aware of the protagonist’s goal, but what happens doesn’t seem to affect him or whether he achieves it. • The things that happen don’t affect the protagonist
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It’s the synthesis of three elements that work in unison to create a story: the protagonist’s issue, the theme, and the plot. The
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.
the theme, is
what your story says about human nature.
third element is the plot itself—the events that relentlessly force the protagonist to deal with her issue as she pursues her goal, no matter how many times she tries to make an end run
“minds exist to predict what will happen next.”6
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?
MYTH: The Plot Is What the Story Is About REALITY: A Story Is About How the Plot Affects the Protagonist
Plot facilitates story by forcing the protagonist to confront and deal with the issue that keeps him from achieving his goal. The way the world treats him, and how he reacts,
reveals the theme.
Since theme is the underlying point the narrative makes about the human experience, it’s also where the universal lies. The universal is a feeling, emotion, or truth that resonates with us all. For instance, “the raw power of true love” is something everyone (okay, almost everyone) can tap into,
Tone is often how theme is conveyed, by cueing your readers to the emotional prism through which you want them to view your story—like a soundtrack in a movie. It’s another way of sharpening your focus, highlighting what your reader really needs to know.
tone makes us feel it, by evoking a particular mood. Tone belongs to the author; mood to the
other words, your theme begets the story’s tone, which begets the mood the reader feels. Mood is what underlies the reader’s sense of what is possible and what isn’t in the world of your story, which brings us back to the
What does Scarlett need in order to feel she’s survived what life has thrown at her? The answer is her family’s plantation, Tara.
Harnessing Focus: How to Keep Your Story on Track
Do you know what the point of your story is? What do you want people to walk away thinking about? How do you want to change how they see the world? Do you know what your
story says about human nature? Stories are our way of making sense of the world, so
each and every one tells us something about what it means to be human, whether the author does it on purpose or not. What is your story saying? Do the protagonist’s inner issue, the theme, and the plot work together to answer the story question? How can you tell? Ask yourself: Is my theme reflected in the way the world treats my protagonist? Does each plot twist and turn force my protagonist to deal with his inner issue, the thing that’s holding him back? Do the plot and theme stick to the story question? Remember, the story question will always be in the back of your reader’s mind, and it is
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Without emotion, each option carried the exact same weight—everything really was six of one, half a dozen of the other.
“Emotions are mechanisms that set the brain’s
highest-level goals.”3 Along with, apparently, e...
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The Protagonist: You Feel Me?
the real story is how what happens affects the protagonist, and what she does as a result.
Neutrality bores the reader. If it’s neutral, it’s not only beside the point, it detracts from it.
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. What it can’t be is dispassionate ...
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If we’re not feeling, we’re not breathing. A neutral
How to Catapult the Reader into Your Protagonist’s Skin
what other characters do, think, and feel will itself be measured by its effect on the protagonist.
Because ultimately what moves a story forward are the protagonist’s actions, reactions, and decisions, rather than the external events that trigger them.
Externally:
Via our intuition:
