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

by Lisa Cron

Story is what makes us human, not just metaphorically but literally. Recent breakthroughs in neuroscience reveal that our brain is hardwired to respond to story; the pleasure we derive from a tale well told is nature’s way of seducing us into paying attention to it.2

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.

WHAT’S HAPPENING HERE? 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.”

Elmore Leonard famously said that a story is real life with the boring parts left out. Think of the boring parts as anything that doesn’t relate to or affect your protagonist’s quest. Every single thing in a story—including subplots, weather, setting, even tone—must have a clear impact on what the reader is dying to know: 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.

A story is designed, from beginning to end, to answer a single overarching question. As readers we instinctively know this, so we expect every word, every line, every character, every image, every action to move us closer to the answer. Will Romeo and Juliet run off together? Will Scarlett realize Rhett’s the man for her before it’s too late? Will we find out enough about Charles Foster Kane to know what the hell Rosebud means?

I can’t tell you how many manuscripts I’ve read where if someone asked, “What’s it about?” my only answer would be, “It’s about three hundred pages.”

Ha!

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. Theme tends to be reflected in how your characters treat each other, so it defines what is possible and what isn’t in the world the story unfolds in.

The 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 around her issue along the way.

Happily, theme actually boils down to something incredibly simple: • 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? Theme often reveals your take on how an element of human nature—loyalty, suspicion, grit, love—defines human behavior.

But the real secret to theme is that it’s not general; that is, the theme wouldn’t be “love” per se—rather, it would be a very specific point you’re making about love. For instance, a love story can be sweet and lyrical, revealing that people are good eggs after all; it can be hard-nosed and edgy, revealing that people are intense and quirky; it can be cynical and manipulative, revealing that people are best avoided, if possible.

Theme often reveals the point your story is making—and all stories make a point, beginning on page one. But that doesn’t mean you have to hit readers over the head with it.

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

And as neuroscience writer Jonah Lehrer points out in How We Decide, “Confidence is comforting. The lure of certainty is built into the brain at a very basic level.”2 In fact, it’s a big part of our sense of well-being. That is why, when questions arise that challenge our beliefs about, well, anything, we tend get a little cranky. Or as social psychologist Timothy D. Wilson says, “People are masterful spin doctors, rationalizers, and justifiers of threatening information and go to great lengths to maintain a sense of well-being.”3 We don’t like change, and we don’t like conflict, either. So most of the time we do our best to avoid both. This isn’t easy, since the only real constant is change, and change is driven by conflict. This or that? Me or you? Chocolate or vanilla? Sounds sort of bleak, doesn’t it?

Definitely a conflict there, and one that reveals a nifty rule of thumb: One way to tell if what the protagonist wants in the beginning is her genuine goal is to ask yourself: will she have to face her biggest fear, and so resolve her inner issue, to achieve said goal? If the answer is no, then guess what—it’s a false goal.

Sometimes the irony stems from the fact that the plan works brilliantly and the protagonist gets exactly what she’s after, only to discover it’s actually the last thing she’d ever want. In which case, Gary instantly falls for April, sweeping her into his arms, murmuring that he loves her almost as much as playing World of Warcraft until dawn, which he’d do every night if only his mom would stop banging on the wall.

Damn funny.