Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere)

by Lisa Cron

The question is: what, specifically, generates that juice? The answer is: it flows directly from how the protagonist is making sense of what’s happening, how she struggles with, evaluates, and weighs what matters most to her, and then makes hard decisions, moving the action forward.

Story is about how the things that happen in the plot affect the protagonist, and how he or she changes internally as a result.

Story is about an internal struggle, not an external one. It’s about what the protagonist has to learn, to overcome, to deal with internally in order to solve the problem that the external plot poses. That means that the internal problem predates the events in the plot, often by decades.

Stories instill meaning directly into our belief system the same way experience does—not by telling us what is right, but by allowing us to feel it ourselves.

It is emotion, rather than logic, that telegraphs meaning, thus emotion is what your novel must be wired to transmit, straight from the protagonist to us.

In a nutshell: A story is about how the things that happen affect someone in pursuit of a difficult goal, and how that person changes internally as a result.

What happens in the story is the plot, the surface events of the novel.

The someone is the protagonist, and as we’ll see, everything that happens in the plot will get its meaning and emotional weight based on how it affects her

The difficult goal is, at its most basic, what’s known as the story problem. All stories revolve around how someone solves a single, escalating problem they can’t avoid.

And that internal change? That, my friends, is what the story is actually about: how your protagonist’s external dilemma—aka the plot—changes her worldview.

We don’t come to story simply to watch the events unfold; we come to experience them through the protagonist’s eyes, as she struggles with what to do next.

The trouble is, they’ve focused on developing the wrong thing—the external plot—rather than the internal story.

Disagree - plenty of outline methods address this. I feel like she hasn't really done her research.

Plotters have it backward: the events in the plot must be created to force the protagonist to make a specific really hard internal change. And that means you need to know, specifically, what that internal change will be before you begin creating a plot. Outlining the plot first is like saying, “I’m going to write about the most difficult, life-altering series of events in the life of someone whom I know absolutely nothing about.”

To help writers in this pursuit, there are numerous guides that very deftly outline what has been dubbed “story structure.” The problem is, story structure is a misnomer because these guides are not about story at all. They’re about plot structure, which is very different indeed.

The trouble is that writers often misunderstand the notion of what beginning in medias res means, taking it to simply be a device to plunge us into current action and explain it later.

100% agree - I hate when books start with pointless action

The first step is to transform that initial slip of an idea into a potent What If question.

Because so what if Freddy discovers a castle or Martha finds a big box on her desk or Jane finds a message in a bottle? Unless we know why these things would matter to Freddy, Martha, or Jane, they’re just a bunch of unusual things that happen, even if they do break a well-known external pattern. Not only don’t they suggest an actual story, they don’t suggest anything at all, other than the reaction: Wow, that’s weird!

What Ifs like that are debilitating to writers, whether you’re eight or eighty, because they’re utterly random and thus completely neutral, rendering them pointless.

This is because, inevitably, the plot will focus solely on the strange event, rather than the effect said event might have on a specific person.

Each of these points gives us a glimpse of the hard internal choice that those big, externally dramatic What Ifs will force the protagonist to confront. Here’s the key: 1. The point is what is borne out in the protagonist’s inner struggle. 2. The What If centers on the external plot that will trigger that struggle, ultimately making the point.

It’s one thing to deconstruct something that’s already been written, and quite another to watch something being developed from the ground up.

Step 1: That First Pinprick

In no more than a page, write about the instant the idea that you’re working with—the one that won’t seem to leave you alone—first grabbed you. As Jennie did with her fledgling protagonist who doesn’t like dogs, try to zero in on the very first glimmer.

Step 2: Why Do You Care?

Now the question is, why have you even gone this far with it? Ask yourself, why does this stick with me? Why do I care about it? The goal is to burrow into wh...

In no more than a page, write down why you care about the story that you want to tell. There is no right answer; whatever comes to mind is relevant—even if it seems silly. You might surprise yourself and discover you care for an entirely different reason than you thought you did.

Step 3: What Is Your Point?

Here’s the (very reassuring) skinny: at the beginning, just about every story starts with a cliché. A cliché is simply something that’s so familiar that it feels old hat. It’s the story’s job to make it, um, new hat.

See if you can nail the point your story will make in a few concise lines. Don’t worry if in the beginning it splashes all over the page. Just keep focusing in on the single driving point it will make. The goal is to reduce it to its essence.

Step 4: Drafting Your What If

Now, you try it. Write a What If that’s as fully fleshed out as you can make it, but still concise. You don’t want this What If to sprawl all over the place. Don’t be afraid if the first attempt is wide of the mark. Keep at it until you have something specific, with context, conflict, and a hint of surprise. In essence: something that will make your point.

Without a main character, the reader has no skin in the game, and everything remains utterly neutral and surprisingly hard to follow.

So even if your What If came equipped with a protagonist, it’s time to transform that person from a generic “anyone” plunked in a dicey situation, into a specific someone, who brought the situation on herself. Not “brought on” in the finger-wagging sense, but because it’s all the things we’ve already done in our lives that have—for better or worse—landed us where we are right now.

The question now becomes, who is the person whose transformation—whose inner change—will embody that point? It’s his or her internal struggle that will trigger the decisions that drive your plot. It’s not what the world throws at them; it’s the meaning they read into those events that your story is actually about.

Write a thumbnail sketch of who your protagonist is before the novel starts. Resist the urge to make detailed lists of the color of their hair and what’s in their closet. Keep it short and to the point—the point being, who is this person on the inside? What do they believe? What do they want? Where are they in their life, specifically? Your goal, as always, is to infuse what your protagonist has done with the internal reason why they did it. Never lose sight of this simple fact: it’s not just about what your protagonist did, it’s about why.

before you can upend your protagonist’s plans, you need to know what those plans are—and, more important, why they matter to her. Otherwise, how will you know what she might do when said plans go awry? That’s why first we’ll get more specific about your protagonist’s initial agenda—what she enters the novel already wanting, and what specific misbelief holds her back. Then we’ll tackle the most important question of all: why she wants what she wants, and why that damn misbelief has such a strong hold on her in the first place.

So at the risk of being obvious, let me say that all protagonists stand on the threshold of the novel they’re about to be flung into with two things about to burn a hole in their pocket: 1. A deep-seated desire—something they’ve wanted for a very long time. 2. A defining misbelief that stands in the way of achieving that desire. This is where the fear that’s holding them back comes from.

In real life if your significant other swore that all he or she wanted was to be happy, chances are you’d instantly pounce on it, asking, “What do you mean, happy? Are you saying I don’t make you happy?” And you’d be off to the races, searching for the answer to the real question: What is it, specifically, that you think would make you happy?

If you’re writing speculative fiction, fantasy, or historical fiction, that means creating the rules of the world in which the action takes place, and solidifying not only what is and isn’t possible, but why. When you do, it’s comforting to remember that the one thing that remains constant is the human element—the emotional, psychological reality that underlies everything. That doesn’t change. You’re writing about how humans view the world whether that “human” consciousness is coming from WALL•E, a Brave Little Toaster, or Yoda.

Now it’s your turn. Write a short paragraph about what your character enters the novel wanting, even if she doesn’t think she has a chance in hell of getting it. The sketch of your protagonist that you wrote in the last chapter may very well have touched on the question. And, yes, even if your protagonist couldn’t possibly articulate the answer, you must be able to do so. Be as specific as possible. Use the “eyes wide shut” test—if you can’t close your eyes and envision it, it’s not there yet.

Now it’s your turn. The question is, why does your protagonist want what she wants? What will getting it mean to her? What does she think it will say about her? Remember, to the outside world it might say something quite different about her. Not to mention that, very often, what your protagonist thinks achieving her goal will mean to her turns out to be very wrong. Often, that is the whole point of the story.

What is a misbelief, exactly? It’s the same thing as a belief, only it’s wrong. I know. Duh. The point is, a misbelief feels identical to a belief that’s spot on. That is, it feels right, not to mention true. And here’s the key thing: it doesn’t feel right because the protagonist is a big fat idiot or so flawed he or she can’t tell the difference between what’s right and what isn’t. It feels right because at a crucial moment in your protagonist’s life, it was right. Right, that is, with an asterisk.

Try defining your protagonist’s misbelief. As concisely as you can, write down what she wants, and what the fear is that’s keeping her from achieving it. One question to ask yourself as you work this out is, Given her misbelief, what does she think the very worst thing that could happen would be? Try to picture it. Spend time exploring it, and don’t worry whether you’re “writing well.” Turn off the part of your brain that’s always nitpicking about your prose (if it gets too loud, mentally duct tape it to the chair). It might take you several rambling pages to strike gold—don’t worry. Dig deep, because you are going to capture the conflict—the yin and the yang of the misbelief—that is going to drive your whole novel.

We ascribe meaning to everything—home, clouds, love, and the fact that our significant other forgot our birthday again—based on one thing only: what our personal experience has taught us that those things signify, and therefore what we can expect of them.

The point is, we never see or do anything “in general.” It’s actually kind of impossible, when you think about it. For instance, did you ever go to school in general? Go to the market in general? How about fall in love, in general? Of course not, because we do every single thing, specifically, moment by moment.

Can you envision the moment in your protagonist’s life when his misbelief took root? Perhaps you have a vague idea, and that’s fine. Take a minute and sketch it out the way Jennie did in a simple paragraph.

So, yes, even as you create this defining moment, you’ll still be reaching into the past and gathering a handful of specifics in order to set it up. That’s why before you begin writing the scene, you need to answer four questions. These are the same questions you’ll ask yourself when writing—or envisioning—any scene. They are • What does my protagonist go into the scene believing? • Why does she believe it? • What is my protagonist’s goal in the scene? • What does my protagonist expect will happen in this scene?

The question is: what existing belief did it topple in order to take root in the first place? Remember, your protagonist isn’t going from “neutral” to a new belief. She enters already believing something, a belief she will struggle mightily to hold onto during the scene.

The question is, What, specifically, instilled your protagonist’s old belief? Since it’s probably something she never even thought about, you, as sleuth, must dive into her life and extract one moment that exemplifies this belief to her.

The question now is, What does your protagonist want the outcome of this scene to be, not in general, but specifically? This means nailing down more specifics about the scene.