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

a story can’t engage readers without the electricity that illuminates the plot, the voice, and the talent, bringing them to life. 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. This is not a general struggle, but one based on the protagonist’s impossible goal: to achieve her desire and remain true to the fear that’s keeping her from it. As we’ll explore in detail, story is not about the plot, or what happens. Story is about how the things that happen in the plot affect the protagonist, and how he or she changes internally as a result. Think of the protagonist’s internal struggle as the novel’s live wire. It’s exactly like the third rail on a subway train—the electrified rail that supplies the juice that drives the cars forward. Without it, that train, no matter how well constructed, just sits there, idling in neutral,

In a novel, everything—action, plot, even the “sensory details”—must touch the story’s third rail in order to have meaning and emotional impact. Anything that doesn’t impact the protagonist’s internal struggle, regardless of how beautifully written or “objectively” dramatic it is, will stop the story cold, breaking the spell that captivated readers, and unceremoniously catapulting them back into their own lives.

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. So if you don’t know, specifically, what your protagonist wants, what internal misbelief is standing in his way—and most important, why—how on earth can you construct a plot that will force him to deal with it? The answer is simple: you can’t.

There is a damn good reason. Story was the world’s first virtual reality. It allowed us to step out of the present and envision the future, so we could plan for the thing that has always scared us more than anything: the unknown, the unexpected.

In life, if we can’t feel emotion, we can’t make a single rational decision—it’s biology. In a story, if we’re not feeling, we’re not reading. 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.

The purpose of story—of every story—is to help us interpret, and anticipate, the actions of ourselves and of others. And you have to admit, it’s a far less messy alternative than all that unspooling.

The takeaway is: We don’t turn to story to escape reality. We turn to story to navigate reality.

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.

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.

Story is about what happens internally, not externally. Not fully grasping the importance of this is what tanks countless novels. 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. That is what mesmerizes us: it’s what we’re curious about, it’s what gives us the inside info we’re hungry for. Yep, the protagonist’s internal struggle is the story’s third rail, the live wire that sparks our interest and drives the story forward.

What undoes so many writers right out of the starting gate is something that seems so totally reasonable that it never occurs to us to question it: we decide that the first thing to do is to learn to write well. The trouble is, in learning to write well, we completely miss the boat, storywise.

The conventions of writing—voice, structure, drama, plot, all of it—are the handmaiden of story, not the other way around. It’s the story that gives those beautiful words, those interesting characters and all that drama, their power. It’s the story that instantly sparks the reader’s curiosity, triggering that irresistible sense of urgency that compels us to read on. Once we’re securely hooked, it’s the story that has the power to change how we view the world, and therefore what we go out and do in the world.

These myths are dangerous because they are deep-rooted, widespread, and alluring, but the more you know about why they don’t work, the easier it will be to resist them. In this chapter, we’ll discover why both “plotting” and “pantsing” lead you away from the story, rather than to it; why beautiful prose means nothing in and of itself; how “writing well” can actually alienate the reader, even in literary fiction; why and how using story structure models like The Hero’s Journey undermines your story; and why, even when it comes to the scenes you will be writing as you blueprint, that “shitty first draft” matters much more than you think.

Will your first draft be shitty no matter what? Probably. It’s kind of a badge of honor. But make no mistake: there’s a massive difference between the shitty draft of an actual story and a shitty first draft that randomly romps all over the damn place.

Plotters come so close to being right. Developing a blueprint of the novel you’re writing before you tackle page one is essential. The trouble is, they’ve focused on developing the wrong thing—the external plot—rather than the internal story. Their focus is on the external “what,” rather than the protagonist’s preexisting, internal “why.” Thus plotters begin by laying out the surface events of the story—beginning on page one—with little regard to the protagonist’s specific past, which is the very thing that determines not only what will happen in the plot, but how she sees her world, what she does, and most importantly, why. 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.”

But if these three techniques—pantsing, plotting, and following external “story” structure models—don’t work, what does? The solution springs from what we’ve learned about story’s effect on the brain, and it starts, proceeds, and finishes with your protagonist’s inner struggle—your story’s third rail. Creating the inside story comes first, because without it you can’t create your plot. Let’s take a look at what this actually means.

At its most basic, a story is about how someone grapples with a problem they can’t avoid, and how they change in the process.

Here’s the skinny: You can’t write about how someone changes unless you know, specifically, what they’re changing from. You can’t write about a problem unless you know, specifically, what caused it. And as real life has taught us all too well, by the time we’re forced to face a thorny problem, chances are it’s been building for quite a while—years, decades, often our whole life up to that moment.

The second half—the novel itself—will contain large parts of the first in the form of flashbacks, dialogue, and snippets of memory as the protagonist struggles to make sense of what’s happening, and what to do about it. It bears repeating: nothing in this process goes to waste.

The first half establishes where the problem came from and who the protagonist is to begin with, so that the plot you then create can force her to struggle with that problem and, in the process, change.

It’s easy for writers of all ages to lose sight of one very simple, grounding truth: all stories make a point, beginning on page one. Which means that as a writer you need to know what that point is, long before you get to page one. Especially since the point your story will make is what allows you to pinpoint the one thing all those surface What Ifs are missing: the source of your protagonist’s internal conflict. In other words, the very heart of the story, and what it’s really about. That’s why the first thing you need to do, we told the kids, is to decide what point you want your story to make, because the point will tell you exactly what kind of internal problem your story will be about. For instance: • Friends stick together when times are tough. • Believe in yourself even when others don’t. • Think about how others will feel before you act. All by themselves each of these very simple points suggests a potent internal story problem. To wit: • A group of friends will face a tough problem sure to challenge their loyalty to each other, ultimately teaching them the hard-won benefits of sticking together (or not). Think Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. • A character will want to tackle something tough that she’s never done before, and when everyone tries to convince her that she can’t do it, instead of giving up, she’ll muster the inner courage to give it her all (or not). Think Mulan. • A character will really, really want to do something that, okay, might hurt someone ...

WHAT TO DO 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.

While we might know what is happening, we have no idea why it matters or what the point is. Because the point doesn’t stem from the events; rather, it stems from the struggle they trigger within the protagonist as she tries to figure out what the heck to do about the problem she’s facing. That invisible, internal struggle is the third rail we’ve been talking about—it not only connects the novel’s surface events to the protagonist’s internal progress, giving those events meaning, but it’s also what ultimately lets you know what those surface events will be (read: the plot).

You’re not looking for a general anyone, you’re looking for a specific someone. A someone whose past will make what happens to them the moment they step onto the first page of your novel, inevitable.

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.

Chances are at this moment your protagonist feels that he has things under control—his life might not be exactly the way he’d want it, but it’s working. Life, up to now, has taught him what to expect, and he’s pretty much figured out how to safely navigate it. What he doesn’t know is that you’re going to make sure his expectations aren’t met, catapulting him out of his safety zone into the world beyond his trusty map. But remember, the novel isn’t simply about how he navigates that uncharted world; it’s about the quest he’s spent most of his life suiting up for. He just doesn’t know it yet. The point is, your protagonist doesn’t start from “neutral.” He starts from a very particular place, with very particular, deeply held beliefs that your novel is going to force him to call into question. So in order to figure out what those beliefs are, what that quest is, and how his expectations will, in fact, be upended, you have to know where he was before the quest began, when he had no idea what you have in store for him. The goal is to write a paragraph or two that sums up who your protagonist is at that very moment—just a short thumbnail sketch. Think of this sketch as a loose outline that you will be filling in as we move forward. As with your What If, it will tell you where to dig for the specifics that will bring your protagonist to life.

WHAT TO DO Now it’s your turn. 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.

The answer is yes—which is the problem. The deeper question, the question the story is actually about, is this: What will those things mean to her? What specific plan will they topple? What internal fear will they force her to confront? What long-held desire will they give her no choice but to go after? Because your novel isn’t about the external change your What If is going to put your protagonist through; it’s about why that change matters to her. There’s only one way to answer that question, and that is by digging deeper into the treasure trove where the heart of

Look at it this way: your protagonist is not like an actor who’s hired to play a role in a plot that’s already been devised; rather, she’s about to walk into the next day of her life, which she believes will go according to plan—her plan, the one based on all that past experience. But it won’t. Your job as a storyteller is to make sure her expectations are not met, since that’s what we’re wired to come to story for: insight on how to handle the unexpected. Because that’s when things get really interesting. So even if the exact thing your protagonist expects to happen does indeed occur, you’d better make sure it feels very different than she thought it would—and causes unintended problems that she never once anticipated.

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.

When it comes to creating your protagonist, asking why something matters to him works—as it did in Lucky Louie—only if there’s something revealing in his past to drill down to, something that pinpoints the internal conflict you’re looking for.

Unless you create a protagonist whose every action is driven by an underlying, evolving “why,” then even big, externally dramatic events will fall resoundingly flat, whereas with a compelling personal “why,” something as mundane as having to call a plumber can be riveting.

There’s a small two-character movie called Sparrows Dance in which the main character, an unnamed young semi-successful actress, has been seized by agoraphobia.

film Sparrows Dance

But Sparrows Dance isn’t about how a woman gets her plumbing fixed (except maybe metaphorically); it’s about how she overcomes her fear and takes that first tentative step back into the outside world. So although a gazillion things must have happened to her from birth until the day she locked herself away in her apartment, most of them are irrelevant to that specific story. This is something the filmmaker no doubt knew, because there’s nothing in the film that doesn’t relate in some way to her inner struggle, continuously forcing her to squirm, rebel, and fight back until she has no choice but to squarely face her fear head-on.

So, how do you isolate and identify your protagonist’s inner struggle, so you can then develop it? By laser beaming into his specific dueling internal duo: what your protagonist wants (his desire) and the misbelief that keeps him from it (think: fear). It is from those two small, burning embers that all stories grow and flame. It is this struggle that becomes your story’s third rail.

These 2 things - protag's desire & protag's misbelief about what's holding him back.

By now it probably seems so insanely obvious that a writer needs to know what their protagonist wants, and what misbelief stands in his way, before they begin thinking about the plot, that there’s no way anyone could miss it. Not so. I recently taught a class full of hopeful novelists, many of whom were on the second or third draft of their work in progress. I went around the room asking each writer what their protagonist entered the story already wanting. Not one person knew the answer.

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. Taken together, these two warring elements will become your novel’s third rail, the live wire that everything that happens must touch, creating the emotional jolt that forces your protagonist to struggle as he tries to figure out what to do. This is what lets us know what matters most to him; it’s the emotional yardstick by which readers will measure the meaning of every event, every plot twist, every turn, allowing them to anticipate how he will react. So that you can lay down your novel’s third rail, let’s dig a little deeper and define exactly what that desire and that misbelief-driven fear might look like.

WHAT TO DO 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.

Stories are about sweating, and exposing the things we keep cloaked, both for decorum’s sake and because we’re terrified of what people will think of us if they only knew. That’s what decorum is for: hiding what we really feel. The irony is that what we keep most hidden about ourselves is exactly what we’re dying to know about others. Not because we’re snoops (even if we are), but because it’s such a relief to find out we’re not the only one who feels that way. Even more liberating is discovering that what we’ve always seen as a negative in our own life might actually be a positive. So while, yes, your reader needs to know what your protagonist wants, that isn’t nearly enough. What makes readers care about whether or not your protagonist gets what she wants depends on one thing: knowing what getting it will mean to her.

WHAT TO DO 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.

there is a spectacular documentary, aptly titled Protagonist, in which four men tell their stories, and while each story is as specific, and as different, as the man telling it, you quickly realize that in spirit their stories are identical. The simplest story in the documentary is that of Mark Pierpont, who’s gay. Mark grew up in a fundamentalist Christian enclave.

documentary Protagonist

what, exactly, is honesty, anyway? That’s a question that Ira Glass recently examined in his radio show This American Life. He interviewed a guy named Michael, whose parents had taught him never to tell a lie,

this American life

Ta-da! Jennie has now created her novel’s third rail, which she can track through her story: the struggle between wanting deep connection and feeling that the price is too high.

WHAT TO DO 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.

Rather, we’re going to zero in on your protagonist’s worldview as it relates to the internal change you want her to make, which means it’s not her whole entire worldview, either. She may have very strong views on politics, religion, and whether there’s ever a legitimate reason to wear polka dots with plaid, but if it has nothing to do with the story you’re telling, then neither you nor your reader needs to know about it.

This discussion often starts and stops with this very narrow mechanical definition, routinely presenting POV as a technical distinction, focusing on the different techniques for conveying someone’s point of view (form), without a word on how to come up with what, exactly, their point of view is, or how to then get it onto the page (content). It’s like limiting your discussion of fine wine to whether it’s best served in a goblet, a water glass, or a red Solo cup. But in this book, when we talk about your protagonist’s point of view, we’re not talking about whether you’re going to write, “I said” or “she said,” we’re talking about how your protagonist evaluates the world you’re going to toss her into.

Misconception #3: Your Protagonist Is a Camera I once worked with a young writer so brilliant that she later got a seven-figure advance for her debut novel. When she came to me, however, she had a big problem: she had inadvertently fallen into the trap of treating her protagonist’s POV as if it were a camera lens, passively recording the things that happened, separate from any effect they had on her. Her protagonist was no slouch, and quite psychologically astute. She would wax eloquent about the problems of everyone she knew, but since none of it directly affected her in any way, nothing hung in the balance. As a result there was no sense of urgency, nothing to be curious about, and nothing to anticipate. And so no matter how fabulous the prose—and it was—her novel meandered into the land of the vague, the general, the uninvolving. Correcting that one problem put her on the path to success. By figuring out her protagonist’s inner struggle, she was able to create a plot that focused on things that actually had a rapidly impending consequence. The novel stopped meandering and began to command attention.

Make no mistake, the lens through which your protagonist sees everything is never neutral, but always encoded with inside info—beliefs—that help her interpret everything she sees, and therefore what she does as a result. And here’s the surprise: every one of those beliefs is subjective, not because she’s so caught up in her own world she can’t see the “real” world, but because there is no “real” world. At least, not in the way we’ve been taught there is.

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 goal isn’t to show us that she’s changing; the goal is to show us what, specifically, she’s changing from and what she’s changing to—internally.