"Once upon a time there was a dragon princess that lived in a tower."
Get it? It’s a play on the fairytale trope of the princess held in a tower guarded by a dragon, but in this case the princess is the dragon. Okay, yeah, you probably get it.
This isn't a story. It's a concept.
Also concepts:
“See, it’s aliens fighting zombie pirates in space.”
“There’s this girl who gets selected to go to a school full of telepaths. It’s like Harry Potter, but instead of learning magic the kids are learning mind-control.”
“I want to write a satirical look at ride-sharing business practices.”
“It’s a peek into everyday life in a morgue!”
None of these are necessarily bad ideas (okay, yes, aliens fighting zombie pirates in space is awful), but also none of them are stories yet.
Here’s one that goes a step farther:
"There was this person who was down on their luck and life kept beating them down more and more until eventually they ended up working for this evil company that did evil things. I’m not going to tell you what the evil things are, just trust me, they’re bad. And then on the last page the main character opens up the door to the evil company and sees something awful that makes them gasp!"
Still not a story and pretty cliche, but it’s actually a step in the right direction – the first examples are concepts, this is a (vague) sequence of events.
Why aren’t these stories? Well, if you asked me five years ago, I would have said something like: “Because nothing much is happening, and no surprises are revealed.” Or, to use writerly terminology, there aren’t any ‘turns’.
Cool. In that case let’s test that theory and make some stuff happen:
An innocent, doe-eyed woman sits in the front row of a classical orchestra concert. The woman is enraptured, even though everyone else in her row is bored. (The guy next to her is literally asleep.)
Suddenly, her phone starts playing Hall & Oates. Loudly. She blushes and quickly tries to silence it, but the phone won’t stop playing the music. Everyone in the auditorium is looking at her. The conductor is even turning around to look at her while he waves his arms spastically at the musicians. Unable to shut off her phone, the woman hurriedly shuffles past the sleeping man and other people in her aisle and flees!
Later that night while leaving the concert hall, the man who slept through the concert suddenly realizes that he’s missing the keys to his Mercedes! Where did they go?
CUT TO: The young woman drives on the highway in the man’s Mercedes smoking a cigarette, no longer looking remotely doe-eyed or innocent. She’s a thief, and she stole the keys while she was shuffling past the man!
She flicks the cigarette out the window of the car, but it accidentally hits against the windowpane and ricochets back in — and the lit cigarette falls right by her feet!
The woman tries to stomp out the flames, and while she’s focused on stomping the ground she crashes into the car in front of her! Blackout.
She wakes up in a hospital and the doctor informs her that she’s been in a coma for three months!
What do we think?
SO MUCH HAPPENED!!! Lots and lots of random things. What happens next? Well, based on what we’ve seen so far, probably more random things with many exclamation marks.
I bet most of you started getting a little bored and/or skimmed, despite plenty of turns. I did, and I was writing it. Why? Because even though it’s chock full of actions and reveals, this is still not a story. It’s just a lot of moves.*
Okay, so what is a story?
When we know what a character wants and they actively try to get it.
That’s it. Character X wants ____ and goes after it.
The woman wants to destroy the robot. The man wants to steal the painting. The housewife wants to become a race-car driver, the teenagers want to get out of the haunted house alive, or the businessman wants to keep custody of his kid. And then that character tries to get what they want and succeeds or fails.
In a story, a character’s want is like setting up a target in archery. Without something to aim at, the audience is just watching lots of arrows sail through the air and eventually they get bored, even if those arrows are on fire and exploding.
By the way, that second part is important – you might have a character trapped in a small white room with no doors or windows who wants to get out of the room, but unless they’re coming up with new ways to escape from that room, it’s not a story. Stories are not just about people who want things. Stories are about people who want things that are actively trying to get them.
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*This is essentially what happens most of the time when TV shows jump the shark – increasingly desperate and random turns in the story that aren’t leading to anything.
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