Is your story stalled? Look at your characters!
If you find yourself tangled in a plot knot or otherwise stuck—or if are still in the get-to-know-you stage of creating your cast of characters—here are some imperative questions you MUST consider. Sometimes going back to this list can help you “reverse engineer” your problem and tangle, and thus clarify what has gone wrong. If you haven’t started writing yet, knowing the answers to these questions will help keep you on track (even if motivations and objectives change while you’re drafting, which is likely to happen!).
1. Who is your character?
2. What is at their core?
~ What do they WANT? This is the external goal or explicit desire, e.g., a new job, to get married, break a world record.
~ What do they NEED to be fulfilled? This is the internal goal or internal desire, e.g., love, acceptance, freedom, etc.
3. What is their goal in the story? What do they expect to accomplish?
4. WHAT ARE THE STAKES? What happens if your character FAILS?
5. Who is stopping them or standing in their way?
6. How do your characters complement and contrast one another?
7. What is your character’s arc? How do they change from the beginning to the end of your story? This can be a negative to positive or positive to negative—there just has to be some sort of change, or you don’t have a compelling story.
Further, your protagonist should be ACTIVE, not reactive, to keep them from being too passive. A wimpy protagonist who doesn’t become brave and mighty at the end in some aspect of their life is uninspiring. Of equal importance is making your protagonist an active participant in their life—it can’t be all about bad stuff happening TO them.
The protagonist needs to drive the action and forward momentum of the story by making decisions and taking action.
8. Who is your antagonist? Keep in mind that the bad guy has to be bad for a reason. Bad people THINK that they’re doing the right thing. Even Voldemort in his own sick, twisted way felt he was doing the right thing by trying to rid the world of Harry Potter. Your antagonist might be something inhuman, like a virus (COVID!) or cancer (as in The Fault In Our Stars) or even an earthquake or a storm or tsunami. Still, viruses and cancers and natural disasters progress because they are doing what they do—killing and maiming—just as your antagonist should be moving forward doing what they do best, true to their nature.
Antagonists have their own goal and truly believe they are doing the right thing. But the protagonist gets in the way of the antagonist, which creates CONFLICT. Yay, conflict!
Less is more! Find the simplest way to get from point A to point B with as few words as possible. One of the things I’ve been told to do is to get into a scene already in progress (this is called in media res), and get out before it’s over. It’s not that you want to leave loose ends untied, but you have to trust that your reader can figure out a few things on their own too.