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Q&A How to move from writing scenes to a short plot?

The mainspring of story is desire. What drives your hero on from one scene to the next? What shapes their actions in a consistent way? It is their desire, they thing they are driven to attain. The ...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2020-01-03T20:41:49Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29867
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T04:39:59Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29867
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T04:39:58Z (almost 5 years ago)
The mainspring of story is desire. What drives your hero on from one scene to the next? What shapes their actions in a consistent way? It is their desire, they thing they are driven to attain. The desire can be anything that reasonably drives someone to action: love, lust, greed, revenge, the desire to save, the desire to return. But you have to find the desire, the want that is strong enough to drive the character forward in the face of mounting opposition and disappointment.

And then you need to manufacture the opposition and create the disappointment, and drive the character on toward that point where they have to make a fundamental choice about their values, either recognizing what their values really are or making a change in their values.

The key elements, in other words, are force and resistance, rock and hard place, devil and the deep blue sea. Once you find those you have the mainspring the drives your story from one scene to the next.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2017-08-22T10:42:07Z (over 7 years ago)
Original score: 2