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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33114
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33114
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

A story is about **one or more characters.** These need not be human, and they need not necessarily even be living beings (a story about an AI's struggle for equality could make an interesting sci-fi story as well as an allegory to our world past and present...), but they should be something that the reader can identify with.

**Characters inhabit a world.** The world need not be large, or elaborate, or even in the least bit different from our own, but you can't just dump characters in a void. (Or, well, a void could also be a world. Likely just not a very interesting one, except insofar as it could present plenty of challenges to the characters.)

**Characters want something.** That really is the basis for any story. They might want fame, or money, or to get rid of a trinket that is causing them all kinds of trouble, or even just flat out survival, but in the end, they want something.

Generally, **characters face difficulties** in trying to attain what they desire. Not everyone is set up to become famous, or rich, and even when they are, there's usually hard work involved; and to just throw the trinket in the nearest river is too simple for some reason, maybe because they need to be certain that the trinket is thoroughly destroyed so that nobody else can use it.

You have a cast of characters, and you have a world in which they live, even if those aren't yet fully fleshed out. **What you now need** is something that your characters desire (to have a story at all), and something to keep them from attaining that goal (to keep the story interesting to the reader).

So get inside your characters' heads. **What drives them?** Even if that is just to live a calm life at the farm, what do they want above all else? Very often, that will be your story ending, or very near it. Now, **put some obstacles in their path** toward that goal. They might be the Chosen Ones to carry the God-Given Almighty Trinket from Apoint to Btown. They might be working leisurely around the farm when someone sets their fields ablaze and kills their herd or tortures their family members, and they need to figure out who and why hired the thugs because the authorities don't care or are incompetent. They might be facing a government that doesn't want them to attain their goal for reasons good or bad. They might be facing the forces of nature. Or anything else you can think of that would keep your characters from doing what they most desire right here, right now.

Once you have those two additional things in place (what drives your characters, and what can keep them from succeeding), then you have the core outline of an actual story. **The story, then, will typically be how the characters face and overcome those challenges,** generally growing in the process; although in some cases, the story can be about how the characters face and are overcome by the challenges.

Chapter one sets the scene. Now figure out how your characters want to change it.

Original score: 8