The Crucial Ingredient Your Story May Be Missing

Today’s post is by editor Tiffany Yates Martin.

In my work as an editor, I see a lot of manuscripts where authors clearly understand and have worked to develop the basic building blocks of their story, with well-thought-out characters, plots filled with intriguing developments, and objectively strong stakes.

And yet the stories may still not be working as effectively as they could. Every instrument in the orchestra may be playing a well-tuned melody—but the music isn’t coming through.

• Characters may be fascinating and faceted, but we don’t see how their history, personality, situation, longings, and limitations dictate their choices, actions, and behavior in the story, so they feel disconnected from the plot. They may travel a meaningful arc of self-discovery or growth, but it’s not clear how it came about directly as a result of their actions and experiences in the story.
• Authors may painstakingly develop exciting, tightly constructed plot lines and follow all the best practices for beat sheets, three-act plot structure, the Hero’s Journey, or another vaunted storytelling system and yet it’s not clear how these developments are directly driven by the character—or what makes this protagonist essential to driving the action and the unfolding of the plot.
• Or stakes may be well thought out and seem objectively high, but readers don’t see the potent personal connection to the character’s core propulsive drives, so despite what may seem to be consequential risks and rewards, readers are left feeling removed and unmoved.

Story is more than just the sum of its parts; as with music it’s the symphony of how all these elements work together. That’s what creates cohesion, the essential component that ties story together into a fluid and harmonious whole: Your characters do what they do because of who they are and what they want and what that means to them.

Stakes drive character; character drives plot.

When these elements aren’t considered as a comprehensive aggregate, even the most carefully developed stories can feel disjointed, fall flat, and leave readers unsatisfied.

What makes stories cohesive

The concept seems logical, even basic—but frustratingly, authors often think their story components do work together cohesively. It’s hard to see the many threads of the tapestry while you’re in the middle of weaving it, hard to understand just how many threads are woven into even seemingly straightforward stories.

Let’s take a hypothetical premise to examine what comprehensive story cohesion looks like:

A gifted but reclusive cybersecurity analyst who prides herself on staying invisible uncovers a dangerous data breach that risks the detailed personal information of millions of people—and could make her rich—only to realize the leak was designed specifically to lure her out of hiding.

On the surface this setup has strong foundational story elements: We see the character’s basic traits, a plot that creates inherent conflict for the protagonist, and objectively high stakes.

But creating cohesive story means showing how these elements are inextricably unified—how they all work together to shape the character and her life and dictate her choices and actions that are essential to moving the plot forward and giving it resonance and impact.

As with most areas of developing story, that means asking questions to keep digging down to ever deeper and more granular layers.

Stakes

The stakes of this story may seem objectively high—protecting customers’ personal information and making piles of money—but these are what I often call “assumptive motivations,” where authors presume a universal resonance or value to what’s at stake without developing its particular, deeply personal importance to this character.

Assumptive values present mere facts as compelling motivations, like relationships (“his mom is dying”—yet not everyone has a close relationship or feels a strong emotional tie to a parent) or generalized values (up for a promotion, receiving a proposal, getting pregnant) that may not mean the same thing to every person in every situation.

So what makes this protagonist feel personally invested in protecting millions of strangers from a major data breach? Perhaps she or someone she loves was once the victim of one, for instance, which destroyed their life. Or is the massive exposure of people’s personal information simply the consequence that makes her discovery financially valuable? 

If the money is her real motivation, why does that matter so much to her? Many would agree that more money is better, but that’s still an assumptive value—and a generalization, which always weaken stories’ effectiveness. If this protagonist has been successful in her career then she may already be doing quite well financially—why would a big windfall make a difference? What’s at stake for her with this possible payout that makes it profoundly, urgently personal and important?

Is there some pressing specific external goal attainable only with a pile of cash? (She has a short-time opportunity to buy a private island to ensure her anonymity and safety or to retreat from a world that seems increasingly incomprehensible and dangerous to her.) Does she stand to lose something crucial to her unless she can come up with stacks of money fast? (Her brother, the only person she feels ever understood and loved her for who she is, got in debt to the mob and his life is at stake if he can’t pay it back within a week.)

Character

Now we have a potent and personal idea of what’s driving the character—her goals and motivations—but the actions, choices, behaviors, and reactions that drive the plot will stem from who the character is: her personality, background, abilities, limitations, and vulnerabilities.

For instance, this character’s reclusiveness is not only intrinsic to the story premise, driving her reactions and actions throughout the story when she faces a foe who is trying to draw her out of hiding, but it should also play a key role in her initial situation even before the inciting events of the plot.

• How has her work and the secrecy it requires (or she desires) shaped her life at the beginning of the story? Did she intentionally seek out this lifestyle or was it an unwelcome side effect of the career she chose? Does her reclusiveness extend to avoiding all public-facing activities—like going to the gym or eating out or even running errands—or does she stay under the radar by living a life of bland, forgettable anonymity? Does she eschew friends or romantic relationships, or does having to stay anonymous mean what relationships she does have must stay relatively superficial?
• How have her circumstances affected and shaped her? What does her daily life look like as a result and how does she feel about it—or tell herself she feels about it? How does she really feel, if the latter case? Is she lonely, depressed? Hardened and walled off? Numb and in denial?

These are the types of questions you must consider to establish a clear “point A” for the character, even before the main inciting event of the plot. That’s what sets the stage for the journey she will choose or be forced to go on as a result of the events of the story (her growth or change to her character arc’s “point B”), and dictates her choices, actions, attitudes, and behavior throughout—in other words, what drives the plot.

Plot

Every development of the story should be directly driven by the character. That doesn’t mean that events outside her control don’t occur, but it does mean that how she reacts to them, what she does (or fails to do) in response, is based in her unique psychological makeup, abilities and limitations, experiences, etc.

In the case of our example above, perhaps at first she tries to deal with the person trying to lure her out of hiding on her own—only to butt up against limitations in her knowledge or abilities or access that means she has to reluctantly seek help from someone else.

Maybe at first she doesn’t trust them, so she uses her exceptional hacking skills to do a deep-dive background check…and then as they begin to work together to stop the breach, her ally’s complementary skills help her identify her foe, and it’s only as a team that they’re able to take him down.

And in the course of that action perhaps she sees how empty or lonely her life has been, and starts to reengage first with her partner and then with the world, to long for the kind of connection with others she didn’t realize she’s been starved for.

All the facets of her particular personality—her specific, unique traits, strengths, flaws, history, etc.—combine to influence every single aspect of the story: Stakes drive the character; character drives the plot; plot drives the character arc.

This symphonic harmony is often what agents and editors mean when they say they are looking for tight, elegant, cohesive stories. It’s what may be missing from yours if you’re hearing that it doesn’t hold together as well as it could, or lacks structure or impact, or doesn’t feel satisfying.

In the strongest stories, you shouldn’t be able to plug any other character into the events of the plot and have the same version. Readers need to see how this particular individual drives the action of the story in a way only they could—not only because of special skills or abilities, but because who they are is intrinsic to what they do and how they react and why it matters, and that particular salad is the only one that could result in this singular story.

Tiffany Yates Martin

Tiffany Yates Martin has spent her entire career as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers and New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling and award-winning authors as well as indie and newer writers. She is the founder of FoxPrint Editorial (named one of Writer’s Digest’s Best Websites for Authors) and author of Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing and her latest, The Intuitive Author: How to Grow & Sustain a Happier Writing Career.She is a regular contributor to writers’ outlets like Writer’s Digest, Jane Friedman, and Writer Unboxed, and a frequent presenter and keynote speaker for writers’ organizations around the world. Under her pen name, Phoebe Fox, she is the author of six novels.