The Four Main Ingredients For a (very) Good Story
Like cooking, writing needs essential ingredients. And like cooking, the better your ingredients are, the better is the end result.
So what are those ingredients?
First Ingredient: A stunning concept
The concept is the core idea of your story. It’s the HOOK.
The concept of your project is what sets it apart and grabs people’s attention when you send out your manuscript or screenplay, making them curious and eager to read it.
The concept answers the question: What is the story about? (in a broad sense).
To create a great concept, you need to start with the very famous What if question. If you can’t put your idea into a what if question, you’ve got a problem.
What if AI wants to rule our world? (Westworld) What if you die and end up in heaven instead of hell where you belong? (The Good Place). What if a great number of people disappear randomly on the same day at the same time? (The Leftovers).
If it’s a good concept, it should present a conflict to come, and we want to know more about it. It creates a sense of excitment. I strongly recommend to start with your concept before writing your story.
Second ingredient: A universal Theme
The theme is the underlying message of your story.
It could be your opinion as an author. Opinion doesn’t mean that you have to teach your readers a lesson. Writers are not there to do a lecture. It’s more about your UNDERSTANDING of the topic you decided to talk about.
The deeper meaning (or theme) is not always obvious, but it’s always there. It answers this question: What is your story saying? Or Why does it matter?
If done well, everything in your story should reflect your theme: the characters, the settings, the plot itself… The theme is like a diamond, it has different reflections.
A theme explores a universal human experience, what it means to be a human being (love, loss, loneliness, fear, poverty etc…).
For instance, the themes of the TV series Dead To Me (excellent TV series by the way) are Loss, Love and Friendship. And the screenwriter Liz Feldman explores many angles of those themes. Watch it and you’ll see what I mean.
Third Ingredient: The plot
The plot, however, answers this question: what happens in the story?
It’s more about the actions and events that occur in the story and move it forward. That includes all the problems, conflicts, obstacles, and resolutions that shape the journey of your characters.
The plot is difficult to craft, because it should be believable but not predictable.
The key is to follow your characters AND to ask yourself: ‘Is this scene a bit cliché?’. If the answer is ‘yes’ then go against it.
Fourth Ingredient: The characters
The last ingredient is the reason why people care about your story: the characters, because they identify with them.
The concept, the theme and the plot will attract them to your story, and the characters will make them stay until the end. It’s probably the only thing they will remember years after reading your story.
So take care of your characters, get to know them, live with them, hear them speak and make sure they are unforgettable.
Conclusion
There is no good story without those four elements.
The concept grabs attention–It’s the big idea and should be exciting.
The plot answers the concept in actions done by your characters, and the more those actions are unpredictable, the better your story is.
The theme gives the story an emotional and intellectual depth. It makes people think about it way after they saw your script or your book.
And the characters embody everything mentioned above.
Well…I don’t’ know about you, but now that I’ve talked about cooking, I’m feeling quite peckish… for writing!
Happy writing x