When I was eight or nine years old, I wrote a Whodunnit?-style mystery story for a school project. I don’t remember the details, but the story had all the stock ingredients you would expect from a mystery – a baffling crime of some sort, a preternaturally gifted investigator, and some obstacles thrown in his path. The story spanned about ten pages of handwritten paper, about half of each page taken up by an illustration. (*Narrator Voice: Adam’s artistic ability never progressed beyond the fourth grade.*) That story had a beginning, a middle, and an end – all tied up in that succinct way stories written by children do, a matter-of-fact “this is how it went down” and now it’s over.
I was thirty years old when I finished my next story (and only because my publisher and I signed a contract stating I would).
During the intervening decades, I began many, many stories, only to abandon them after a few pages. I started one science fiction story about a series of colonies on the moon that hadn’t heard from the earth in years and decided to set up their own government. That one made it about 1,500 words. I started a middle-school retelling of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. That one made it longer than the moon one, but it too floundered. The largest chunk of a book I’ve ever written that I then consigned to the sub-basement of my Google Drive was a whopping 14,987 words.
There have been others: a few sketchy scenes sort of stitched together, neato ideas that led to some exploratory paragraphs, some James-Bond-style pre-credit intros of characters…but none of them stuck.
The question is: How do you know when you’ve got a full-fledged story and not just a fun idea? Here are four things to ask yourself if you’re wondering if your story has legs.
Conflict
Does your story have enough conflict to fuel itself from beginning to end?
Every story has conflict, though conflict comes in many shapes and sizes. Sometimes conflict emerges in superhero movie style, good vs. evil fights that destroy Midtown Manhattan. But in most stories, conflict isn’t about actual fist fights. Conflict happens any time one character is not able to fulfill an intention because of an obstacle put in their way by (a) another character, (b) the environment, or (c) the character’s own interior life. (See my earlier post on Intentions and Obstacles.) Stories that make it past the embryonic stage have both enough conflict and conflict that escalates throughout the story, leading to a point of crisis and release near the end.
Transformation
Does the conflict in your story lead to character growth and transformation?
It’s not enough for a story to have conflict. The conflict needs to reveal flaws in your character that the story wrestles with. How does the conflict test the lies the characters believe about themselves and the world? How do they learn the truth? And how does this truth transform them? The superhero fist fights are all well and good, but it’s the character work that’s most compelling.
(N.B. Sometimes fist fights and character growth happen simultaneously. Watch Tony Stark’s growth from the first Iron Man movie through Avengers:Endgame to see what I mean. It’s a long haul over a dozen or so movies, but it’s worth it.)
Revelation
Do you keep uncovering new elements of your story as you write?
Stories with legs keep the writer curious about what’s happening in the narrative. A character reveals something about herself that you, as the writer, weren’t expecting. A whole new subplot emerges, and you’re off! Even if you have a full outline, writing fiction is an act of faith. You’re the proverbial car at night, driving down a dark road. You can’t see your destination, only the stretch of road your headlights illumine. But you make it in the end.
When a story keeps revealing its layers to you and you giggle with the heady feeling of self-discovery, you know you’ve got a tale worth writing to its conclusion.
Enjoyment
Are you experiencing enough delight to make you want to continue writing?
Sometimes writing is a slog, especially when writing the Middle of a story, which some authors call the Muddle instead. But overall, you should be enjoying yourself during your creative endeavor. If the writer isn’t having fun in the writing, there’s a good chance the reader won’t have fun in the reading. If the story you’re writing is just too DARN boring, then it’s time to let it go.
Those are four questions you can ask yourself as you wrestle with whether or not to continue a story. Writing an outline can be helpful, and there are plenty of resources online about effective outlining. But the outline tends to answer only the first question about Conflict and maybe the one about Transformation. Outlines won’t tell you if you’re going to Enjoy the writing, and sometimes they can even stymie Revelation.
The funny bit is this: In the end, the only way to know if you have a story with legs is to write the whole damn thing.
Adam Thomas, Author 