Three essential questions about your protagonist

Aaah, Spring! All that new energy. Doesn’t it just make you want to — write a book or something?

Well, let’s do it! Here are three absolutely essential questions that will help crystallize what you’re writing:

• What does your protagonist WANT?
• What is their PLAN to get it?
• Who and what is standing in their way? (FORCES OF OPPOSITION)

You’d be surprised how many people come to my workshops (some with half-completed books!) who can’t answer those deceptively simple questions.

So let’s talk about PLAN. In most cases, understanding your hero/ine’s plan will quickly focus what might be a very amorphous idea and save you endless rewriting (or worse, giving up completely). PLAN really is the key to the drive of your story.

You always hear that “Drama is conflict,” but when you think about it — what the hell does that mean, practically?

It’s actually much more true, and specific, to say that drama is the constant clashing of a protagonist’s PLAN and an antagonist’s, or several antagonists’ PLANS.

In the first act of a story, the main character is introduced, and that character either has or quickly develops a DESIRE (usually triggered by the INCITING INCIDENT). They…