story elements

(I actually mean P’s, but Peas are cuter. Obviously.)

Five essential elements make up any good story, whether it’s a 100,000-word novel or 150-word flash fiction. Fitting them all in an alliterative scheme (slightly force-fitting them, in a couple of instances), makes them easy to remember.

Place. I fudged a bit on this one: a better word is setting, which describes both place and time. But for the sake of the peas, I’ve conflated both into place. (Just consider time as the fourth dimension.) Sometimes the place doesn’t seem too important to the story; contemporary mid-America could be anywhere from St. Louis to Minneapolis. But a story set in the Saraha is going to be qualitatively different from a story set in the Okefenokee Swamp. Likewise London in 1590 and London in 1950. A place may be so significant it almost becomes a character, as in White Fang or other Jack London stories.

People. Every story has at least one character, and granted, they may not be people of the human kind. But even if the people are animals, as in Charlotte’s Web, they are definitely personalities. They experience emotions, they make decisions, they perform actions. The people, or personalities, have a symbiotic relationship to the

Plot. A plot is much more than a sequence of events. Even a thrilling or dramatic sequence, as in a choose-your-own-adventure or a daytime soap opera, gets boring if it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. A good plot is always going somewhere. From the “inciting incident” at the beginning (the event that gets the story rolling), through all the twists and turns that build on previous twists and turns, through the climax and the long sigh that ties up loose ends, a good plot knows when to slow down and speed up and make shocking turns. None of this happens independently of the people in the story. They move the action, but they are also moved by the action. That’s the symbiotic relationship.

Problem. Strictly speaking, the problem is part of the plot but it’s also over the plot. You may have heard that there’s no story without conflict (i.e., problem). It may be between characters, or between a character and his surroundings, or between one group and another. The problem may be getting a jar of hunny open, or taming one’s inner Wild Thing, or surviving the Hunger Games and going on to lead a revolution. It doesn’t matter how great or small, so long as there’s a problem to be faced.

This last P is on no one’s list of story elements (except mine). A bland story can do without it, but a GOOD story needs a

Plunge. Think of standing on the edge of the pool on a hot summer day. You take a breath, steel your nerves and jump. What a rush! That clap of cold wakes up all your senses and propels you toward the far edge of the pool. A story plunge is the first page, paragraph, or sentence that wakes up your appetite and starts you wondering, What’s going on here? And what happens next? “First lines” are almost an art form by themselves. Every reader has her favorites. One of my favorites is

None of this that I’m about to tell you would have happened if my mother hadn’t found that squirrel in the toilet.

Full disclosure: I wrote it. It’s the opening line of my 2007 novel, The Middle of Somewhere. The inciting incident of that story is an accident that injures the mother (not life-threatening) and sends her kids (including our first-person narrator) on the adventure of their lives.

Now you want to read it, don’t you? All praise to the plunge!

To get a sense of any story, ask yourself 1) Is the place incidental or vital? 2) How do the characters’ personalities and choices move the plot and 3) how do plot developments motivate the characters? 4) What’s the main problem? And 5) What’s the plunge? When did I get hooked?

Now that you have the elements in place, what’s your story?