Goals, Conflicts, & Stakes: Why Plots Need All Three

By Janice Hardy

A strong plot is built on strong structure. 

Goal - Conflict - Stakes. They're the engine in every scene and the backbone of every novel. When something feels “off” in a story, when the middle sags, when scenes feel random, when tension fizzles, it’s almost always because one of these three pieces is weak, vague, or missing.

All three exist no matter what genre you’re writing:

• The protagonist wants something (goal).
• Something stands in the way (conflict).
• Something bad will happen if they fail (stakes).

What trips up many writers, is that each of these can be used in multiple ways. 

There are story goals and scene goals. Internal conflict and external conflict. Personal stakes and larger story stakes. If you don’t know which aspect you’re working with, it’s easy to stall around page 100, wondering why your “great idea” suddenly has nowhere to go.

Let’s break all this down.

Two Questions to Ask for Stronger Character Goals and Motivations

By Janice Hardy

Strong plots start with two deceptively simple questions.

The sheer number of plotting questions I get—both in person and online—is a good indication that plotting is something a lot of writers wrestle with. And it’s not always because they don’t understand story structure or scene dynamics.

You can write gorgeous prose and still wind up with a story that meanders, stalls, or lacks punch. That’s because the characters aren’t making active, motivated choices that drive the story. They’re just… doing things.

“Because that’s what has to happen next” isn’t a goal.

I’ve had countless brainstorming sessions with stuck writers (and been one myself), and over the years, I’ve noticed something. No matter how complex the plot, how high the stakes, or how elaborate the worldbuilding, the problem almost always comes down to one missing element: goals.

Three Questions to Get to the Heart of Your Story

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

The story is why readers picked up your book. 

Writing is such a strange thing. As writers, we get these characters and stories in our heads and put them down on paper. Sometimes we know exactly what happens and write what we imagine, other times we have a character shouting in our heads and we transcribe what they tell us. We all have different processes and write with different voices.

What I find interesting, is that no matter what genre we write in or what age group we write for, one thing stays the same.

The story.

Not the plot, not the series of events that unfold, but the story that causes those events to happen as they do. Because story is bigger than plot or any of the other mechanical and technical aspects of writing. It’s the heart and soul of an idea and what brings the reader along for the ride.

Stuck on a Scene? Try This Trick to Get it Moving Again

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

The problem isn’t always where you think it is.

Before I dive in today, I'm also guest posting over at Writers in the Storm, sharing tips on How to Make Clichés Work for You. Come on over and say hello.

Unless you’re very, very lucky, at some point in your writing you’re going to get stuck. You’ll write yourself into a corner and won’t be able to figure out how to get your protagonist where they need to go, or maybe you’ll have no idea what the conflict is supposed to be. You’ll sit at the keyboard and grow more and more frustrated by the minute until you want to scream. Or take up botany.

It’s not writer’s block—you can write, it’s just that the scene has stalled and you don’t know what to do to get it moving again.

Instead of struggling to fix the scene that’s not working, try this:

How Point of View Can Solve Your Writing Troubles

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Point of view is one of the strongest tools writers have for crafting stories readers just can’t put down.

Whenever I’m asked to give “one tip that will help writers succeed,” I say, “Master point of view.” I’m a firm believer that understanding point of view (POV) can help you avoid most common writing problems—especially the newbie mistakes we all stumble over at the start.

Point of view a versatile tool that does more than just help you pick which pronoun to use, or if you should write in first person or third. It allows you to put yourself in someone else’s head, empathize with them, and see the world through their eyes, even if that world is different from your own. It’s what lets you be a storyteller and not just someone who plops details on a page in a logical order.

Here are five common problems point of view can help you solve.

How a Sequel Works with a Scene

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Sequels are the emotional glue holding scenes together.

Before I dive it, I’m over at The Insecure Writer’s Support Group today, chatting about the dangers of empty dialogue. Come on over and check it out!

Now, on to today’s regularly scheduled post…

The sequel trips up a lot of writers, even when they know what it is. The most common problem is thinking it has the same nature (and structure) as a scene, so they try to write it as one.

And it fails.

The pacing flatlines, there’s no goal, and often, writers twist themselves into knots trying to add a goal, motivation, and conflict to a sequel, trying to “make it work.”

Do or Do Not. There is No Try: Clarifying What Your Characters Do

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

The word “try” can send all the wrong signals to your reader.

Characters “try to” do a lot of things in stories. They try to get up, they try to hide, they try to hold back tears. But what the writer really means, is the character got up, they hid behind the couch and were found anyway, or they blinked back tears welling in their eyes.

The “try” isn’t describing the action, it’s describing the motive, which is another form of telling, not showing. The trying weakens the writing, and isn’t putting enough of what’s actually happening on the page for readers to understand the action.

Not that “trying to” act is a bad thing. If the motive is more important than the action, “trying” works just fine and conveys what the author wants readers to know. But more often than not, “trying” is unclear, and readers are left wondering if the character accomplished what they tried to do or not.

Goal and Motivation: What Does Your Story Character Want, and Why?

By Rayne Hall, @RayneHall

Part of the Focus on Short Fiction Series

JH: Goals and motivations drive every story, but they're critical in a short story. Rayne Hall discusses character wants and needs and how they keep readers hooked.

Today, I want to share a professional trick for hooking readers from the start and keeping them hooked until your story's ending.

Give your main character a goal and an urgent reason to pursue it. Perhaps she wants to or win a prize in the village flower show, rescue her daughter from the kidnappers, get her suitor to propose marriage or raise money for her business.

Make this as important as possible: she doesn't just want it, she needs it. (I'll use the female pronoun in this article, but of course the main character in your story can also be male.) Give her a compelling reason (or better, several) for needing to achieve this.

Beware the Vague Goal When Outlining a Scene

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Vague goals can trick you into thinking your scene is ready to write when it really isn’t.

Vague goals are nobody’s friend. They creep into our scenes, make us think our structures (and stories) are solid, but they’re really undermining those stories, especially in the drafting stage. “Stop the bad guy” tells us noting about what will actually transpire in a scene. Neither does “Protect the witness.” How is the protagonist going to do that?

Then there’s the king of the vague goals—“Survive the threat.” As Kristin Lamb hysterically puts it, her goal every day is to not die. Every protagonist in every book has this same goal. What the threat is and how the character survives it is what creates the plot and tells the story.

5 Ways to Fix a Stalled Scene in Your Novel

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

It’s a terrible feeling when the scene you’re working on grinds to a halt—and you have no idea how to get it moving again.

Imagine it—you’re in the middle of a writing session, your fingers are dancing over the keyboard, and suddenly…

They stop.

The words, your fingers, your understanding of what comes next in your novel.

Your scene has stalled and you don’t know why, and what’s worse, you have no idea what to do to fix it.

We’ve all been there, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a brand-new writer working on your first story or a professional author with fifty published novels. Sometimes, scenes just stall. Ideas poof out of your head and leave you hanging. Your characters stop talking to you, and the last thing they said was so out of the blue that you can’t fathom what they meant by it or what they plan to do.

An Easy Way to Find Your Protagonist’s Goal

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

If you have a great premise, but can’t figure out the protagonist’s goal to go with it, this little tip can help.

Every week, I get at least one message from a writer along the lines of, “This post is exactly what I needed today.” It always makes my day, and it’s the reason I tweet and post from the blog’s archives. There’s a ton of information on this site, and I never know who is going to need what when.

This past week, it was me.

I was doing my initial brainstorming for a new series, and I ran into a problem. I had no idea what the protagonist in book two wanted. Until I figured that out, I had no plot and no conflict. Utterly stuck, I set the notes aside and went to work on my blog posts for the week.

And I solved my own problem with my own post—and I hadn’t even written it yet.

5 Questions to Ask for Stronger Scenes

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

If you have trouble plotting, ask these five questions in every scene. 

I've always been a natural plotter. That doesn't mean I was always good at it, mind you, just that figuring out what my characters had to do rarely left me scratching my head.

I think it's because I typically think in "What has to happen in this scene?" terms. And the action, the "what happens" is driven by a character with goal. Create a problem, toss in something that has to happen, add a protagonist who needs something, and voila, you have a plot.

In basic terms, a plot is a series of events that allow you to illustrate your story. It's simple, yet often difficult, which is why so many writers struggle with it.

As you start your scene, your protagonist will have a goal. It'll probably be a story goal, because the whole point is to move the story forward, right? But maybe it's a smaller goal, or a internal goal, or a unconscious goal. Maybe it's not anything they want, but something you as the author wants.

What's My Motivation? Tips on Showing Character Motivations

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Knowing what motivates a character to act not only makes for a great read, it also makes it easier to plot.

Understanding character motivations is a big part of plotting. Why your characters (especially your protagonist and antagonist) do the things they do determines how your plot unfolds, since they'll have reasons for choosing Option A over Option B.

Of course, showing those motivations without banging a reader over the head can be the hard part. Especially if the reasons aren't clear to the character.

While you don't have to know every single reason why your character does every little thing, if what they do affects the plot or story, it's a good idea to know why they did it. Otherwise, you might end up with a reactionary protagonist or a character who's just acting out plot, but doesn't really care about what happens. Those kinds of characters can leave a story feeling flat and lifeless.

Oh, Woe Is Me: Strengthening Character Goals

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Characters drive the plot, because they want something badly enough to act to achieve (or avoid) it. But don't make it easy on them.

When I'm plotting a novel, one of the first things I ask is "What does the protagonist want?" It's a critical question to understand my plot and even my novel, because if I don't know the goal, I can't possibly write a novel that illustrates how the character tries to achieve that goal.

And that's what a novel is at the core: a character trying to have their way and get what they want.

What they choose to do is going to create the plot. Why they choose to do it will create the motivations and stakes. Together, characters, motivations, stakes, and plot make readers want to read on. I've found understanding the why make it's a whole lot easier to figure out the what.

The Core of Every Novel: The Big Want & The Big Fear

By Spencer Ellsworth, @spencimus

Part of The How They Do It Series

JH: As complicated as novels are, they really do come down to some very simple things. Spencer Ellsworth shares two of them.

Spencer Ellsworth has been writing since he learned how. He is the author of The Great Faerie Strike, a tale of the Otherworld’s first labor union, from Broken Eye Books. He is also the author of the space opera Starfire Trilogy from Tor, and many other short works. He lives in Bellingham, WA, with his wife and three children, works at a small tribal college, and would really like a war mammoth, please.

Website | Twitter | Goodreads

Take it away Spencer…

Goals-Motivations-Conflicts: The Engine That Keeps a Story Running

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Without a strong GMC, your story engine can stall. 

With “What’s your story about?” being a common question for writers, it’s easy to think about our stories as being one conflict or idea. We pose a problem, and then the book is spent trying to solve that problem. We postulate an idea, and we go on to explore that idea. We introduce a character, and we live in that character’s life for a while.

While stories might be about one problem, the plot is actually made up of many pieces all building on each other toward a resolution. Just like words form sentences, sentences form paragraphs, and paragraphs form pages, which is turn create scenes that form chapters and chapters that form acts. Everything builds to create a larger construct.

At the end of it all, is a novel (or short story if you prefer).

A Goal-Checking Trick for Plotting Your Novel

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy 

Here's a handy trick to make sure your plots are strong and driving your novel to the end.

I’ve just finished a rough draft of my latest novel, and like all my rough drafts, I have to fill in some holes and fix a few issues before it’s done enough to call it a first draft. This is all part of my usual process, so I don’t worry about things that don’t yet line up or work (I’ll get there). The rough draft is my way of getting the idea down and giving me something to work with to bring my story to life.

One of my first steps is creating a brand-new editorial map. I already have an outline, but it gets messy with notes and old ideas I forgot to edit out, so I like to do a fresh map to make sure my outline matches what I’ve actually written. It’s also a nice way to remind myself of the story flow and spot holes and things I need to fix on round two.

Four Pillars Linking Character to Plot

By Jeff Seymour, @realjeffseymour

Part of the How They Do It Series

JH: First chapters carry an extra challenge for writers--they need to make someone want to read the rest of the book. Please help me welcome Jeff Seymour to the lecture hall today, who's here to share some thoughts on first chapters and help us create stronger openings.

Jeff Seymour writes hopeful, heartfelt fantasy that blends modern characters with timeless plots and offers something new and fantastic on every page. His debut middle-grade novel, Nadya Skylung and the Cloudship Rescue, was published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons on May 15, 2018. In his day job as a freelance editor, Jeff helps shape and clean up stories for a talented roster of bestselling sci-fi and fantasy authors as well as newcomers to the business. In his free time, he serves as support team to a wife with an incredible career of her own, pretends he knows anything about raising children, and gathers ideas for stories everywhere he goes.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Take it away Jeff...

Fill in the Blanks: A Plot Template to Keep you on Target

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy


A while back I shared some great plotting tips from Southpark creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. I've been using them myself as I revise, but I couldn't stop thinking of other ways to apply this technique. I was also thinking about something a commenter said, and how this applied to the bigger macro issues, not just in the smaller goal-driving aspects. I was working on a blog post for that when it hit me.

This could make a really cool plot template.

The tip works on a micro level to see if your protagonist's actions are driving the plot, but when you pull back, you can also see how the entire scene works on a larger scale. The cause and effect of your scenes doesn't have to be as specific as my examples last week.

Keeping Goals and Motivations Fresh

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

There's so much pressure on writers to find a fresh, original idea, that we often forget there are only so many plots to begin with. Depending on which theory you believe, that can be anywhere from two to thirty-six, though the classic number is seven. (Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth)

No matter what story we write, our characters are going to want things that other characters have also wanted, and other writers have written about before. The general goals and motivations are not going to be fresh, because those themes are what makes a story universal and relatable. No matter who you are, you can relate to someone trying to find love of righting a past wrong.