Every story is composed of five to eight elements. Each of these elements work together to bring a story to life; to grab the reader. At a minimum, an engaging story needs the five basic elements:
- Characters
- Setting
- Plot
- Conflict
- resolution
- CHARACTERS
To put it simply, characters drive story; stories are (usually) about people.
A reader wants a character they can relate to, someone who could possibly be real. The personality of the character will draw the reader into the story, making them feel some emotion toward the character. This emotion can be either positive or negative, it really depends on the character and their conflict.
For a writer, knowing your character will help create a realistic one. What are their goals, their emotions, their fears, and what makes them smile, all these can be hidden in the words of dialogue and/or action.
As it pertains to non-fiction, the character is not a made-up individual, but rather a real person who experienced the conflict in real life. This doesn’t mean there will be less writing, but if the main character and conflict are not the writer, then the writer has a lot of work to do to understand what the character has experienced.
- SETTING
The setting of a story (or a scene) can be a geographical/physical location, a social/cultural environment, climate/weather conditions or a time period (past/present/future). For any story, one or more of these settings are needed within the story itself.
The reader needs to know where they are in the story, it allows them to envision the actions and atmosphere. This further helps them to understand what is taking place with fewer filler words by the writer. The story setting can also be used to further the plot along.
The old adage of 'show don’t tell' comes into play with describing the setting. You want to show the reader where the character is, not tell them. Instead of describing the scenery, incorporate the character into the setting description.
Example: The glove on the ground was half-hidden in snow.
Rewritten: Gary walked slowly along the path, not seeing the glove peeking through the snow.
In the above rewrite, the reader is still told there is a glove in the snow, stating the fact it was half-hidden was not necessary. The difference between the two is that you are not boring the reader with sections of descriptions that can and should be written within the story. Also, we now have a character (Gary), an action (walking), and we know he did not see the glove. What does this mean? Is it crucial to the story that he did not see the glove?
- PLOT
The plot of a story is the sequence of events that shape a broader narrative, with every event causing or affecting each other. In other words, story plot is a series of causes and effects that shape the story as a whole.
Plot is not merely a story summary: it must include causation. The novelist E. M. Forster sums it up perfectly:
'The king died and then the queen died' is a story.
'The king died, and then the queen died of grief' is a plot.
(E. M. Forster)
In other words, the premise doesn’t become a plot until the words “of grief” adds causality. Without including “of grief” in the sentence, the queen could have died for any number of reasons, like assassination. Grief not only provides plot structure to the story, it also introduces what the story’s theme might be.
- CONFLICT
At its most basic, conflict is the clash of opposing forces with a character’s pursuit of a goal. The character must overcome these opposing forces to achieve the goal. These opposing forces might take on numerous shapes, and might even exist solely within the character’s own psyche.
Most stories begin with a basic premise: a character wants or needs something; there are certain obstacles standing in the way of that character’s goal(s); that character does not know how to overcome those obstacles. These are the elements of conflict in a story because the character repeatedly encounters different obstacles as they try to achieve their goals, which culminates in the story’s plot. Keep in mind that success is not guaranteed, they might fail to achieve their desired goal.
Conflict can be something as simple as choosing a brand of cereal at the supermarket—do I buy the one I know I really want, or do I get the one that’s on sale? Or it can be a socio-internal quandary—do I risk moving across the country to take a fantastic job opportunity, or do I stay in a place where I already know I’m comfortable and safe?
Your character’s conflict can also be a direct opposition to another person, or it can be a fight against an impersonal, external force, like a big storm.
The type of conflict your protagonist faces and, more importantly, how they deal with it, can reveal a lot about their personality and temperament. It’s also what causes them to begin making choices that form the backbone of the story.
- RESOLUTION
At the story’s end, the warrior protagonist has found victory or defeat, hero and heroine have declared their love, the detective has caught his murderer. But what happens next?
Win or lose, we can’t leave our warrior on the battlefield, bloodied sword in hand. The lovers need a moment to reflect on their love and the trials they faced and overcame to reach that love. The detective considers what his latest case has cost him and whether he can face another when the stakes are so high.
How do you move from the battlefield or the declaration of undying love or the unmasking of the murderer and go to “The End”? You write a resolution.
You tie up loose ends and bring completion to all the threads you so carefully laid out for the reader’s entertainment. You finish the story. You give the reader enough explanation that they will be fully satisfied by your tale.
The resolution must fit the story, each element of the story. And as no stories are alike, no resolutions will be alike. Not in every way.
You will come closest to conformity within genres. Thus series romance may recommend a five-page final chapter for the resolution. A political thriller might allow for a longer resolution in order to tie up major story threads involving several characters.
No one wants story gaps in the final pages. Readers want to know what happened and how and why. And they want those answers for each of the major plot threads and characters, including the protagonist, antagonist, and any other characters they’ve come to care about.
No, they don’t need to know everything about everyone in the story; with solid hints and a clear presentation of characters, readers will be able to fill in a lot of blanks. But if you gave a plot thread importance in terms of events or motivation, then you need to resolve that plot thread by story’s end. And you need to show how major characters have been changed by what they’ve faced and what they’ve done, activities far outside what they’re accustomed to in their normal lives.
NOTE:
The information presented here is based on multiple sources from the Internet.