Three Tips to Bring Forth the "Why" of Your Story
How to use your character--fictional or real--to make your story's purpose clear
What’s new in my writing room: So very honored to be included in the wonderful “How We Spend Our Days” series by author
who has interviewed so many amazing writers (the likes of and Steve Almond and Dani Shapiro!) about a day in their writing life. An inspiring look behind the outer persona of working writers into what goes on during their working day. Read about my (not-so-typical) writing day here.
Characters stay with me long after I close a book. Be it memoir or fiction, I’m often swept deeply into a character’s life, feeling like they’re a great friend I could text and hang out with. I personally feel that characters are so important to storytelling these days because we are, as a culture, searching for the “why” behind our lives.
And characters are the vehicle for bringing forth the “why” in the stories we read—the reason, the purpose, of what we’re witnessing on the page.
Sure, you have to also have a good plot, something interesting happening. And there usually has to be a context, a setting or environment that magnifies the character’s journey. And yes, your characters have to be externalized enough that we readers feel they're believable (like how they look, how they move, what they wear, what music they love to listen to, what they love or hate to eat first thing in the morning).
All that’s essential. To me, it’s the frame of a story. But it’s the character’s inner world that drives everything. What does that mean to us writers and how can we step up to that need?
Falling in love
Over the years, I’ve gotten so many rejections to my writing. From agents, from editors, from publishers. In the early days of submitting my work, I heard this a lot: “I just didn't fall in love with your characters.”
It’s a depressing response. What does “falling in love” actually mean? In time, with enough rejections under my belt, I got a sense of the answer. “Falling in love” is industry speak for a reader’s deep engagement.
I remember when I was first submitting to agents. I can’t tell you how many agency websites talked about this “falling in love” as being so engrossed in reading a story that the agent missed their train stop (agents commuting into Manhattan) or subway stop (city dwellers).
I know that feeling—when I really can’t awaken from a story I love. I want to stay in it—it’s more interesting than anything in my outer world at that moment.
But it’s a high bar. I used to tighten my plot, add more backstory and setting. But the most effective plan, and the way I began to get my first “yesses,” was to work with the three tips I want to share this week.
They strengthen the “why” of any story, in my view. They deal with conflict, false belief, and backstory.
Tip 1: Creating inner and outer conflict
Each character has what I call an inner and outer story. To address the “why” of a story, to create and maintain tension throughout, the writer needs to make these conflict with each other.
Here’s a brief explanation of the two.
Outer story is how a person moves around in the outer world. In story, it’s the actions they take, the stuff that happens to them, the decisions that send them on a new course, the people they come in contact with, the places they live in or visit.
Inner story is everything that happens inside them, internal forces like desire, love, fear, revenge, jealousy, a memory that haunts them, a false belief about themselves that influences their life.
Characters come to all outer stories with some inner baggage. A writer’s job is to not just create the outer circumstances but also figure out what’s hidden inside the character.
I look for one major internal belief that makes life challenging for them. This means I have to get to know my character beyond their surface, the self they present to the world.
That leads to tip #2, the character’s false belief.
Tip 2: What’s your character’s false belief?
False belief, or false agreement, is a dynamic element in successful stories. It applies to either real or fictional characters because we all have history that forms our beliefs about the world and about ourselves.
Often, a character will start a story with such a belief and by the end have faced it, or at least questioned whether it’s actually true. (It’s usually not.) But if their purpose in the story is to grow past their false belief, and you can zero in on what it is, you can structure the outer story to create this face off.
A classic example in kidlit is A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle. Meg is a super smart young person but her false belief rules her life—that she’s awkward, basically a misfit, and won’t succeed in much beyond high-level math. So L’Engle sets Meg on a course of conflict by forcing her to rescue her father and baby brother. Her false belief that she’s a mega failure in her life is faced and reconsidered.
As I get to know a character, I begin a brainstorming list of their possible false beliefs about:
themselves
stuff that happened in their history
their potential future
how they fit or don’t fit into their world right now
From that list, I get a sense of what kind of belief burden they are carrying around. They may not show it to anyone! They may not even be aware of it themselves. But as the writer, we know. We find the false belief that is the most untrue, we see how that mistaken view affects how they make decisions, and we play with how to make them face it—eventually.
That influences the plot, doesn’t it. If the goal is to make sure your outer events in a story force the character to face their limited idea about life and decide what to do with it, it means you get choosy about your plot. You also get choosy about what backstory you include, because now it all has to be relevant.
Tip 3: Finding relevant backstory
I remember as a writing teacher and editor reading many, many student stories that started with a backstory dump. Rather than engage us immediately in the “why” of the story via character actions and the false belief leaking through, we learned about the town, the car, the war that took place a hundred years ago, the origin of some vegetable in the garden. This fascinated the writer; the reader, not so much.
Backstory is the background of the story. There’s a lot of it for any character, real or imagined. What you choose to include must have relevance to the “why”—what will reveal why our characters believe what they do.
A first step: list anything your character has experienced pre-story that still lives with them. A death, a loss, a betrayal, a missed opportunity, something they did that they are still ashamed of, a person they’ll never forget, a lesson they flubbed?
Sometimes this is called the “wounding event” (hat tip to
). Once you locate it amongst all their backstory, you find what drives them now, often without their knowledge.How do you find this? I use a very simple technique: writing a character bio.
Imagine your character going to a job interview or posting their history on a matchmaking site. What would they say about themselves? Then try interviewing them about what they’re not saying. What still haunts them?
Once you have a bio sketched out, including what they’d reveal and what they’d prefer to keep hidden, test each backstory item. Can you can draw a present-life belief from it?
The ones that still resonate are often the cornerstones of your character’s journey through the story. They help reveal the “why” and keep that prospective agent reading long after their subway stop.
Your Weekly Writing Exercise
Which of the three tips has been underused in your draft? Consider one or two this week. See if you can apply them more consciously, using the prompts and ideas above.
Share your thoughts!
Shout Out!
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I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.
I’m also the author of 15 books in 3 genres. My third novel, Last Bets (Riverbed Press), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, was published in October 2023 and also became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.
Mary explaination really helps. As I look at my story, I can see all those elements for both my mother and myself. I am stumped with my father's wounded event. He was such an unusual guy, very likable, small town football hero, Golden Glove boxer, and a bully in certain instances. He was taught by his parents and believed that he was better than others. Perhaps he was covering up insecurities. Your post has given me a lot to think about. Thank you.