I touched on the idea of identifying your core story in my post about how to describe your story in a way that makes people want to read it, but I didn’t go into detail about what I meant or how to best use this tool.
What do I mean by the core of your story? I mean what the story is about at its essence.
Twilight is about a teenage girl and a vampire who fall in love.
Wonder is about a 5th grade boy who looks radically different from everybody else and starts going to school with other kids after a lifetime of being sheltered.
Within These Lines is about an Italian American teenage girl who’s in love with a Japanese American teenage boy, and his family is taken away to a concentration camp during WWII while hers doesn’t.
Sure, there are a lot of other things that happen in these stories, but if you drill down to their essence, this is what they’re about.
Maybe you have heard this referred to as “the A story line” or the “main plot” or “the through line.” I think of it as “the core story” because that’s helpful to me.
Whatever you choose to call it, every scene in your novel should be about the core story.
That feels like an extreme statement to me, and I don’t often use extreme words when I’m teaching writing. I shy away from always and never, and I don’t say things like, “this is the best way to write” because I know what’s best for me isn’t best for everybody.
Here’s my thinking on why that statement is justified:
Just because every scene is really about the core story, that doesn’t mean that it’s obviously about the core story.
Maybe when your reader is experiencing the scene, they don’t see how it fits in with the core story. That’s fine, so long as you the author know why it matters.
Maybe your main character learns a skill or something about herself that she’ll need to know in the climax of the book. Maybe we’re meeting vital characters. There are lots of ways that a scene might apply to the core story, even if the ways are subtle.
When you show your readers something, you’re promising them that it matters.
When you’re reading a story, do you want to read scenes that don’t matter?
Neither do your readers. If you include a scene in your book, that’s a promise to your readers that the scene matters. And the longer we fixate on a topic (or character, or plot, or setting) the stronger our promise grows that this is important.
When you know what your core story is, you then have an automatic filter for, “does this scene belong, or does it not?” because the question really becomes, “does this impact my core story?”
Subplots are really about the core story too.
Subplots are entire plot arcs within the main plot arc. We see them often in epic stories. Subplots have their own inciting incident, their own black moment, their own climax, etc. Strong subplots, in my experience, always tie into the core story. They enrich it. Show it from a different angle.
The term “subplot” often gets used for things that are really story threads. The main character’s conflict with her mother or the love interest are probably story threads not subplots with their own story beats. Every novel has story threads, but not all novels have subplots.
Either way, all subplots and story threads work best when shown in the context of the core story.
The core story might exist only for your main character.
This is where a lot of your character-to-character conflict comes in. For example, in The Lost Girl of Astor Street, the core story is that Piper’s best friend Lydia has gone missing and Piper has to find out what happened to her.
This is only the core story for Piper. None of the other characters in the book are revolving their lives around this, and that’s why Piper is in conflict with them. Nobody else cares like she does. Even Lydia’s parents, who are worried about the disappearance of their daughter, are responding differently than Piper is.
If we make all the characters revolve around the core story, we end up with flat-feeling characters.
Now, that doesn’t mean that the core story should always only exist for your main character. Side kick characters or villains might have the same or very similar core stories as your main character.
What do you think? Do you agree every scene should really be about your core story? Do you think there’s wiggle room for scenes that don’t tie into the main plot? Are you unsure?
I think you need some of both. The book definitely needs to mainly have only core scenes, but some fun scenes are also nice to the character and the reader. For example, in Harry Potter, they have multiple celebration scenes after Gryffindor wins a game. Most of the time it doesn’t matter to the main plot. The only time I can think of (which I don’t think was in the movie) is when Harry FINALLY kisses Ginny, therefore starting their romance throughout the sixth book. As a reader, I enjoy both. Sometimes scenes that don’t matter are the best because you see the main character relaxing when they are normally stressing about defeating evil.
Harry Potter is the series I keep coming back to as I consider this concept, Macey. Because I love those book, but there’s a lot of Quidditch that could probably be cut without losing much story. However, those are fun scenes, and they build the sense that this world is a real place.
I haven’t gone through the books scene-by-scene, but I think an argument could be made that Quidditch is often the backdrop for other more serious things that are going on. The rivalry between Harry and Draco, Ron’s character development, or Harry being attacked during a game are all situations that come to mind. There maybe are a couple superfluous Quidditch scenes (or celebration scene) but I honestly can’t think of any Quidditch-just-for-the-sake-of-Quidditch scenes where nothing else of importance happens.
Yeah, that’s true. I didn’t think about it like that.
I haven’t really thought about that either, but now that I do, it’s so accurate. A lot of the Quidditch scenes are vessels for character development, world enrichment, and there are quite a few that further the main plot. (Examples- but spoiler alert to those who haven’t read the series but still want to: Quirrel trying to knock Harry off his broom, but Harry, Ron, and Hermione think it’s Snape; the rogue bludger; the dementor attack) Also, the fact that Harry’s skills on a broom come in handy during many non Quidditch scenes throughout the series. The Quidditch scenes establish that skill so it can be implemented to the main plot later.
Love this! Something I’ve been thinking about a lot as I dig through edits on my WIP.
This is definitely something I’ve been learning! Although I still live for “breather scenes” that aren’t so emotionally charged, I’m learning to make them count. My core story is a soldier’s struggle with PTSD, but I just spent two days on a scene where he’s a teen running around with his best friend who just got his drivers license. It’s not crucially important per sé, but it was a good window into my boy’s reckless personality and it paved the way for an important conversation. I love including everyday life in my story, so I’ll definitely be keeping this in mind!
This is a really interesting post. I’ve considered this question before and I still can’t tell how I feel about it. On the one hand, there needs to be a heavy focus on the core story to really make the book about *that* story: on the other, saying all scenes should be about your core story seems restrictive at first glance. I think it comes down to what we mean by “about.” If all scenes must focus exclusively on the progression of the main plot, we exclude a lot of other great stuff–e.g. in The Lord of the Rings, the core story of which is “Frodo obtains an evil Ring and must destroy it to save the world,” we would lose all of the stories about Merry, Pippin, Aragorn, and Gandalf. That being said, the main plot of Frodo taking the Ring to Mordor would feel out-of-place and unfinished without the context of everything else that happens simultaneously.
I think, then, that every scene should provide context for your core story. Everything that happens to us is related to our lives, whether or not those events happen to be related to one another. They provide “context” for us–for our decisions, actions, thoughts, etc. Thus, everything that happens to our main characters is related to them, and how they act in certain, seemingly unrelated situations actually helps readers understand them and their core stories more deeply. So scenes that aren’t directly about the core story, or aren’t about it at all, can at least show that the main character has an actual life, i.e. things happen to him or her that are unforeseen, and frame the core story in a more understandable way.
I think you phrased that perfectly. I couldn’t agree more.
This is a tricky question. To put it in perspective, I started thinking about a scene I recently added to my WIP in which the characters sit down to watch a movie on a rainy evening. On the surface, it has nothing to do with the core, but it provides a nice change of pace. The previous scene was intense and heavy in crucial information, and a character found out the secret that my main characters were hiding from him. In the next scene, the characters encounter a major set back that forces them into crisis mode. Having a sweet, mellow scene in between those gives the reader a breather.
However, once I think about it more, the movie watching scene does tie into the core, at least on some level. It shows how the character who uncovered the secret is coping with it and how the others are helping adjust him to the idea and welcoming him to their little band. By showing the characters in a happy, normal scenario, it shows what is at stake if the characters fail at their goal. And it sort of makes a promise that something is going to go wrong in the next scene. I think I even threw in a couple lines that heavily suggest “DON’T GET COMFORTABLE!”
I guess the idea that all scenes should tie into the core of the story is valid, because scenes can offer more than just crucial events. They can offer character development, world building, foreshadowing, etc. While it’s true that there are some scenes that should be cut from stories in the editing process, deciding what to cut isn’t as simple as “what is happening in this scene?” I think it’s about “What is the reader gaining from this scene?”
I think you’ve said it in the best possible way. The phrases “scenes can offer more than just crucial events” and “What is the reader gaining from this scene?” are especially enormously helpful. Thanks!
Aw, glad to hear it! 🙂
Ooh I really like this. The more I read the more convinced I become that stories should be fundamentally holistic.