Four More Story Elements To Guide Your Novel

We’re talking about more story elements. We’re picking up where we left off with a deeper look into how and a full look at why following our who, what, when, and where from the previous Four Story Elements post. We looked at the basic three elements: character, plot, and setting along with POV. Here we will dive into the crux of plot (conflict) and some of the craft elements that help you guide your readers' experience of the narrative.

Within plot we have conflict, the internal why of your story. And within conflict we have its expression through tension, pacing, and stakes. There is a secondary why to your story though, an external one. The purpose of the story, the relatable truth of your story, the theme. And there’s a final piece to how your story is written that falls more in the craft category and therefore more in the editing category than the outlining or writing one. But that doesn't mean you don’t want to think about your style and tone early on, just that you can certainly polish it later.

Conflict

The internal “why” that drives the story.

Definition: Conflict is the driving force of the story. Without it plot doesn’t happen and characters don’t change. Conflict is what makes a story interesting. Think of conflict as challenges and obstacles rather than strictly violent or vocal conflict.

Example:

Romance

A queer couple fighting discrimination 

Or

Falling in love with your best mate's partner

Fantasy

Knight fights a dragon 

Or

The unwilling hero fights against prophecy but always ends up right back in it 

Horror

Person unsure if haunting is real or not 

Or

Person secretly detaches from bio-upgrades and sees the world for what it really is and must fight against it 

Considerations: 

Simply, what’s stopping the character? Who or what are they fighting against?

To figure out what your conflict is, you have to ask yourself what's stopping your main character from getting what they want. If we look at the age old "every character should want something even if it’s just a glass of water” example, what could be stopping them from getting that glass of water? Is the water turned off? Are they in a desert? Are they unable to get up or walk? Does someone keep moving the glass of water? This starts building your obstacles. Tension and pacing are huge pieces of conflict (and plot).

The other half of conflict is what happens if they don’t overcome? This is called stakes, but really it’s the consequences of failure. Let’s look at stakes alongside its brethren tension and pacing.

Stakes, Tension & Pacing 

How the reader experiences the conflict

Definitions:

Stakes - What your character has to lose through the conflict. This is what makes the conflict feel real and what makes it matter to your reader.

Tension - The feeling that failure is possible. If everything is quickly solved there is no fear of failure and your story becomes uninteresting.

Pacing- How quickly the reader is pulled through your story. This is the craft part of stakes and tension. Pacing is created through how you write your conflict. It’s a consequence of structure.

Examples:

Stakes: Kyle will die if Gregory doesn’t find the cure in time

OR

Timothy will end up in jail for a crime he didn't commit if he doesn’t find the real killer.

Tension: Valeie reaches base camp but a blizzard erupts before she can get set up

OR

Drawn out scene of Helen awaiting the decision from her interview.

Pacing: Long sentences in passive voice to draw out a scene slowing the pacing

OR

Short, active sentences to rush your reader through a scene that is frantic.

Considerations:

Stakes, tension, and pacing are all about the reader’s experience of the conflict. 

Stakes, along with character, give your reader a reason to care about the outcome of the conflict. Stakes lead to tension, as long as you don’t let things resolve too quickly or easily. If I am unaware of stakes or pressure on the conflict then there is no excitement or worry. 

Think of it like a road trip. The stakes are low if the weather is nice, the traffic is light, and you already have a hotel booked. But if suddenly there is a tornado watch, bumper to bumper traffic, and you were told the hotel is “first come, first served" there's a lot more tension. A balance of easy going, high stakes, and everything in between is what creates a satisfying story. And a different balance is expected in different types of stories.

You need to be thinking about when a slow, tension-filled scene makes sense and when you should increase pacing to either get through something that’s inconsequential or create the feeling of losing control over the situation. Tension puts the reader on the edge of their seat waiting for release. This is easy to see in something like a thriller or horror, but tension is needed across genres. Even romance needs tension, it might be more subtle, but it will be there.

Pacing is how you create tension. This is more of a craft decision than a narrative element. A huge part of it comes down to structure. Sentence, paragraph, and beyond. You can create the sense of time slowing down by making things “harder” to read. Longer sentences with more complex structure take more time to parse than short, simple sentences. (I should do a grammar series on types of sentences shouldn't I?) Passive voice also creates the sense of more time being taken up than active voice. That’s why there is no such rule as “never use passive voice”; it has its time and place.

Stakes gives you the narrative elements, tension gives you the experiential element, and pacing gives you the mechanical element of conflict.

Theme 

Why you are telling the story

Definition: The universal truth of your story. Every story has something at its centre that is relatable and relatively universal. This creates purpose for your story (in addition to entertainment of course). 

Examples:

Grief

Found Family

Love

Coming-of-Age

Good vs Evil

Survival

Peace vs War

Considerations:

You might not know your theme right off the bat, but it’s a good thing to think about as you work through your planning and drafting phases. Theme is going to be the cornerstone of your narrative whether you realize it or not. 

You may be writing a fantasy story with a focus on really cool dragon fights, but something in there is going to need to be relatable to your audience that will never get the chance to fight a dragon. Perhaps the dragon is a metaphor for a greater power in the real world, maybe your main character only has the strength and courage because of their found family, maybe this is a revenge killing and the dragon (or just a dragon) killed someone close to them or burned down their village.

The sooner you realize your themes the sooner you can be sure you are planting the seeds throughout your story. The sooner you can find the right motifs and metaphor to lean on. Theme is important in crafting a relatable story even if it’s covered in magic, and ghosts, and worlds unlike ours. Readers look for themes to aid in their escapism. A person dealing with loss is going to be drawn to stories about overcoming grief while someone that doesn’t fit into society is going to be drawn to themes like found family and similar identities. 

Style & Tone

How the reader experiences the writing of your story

Definition: Style and tone refer to your prose more than your narrative, but they affect each other. Style is more about your structure and tone more about word choice but they overlap. Style speaks to the reading experience while tone speaks to the emotional one. 

Examples:

These are some common style and tone choices. Not necessarily your only choice though!

Rom-com

Light, humorous, and easy to read.

Fantasy

Verbose and description heavy with an Old English spin. Eccentric spellings.

Horror

Atmospheric with a lean into dark imagery, lots of sensory details.

Considerations:

This is one of those things that is hard to put a finger on. It’s the quality of the writing; not good or bad, but the general emotional and descriptive lean. It’s a piece of voice, but is less consistent over a body of work. A writer’s voice can be found in most things they write where style and tone are dependent on the content of the story. 

Consider the experience you want your reader to have. Do you want them to escape into a world of whimsy or be crawling out of their skin? Do you want them to sit with difficult emotions or breeze freely through an uplifting story? 

There are genre/content expectations of stories that you should keep in mind (though there are always exceptions and sub genres that break these expectations). Fantasy and literary fiction tend toward a more complex style and structure while rom-com and action lean into easier reading. Horror and thriller focus a lot on the atmosphere and hype up the danger of the story with word choice. Historical fiction is going to lean heavily into the style of the time; rather than worrying about slang dating your work, it’s expected! Style and tone should also be considered differently for different audiences.

Consider your theme as well as your genre. A theme about a teen coming-of-age will have a very different vocabulary and vibe than a story about retirement. A story about grief likely requires a reflective tone. Word choice that grosses out a reader is probably not what you’re going for in a story about love but in one about good and evil there is certainly a place for it.

Style and tone are very much about the reading experience and you probably won’t get it right in the first draft, but that doesn't mean you shouldn’t be thinking about it.

In conclusion

Save for conflict, these elements are more on the craft side of your story than the narrative one. They’re harder to plan and more likely to be fixed during the editing process, but I highly encourage you to think about them during your planning and drafting phases. 

Within your outline it might be helpful to take note of where you want tension to build and when it should release. Being able to reference these notes will help you sit in those moments of tension or quicken the pace through moments you want your reader to feel the fear of a confusing or frantic moment.

Take a second to think about the type of words you want to use. Are you going for something with (appropriately used) five dollar words or do you want to keep things simple with every day word choice? Is there a motif you want to use that will help build your theme or keep you aligned with your style and tone? Imagery of rotting and death might help in something surrounding grief or in horror while flowers or plants might signal a coming-of-age or enhance a romance.

I’ve gone and mentioned more writing elements so if you want me to dive into some even smaller elements like motif, imagery, and metaphor be sure to let me know, and I will move those up my list! I’m starting to think I should make a glossary of writing and editing terms or something!

If you’d like someone to take a gander at your novel and guide you with your style and tone (among other things), I’d be happy to help! Just reach out.

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Jerrica is a writer and editor who inspires up-and-coming writers to create compelling fiction and creative nonfiction works while providing them with the confidence to do it themselves or ask for a helping hand when they need it. She enjoys speculative fiction, horror and gut-wrenching emotion with a side of food & drink and the cozier things in life.