This post is a little more advanced, so if you’re at an earlier stage of your writing career, work through some of the earlier posts about structure and drama, then come right back here!

So, in the beginning of the story, your character wants something.

In the middle of the story, there is a whole lot of trial and error. Things don’t go right, new problems come up. You win some, you lose some.

By the end of the story, your character should get something they want.

In the Macdonald Hall story Go Jump in the Pool (Gordon Korman), the protagonists want to save the school by getting a pool. And in the end, they do.

But is the thing a character gets at the end of a story the same thing that they wanted at the beginning?

Sometimes.

In I Want To Go Home, Rudy starts out wanting to go home. By the end, when he has the chance to leave with his family, he stays.

But that isn’t because he lost. It’s just that he grew as a character throughout the story, and by the end he wanted something different than what he wanted at the beginning.

In Mulan, she started out wanting to prove something to herself and her family. 

She ended up saving China and proving something to herself. She got a new thing and the old thing.

Characters are more interesting to read about (or watch) when they learn and grow from their experiences through the story.

Mulan.

Anne Shirley.

Merida.

But less so Cinderella, Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty. Those ones don’t really grow through their stories, at least not in older tellings.

They go through a lot. They find out more about their worlds as the story goes on.

But they aren’t really different people at the end than they are at the beginning.

At the end of the stories they are no longer cursed, or chased, or threatened.

But that is not the same as growing and becoming different or more mature people. Maybe that’s why those stories are less satisfying to experience than some of the others like Mulan or Brave.

In Brave, Merida starts out kinda selfish. It’s true that she is being forced into a marriage that she doesn’t want. And what she wants is to choose for herself. But her original reason is because she wants to live her life for herself and to heck with everyone else.

In the end, she learns that she has responsibilities to other people, especially as a leader as well as a daughter. So, she should be able to choose for herself, yes, but she learns that there are bigger things she needs to think about in making those choices. She gets what she wanted at the beginning and she learns something new about herself and her place in the world by the end of the story.

Character grows, character is more interesting to read about.

So, if we want the reader or the audience to want to know what happens next, in any story, we need

1. The story to have a beginning, middle, and end.
2. Conflicts to happen to the protagonist (drama).
3. The protagonist should grow somehow over the course of the story.

Mind you, the protagonist doesn’t have to grow. We can write those stories like Cinderella, or monster movies where the only thing the character wants is to destroy the beastie.

Those stories can be good and cool.

But just know that a story becomes even more interesting when our main character grows.

But how do you do that? I’ll go into detail about that in another post, but for now, think about this: Think about your character and everything you like about them. Usually, young writers make characters who are likeable and brave and such, right from the beginning.

So if you’ve already got a character like that, keep them like that for the end of the story. But back at the beginning of your story?

Try making them the opposite.

If they end up brave, make em shy. Do they win a big race? Give them a broken leg at the start. Do they end up running a dog shelter? Make them scared of animals at the beginning. You get the idea.

For the reader and for you, it will be more fun and exhilarating to see them grow.

Happy writing, young writer.