But…

Imagine our protagonist has invited a date for dinner.

They take a shower, get dressed, check their appearance in the mirror.

The smell of cooking fills their home. They open a bottle of wine and leave it to breathe next to two glasses, they choose some music to play softly in the background.

They straighten the cutlery on the table and check their watch.

There is a knock at the door.

Now what?

What happens next is the difference between a story and real life.

In real life the protagonist will open the door. Their date will be standing there, they’ll invite them in and they’ll have a meal together. Maybe they will enjoy each other’s company, maybe they’ll find the experience a little dull.

Either way, this isn’t a story, just a sequence of events. The person showers and they get dressed and they cook a meal and they open a bottle of wine. To make this into a story we need a but.

There is a knock at the door…

… but there is a police officer standing there
… but their date’s partner is standing there
… but their date is standing there in tears
… but their date says “We need to talk”

If the writer has just spent two pages setting the scene and building anticipation of the knock on the door, the reader will be very disappointed if the person standing there smiling is just the protagonist’s date.

Writing this, it seems so obvious. You might wonder who would make such a mistake. Well, I for one. Sometimes I’m so taken up by the loveliness of the world I’m describing I forget to add a story. And it was definitely a fault of mine when I first began writing.

Howard Suber said it much better then I can…

What Do All Great Stories Have In Common?

The word “but”. Which is to say inexperienced or poor storytellers structure their material with the words “and” or “then”. So “They did this, and then they did that, and then they did this, and then they did that,” which produces an episodic structure that doesn’t build on anything, and there’s no relationship between what came before and what came after.