How to Write a Good Story - All Elements

Desire

Desire is the concept that drives every one of us, and everyone has a different one. It is the final goal we want to accomplish, through smaller tasks. For example, each lesson at secondary school adds up the knowledge to the desire to pass the exam at the end of school.

I made a list of all the main desires I can think of. Desire for: love, sex, freedom, money, power, curiosity, social contact, acceptance, status, vengeance, equality, tranquillity, independence, joy, order, saving and honour.

1. Desire for love is the need to be with someone you love, or the need to be loved.

2. Desire for sex is the need to make sexual intercourse. It is one of the fundamental actions that create the feeling of happiness in our brain, so no wonder.

3. Desire for freedom is the need to become free from jail, slavery or society, something that locks us up in any way.

4. Money is the need to get or gather a lot of money. It could be about someone who is very poor and wants to get a comfortable life, or for another that wants to get rich.

5. Desire for power is the need to be powerful, to rule.

6. Desire to know is the curiosity. It could be about a treasure, country, magic, civilisation or anything that one is really curious about.

7. Desire for social contact is the need to have contact with people, a group of friends. We are social animal, who does not need social contact?

8. Desire for acceptance is the need to be accepted as one is, for the society, or a specific person/group. For example, like women fought for their rights, in 19th and 20th century, to be equal to men.

9. Desire for status is the need to develop a specific status. It could also mean for one to become famous. For example, someone who wants to become a great writer, or another that wants to be a popular singer.

10. Desire for vengeance is the need for revenge.

11. Desire for equality is the need for everyone or a specific group to be equal. For example, how African American fought for their equality.

12. Desire for tranquillity is the need to have peace in the mind. It can be for both physical (pain, slavery, bad health, etc.) and mental (someone close who died, being lonely, love leaves you, etc.).

13. Desire for independence is the need to be independent in any given aspect of life. For example, maybe one wants to earn his own money, or be independent in learning.

14. Desire for joy is the need to be happy. It could be anything that makes a specific person happy. For example, having great group of close friends, getting a wife, earning for a holiday or anything else that creates happiness.

15. Desire for order is the need to achieve order, such as being organized, having organized life or wanting the society to be organized.

16. Desire to save is the need to stack up/collect certain items. For example, some people like to collect stamps.

17. Desire for honour is the need to achieve honour by any means.

The plot of the story is built of scenes (conflicts, setting and actions). Essentially, the stories' plot builds up due to the main aim of the protagonist, the desire.

A great example is the desire of 'love' in romance genre. The main desire for the protagonist is to get out with the girl/boy the protagonist wants to, or to be with someone, while there is a struggle of some sort.

As I told earlier, there are four types of conflict. Vs self, vs nature, vs society, or vs character.

Romance genre (desire of love) example in each type of conflict.

• (Vs man) protagonist's love begins to like another man. The desire of this protagonist is to win the war, show that he is better than the other guy.

• (Vs nature) While coming home, miles away from home, the protagonist gets lost in a desert. His love awaits him at home, while he tries to escape the vastness. In this example, love drives the character to get home and out of the desert.

• (Vs society) Now we can talk about Romeo and Juliet. They fell in love with each other, but their families hate each other and forbid them to meet together. Everything that drives this story is the fact that they are in love, and do anything for it, but of course their families are not the best friends. Nevertheless, I would call it a society, as it involves two huge families but, vs man might also work for this particular example.

• (Vs self) protagonist goes out with his love, but with time, she sees that they are completely different to each other, or he develops a nasty trauma that changes him. In either cases, the protagonist's desire is love, as he is trying to change himself for her, because he loves her.

Desires can be evil in life, but can add great conflicts to the story and are important to drive the character through the story. Sometimes, we can behave really weirdly when we are really focused or driven on by a desire. The same applies for characters, this can make them act very violent, without thinking or blind on everything else what happens around them. For example, a teenager could get much focused on getting to be a professional writer, that he neglects his friends and family. Later on, as he fails and gets down, his friends and family is no longer there to support him. Desires can build unwanted conflicts, but they are realistic and can make the story more interesting.