#11 Moving On:

Every story must have a driving point, something that keeps the story going – pushing it forward to a climax or multiple climaxes in the book. If you want, you can break that up and make it per chapter – where every chapter has a driving point, which keeps the readers excited, and makes them what to find out more. For ex: If the MC’s boyfriend is kidnapped, she will have to work her way to rescue him, this will be the focal point of the story, until she rescues him and finds another reason to worry about. It doesn’t necessarily have to be one major point that keeps pushing the MC forward, it could be any number of things.

If there were no driving points to the story, it would be stagnant, just dragging on with no real purpose. The driving point maybe something, as simple as surviving high school or something as big as killing the villain. I have never written anything that didn’t have a particular focus that keeps moving the story towards a specific end, but for other writers finding that focal point maybe a little difficult.

Now, you might want to sit down and think about it, about that main event the MC must achieve to get to the end of the book (again it could be anything ^^). For example (since I am currently addicted to GOT I am using it as a reference) In the Game of Thrones series things spiral out of control after Eddard Stark’s death, that is where it all starts. It moves on to create a lot of chaos, and in midst of it, the Dragon Queen plays a major role, with her planning to attack King’s Landing. Think of it this way – if Ned Stark hadn’t died, the story wouldn’t have moved forward, so that was the first driving point. After it was achieved, we moved on to another driving point -- the upcoming battle with the Dragon’s daughter, the Wildlings and the White-walkers (the Nightwatch guards) and the battle with Robb Stark. These three are the major driving points of the story (like I said, it can be any number of things). Now, those three events push the story forward to the ultimate climax (now I am not giving that away, because some of you might have not read the series. I would recommend it to you people, because the development of the characters in that series is simply amazing and even the world building ^^)

So, you need to find that trigger that gets the dice rolling and everything falls into place. In one of my stories, two supernatural beings meet in a café, that is my first driving point and then it moves ahead to other things. Even in the TV series, you can see that the main story keeps playing in the background, and is triggered by many things. Keep in mind, to keep the goals small though, you don’t want to confuse yourself yanno :P

That’s all for now ^^. Make sure to find that one thing the MC should achieve in the end, and map the path towards it, create events for them/her/him to achieve that goal – drive them forward.  

Post your thoughts in the comments section below, I would love to hear from you'll :P !! - Sanya