You have a great plot idea! Our Hero is sent off by the king to retrieve the stolen Goblet of Peace from the evil wizard and the stakes are high. If that goblet is destroyed, the magic barrier holding back the Hordes of Darkness will dissolve and the Elven Kingdom will be destroyed….

So off your hero goes, slashing and swinging, killing evil demons by the score, retrieving the goblet at the last second and casting the evil wizard into the Fires of Doom. Cool, huh? So. How come it won’t sell? How come editors keep sending it back with that form rejection slip? The visuals are stunning, the action is great, and the story really hurtles along. What the heck is wrong here? It’s a story, right? We have a beginning, middle, and end, a really strong conflict…the stolen goblet…lots of obstacles, and a great resolution.

What is missing here?

Well, he survived, yes. But real people are affected by events like these. They are left shaken, changed, their view of the world tarnished, warped, even if they expected to have a rough time. So Our Hero is no more real to us than the little battle armored warrior on the video screen as we charge him through the enemy ranks in Frontline Warrior or any other video game. If he’s plastic, then so are the demons and sorcerers he fights, and we never really fear for him or his survival.

So let’s make this plot more real. Let’s give Our Hero something to win or lose personally. He’s not just a video game warrior. You can’t just click ‘new game’ and start over. He’s someone with something on the line here, something he can win or can lose and if he loses, it will be part of him forever. Hmmm. Suddenly this is no longer a video game. Yes, he might kill the Bad Guy and win back the goblet, but what if he still loses his lover because of that triumph? Will he really have won? It’s not enough to just survive if the person he cares most about is killed, or ends up hating him.

Wow. Suddenly we readers have a lot on the line here! We’re no longer so sure of the outcome and we have forgotten all about ‘new game’.

Well, let’s take a look at Our Hero and the stolen Goblet of Peace. We have the story down solidly: Hero is sent on the mission by the king, he fights demons, is nearly killed by the evil Wizard, kills him instead, and arrives back at the castle in triumph with that goblet. The Elven Kingdom is safe. Our Hero is on his way home for that beer and the remote…

Okay, hold it! Rewind here.

Our Hero is happily teaching the next generation of heros in his dojo outside the castle wall, and he’s partnered with this gorgeous Amazon who not only loves him, but hunts with him, and teaches archery and hand to hand with him. They’re a great couple. Not formally married you understand, but a great couple. So here comes the messenger from the King with the message. And our retired Hero of course, can’t turn his back on the kingdom. So he goes.

And the King not only sends him off on this quest but tells him that he was chosen because The Great Oracle prophesied that whoever brought back the goblet would rule the kingdom and be invincible, and the Warlord threatening from the north believes in the oracle, too, so this is VERY important, and of course, when Our Hero returns victorious, he will marry the Princess because you must be connected to the royal lineage in order to rule.

So, Our Hero sets off with the knowledge that if he saves the kingdom, he will lose his quiet life and his lover and his beloved students of heroism. But if he fails, the kingdom will perish. So he is caught in a cleft stick that distracts him even as he fights those demons and saves the goblet. And even after he was won and we breathe a sigh of relief on that score…we are still worried. He loves his Amazon! He can’t just walk away from her! And what about his students who really won’t become heros without him? So we worry all the way back. It isn’t until he pulls off his very clever trick at the end -- which leaves his brother who is very smart and a great leader but not so hot when it comes to warfare as a king protected by the Oracle’s prophesy, while he gets to go back to his dojo and his Amazon -- that we sigh in satisfaction and close the book and wait breathlessly for the next.

We had two plots here. Our Hero had to survive the demons and rescue the goblet, AND, he had to find a way to keep his lover and his students. Because they are connected, they reinforce each other and create a whole that is larger than the sum of its two separate parts.

Start with your external plot. Your character encounters an external problem, struggles to deal with it, and either succeeds or fails. She might be trying to get rid of a dangerous boyfriend without getting killed, he might be trying to get an injured friend to civilization after a plane crash, she might be trying to save a stray dog from the pound. These are the ‘external’ plots. Your Main Character is reacting to some problematic circumstance that the universe has thrown in his or her way.

What you need to do is to find the problem within your Main Character that needs to be fixed. Everyone needs something, everyone has a weakness, a hidden need, a hidden grief. What is your POV character’s problem, and how can the external plot help fix it?

Well, let’s look at the woman trying to escape her dangerous boyfriend. Maybe her problem is that she has never seen herself as a ‘strong’ woman. She was a wallflower, the last to step forward, the one who accepted the leftovers because she didn’t think she was entitled to anything more. Now, as she is finally cornered and has to stand up to her fears or be killed by this evil man, she realizes that she is not a doormat, that she has strength and brains and she’s not a loser. And at the end, she has not only seen Mr. Dangerous safely behind bars, but she now knows that she’ll be okay on her own and later on maybe the Detective who was interested in her might be an option. She needed a sense of self worth and she got it through finally dealing with Boyfriend. That is your problem – her need for self worth, and your resolution – her discovery that she can take care of herself, that she’s not a door mat.

Our little girl might not only be in love with the stray dog, but she is very lonely. Dad has shut himself up in his work ever since Mom died, and our Girl feels that Mom’s death is her fault and that’s why Dad is mad at her. The dog is a new and wonderful friend who loves her and when Dad says it has to go, she runs away with it, to take it to the distant elderly hermit who will take care of it for sure. Dad comes after her to find her and very nearly falls to his death when he finds her in danger and tries to rescue her. She realizes that he loves her after all, he realizes how much he has shut her out and the dog gets a good home. J Can’t do better than that. (Go write this story and sell it to Dog and Kennel Magazine!) Her external problem is a need to save the dog from Dad, and her internal problem is her need to get Dad to love her or to come to terms with the fact that he can’t. We chose the first resolution here.