Hi there!

Welcome to the second entry in your free seven-day storytelling course. In yesterday’s lesson, we discussed
how structuring your novel around a strong middle can make your story more emotionally resonant and
meaningful. Today, I’d like to describe the concept of the “Story Engine”, including how to write an impactful
opening to keep your readers turning the page.

I have a confession to make: I’m really behind on modern Netflix shows. That’s mostly because I have way too
much stuff to do. But there’s another reason. I’m afraid to invest in shows that are unlikely to pay back that
investment. What do I mean by that? I mean that most Netflix shows, by necessity, have good openings, but
usually fail to properly round out their stories, particularly with their endings.

It’s not exactly a Netflix show, but Game of Thrones is the most prominent modern example of this. Without
spoiling the show’s ending completely, many fans raged at how badly the series’ finale subverted expectations.
Now normally I’m all for expectations being subverted in any story. But these plot twists had never once been
hinted at or foreshadowed. The writers completely betrayed all the fascinating character development that the
audience had so faithfully invested in—seeing how the ending played out, I don’t blame them for feeling
betrayed.

There is one thing that Game of Thrones did get right, though, and that was its pilot episode. This introduction
to the long-running TV show sparked off a conflict between the Starks and the Lannisters, as well as starting
many other stories in Westeros, like that of Daenerys in the continent’s south. The honourable yet humble Nedd
Stark gives wise lessons to his eager children, while the noble yet cruel Lannister twins get caught in an act of
incestuous adultery, pushing one of Stark’s youngest children off a ledge.

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The Game of Thrones pilot episode managed to get all of these conflicts and plot machinations going in a single
episode—equivalent to a few chapters of written fiction. This demonstrates a great example of what I (and
others) like to call a powerful story engine. Just as you start a gas automobile’s engine by sparking the ignition
key, the opening of your story should start a self-sustaining engine that pushes the drama onwards at a relentless
pace. In a way, it forces your reader to keep turning the page, wanting ever more from the unfolding plot.

The positive effects of a powerful story engine are self-evident:

• A powerful story engine is, by definition, a good page-turner. We all want to write stories that are
veritable page-turners for our audience. There’s not a writer out there who doesn’t want their readers
glued to the page.
• A powerful story engine has plenty of juicy conflict. As the example from the Game of Thrones pilot
episode shows, mystery and controversial drama between opposing characters is the best way to earn
audience investment in your story.
• A powerful story engine’s drama is self-sustaining. When it comes to writing characters for your
story, one of my favourite rules of thumb is to write them so that conflict between them all is inevitable.
They should be itching to spark off one another. Such characters provide you with endless options for
creating scenes filled with conflict—in other words, there’s no excuse for a blank page!

These benefits all sound fantastic, but there’s something we still need to cover. What are the ways we can create
a powerful story engine in our own writing? Here are some tips that should help get you started:

• Don’t be afraid to use cliff-hangers. There are many reasons why Dan Brown was able to sell millions
of copies of Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code, among his other titles. But the biggest reasons
of all, I’d argue, is that they’re page-turners, and Brown is an absolute master of ending his chapters
with cliffhangers. Don’t be afraid to use them, they work!
• Tease and hint, taking your time to reveal the most intricate details. Don’t blow your load. Even
though you’re excited to reveal every detail about your characters, their interactions, and your world,
this excitement won’t translate to your readers if you don’t channel it properly. Let the events of your
story unfold gradually and deliberately. A sense of mystery will keep your audience glued to the page,
curious to learn more. Don’t give them everything at once, let them work for it!
• Write characters that are destined to conflict with one another. If you look at Arthur Miller’s play
All My Sons from a top-down perspective, you’ll see that all the characters seemed destined to argue
with one another. The father is covering up a big lie that he’s ashamed of; the mother is desperate to
hide the inevitable fact that her son has died, and their children each have further conflicts of their own.
This keeps the story moving forward, and the way it unfolds over the play’s acts has made it a classic of
theatre ever since.

Finally, here are some great examples of powerful story engines from some of my favourite stories:

• John Wick: This might seem an odd choice, because it’s an action movie. But John Wick shows that a
simple, linear, and fast-moving plot is all it takes to hook the audience and keep their investment
throughout the story. In the film’s beginning, a cruel heir in the Russian mob kills John Wick’s dog in a
brutal way, shocking the audience and forcing the former assassin back into his former life. And. He.
Kicks. Ass. Without this opening, the famously fast-paced plot couldn’t happen—learn the lesson.
• Blade Runner 2049: This intricate crime thriller’s story engine is ignited when Officer K finds evidence
that a Replicant has given birth to a child. This discovery has the potential to completely destroy the
tense peace between humans and Replicants, and multiple elements in the story’s dystopian world all
have their own interests to protect. In Blade Runner 2049’s case then, a ground-breaking discovery that
breaks the rules of its world inevitably sparks off a lot of interesting drama—not to mention Officer K’s
internal conflict about his own humanity.
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 • Suits: Though I really didn’t like the direction that the show eventually went in, I absolutely loved the
first series. The show’s feature-length pilot excellently starts off its story engine by taking time to
demonstrate the personalities of its two main protagonists: the young and naive Mike Ross, and his
driven boss Harvey Specter. The pilot episode’s drama pits Ross’s idealism against Specter’s pragmatic
realism, also opening up the fierce conflict between Specter and the cunning Louis Litt. Look to this
show’s opening for a brilliant example of how to start a powerful story engine.

That’s all for today’s lesson on creating a powerful story engine. Tomorrow, we’ll be taking a look at a method
of creating character trios, which can often bring better results than the traditional hero’s journey pattern. Hope
you like it!