Why Stories Need Frameworks
How do you write a good story?
If you’d rather watch then read click here: Why Stories Need Frameworks Video … Otherwise read on!
It has to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. I don’t know about you, but when I’m watching or reading a story, I rarely notice where the middle is. The best I do is wiggle my mouse to see how much of it is left, then shrug and carry on.
Your characters have to be interesting, so they say. But what’s “interesting?” I’m fascinated by pruning my plants for hours, yet my wife would rather peel paint off the wall than join me. In the same way, I’ve loved certain movie characters who got zero admiration from anyone else , so maybe “interesting” is subjective. Or maybe everyone else is just wrong.
Then we have goals. Characters apparently need them. So… money? Everyone wants money, right? That’s a goal. But is it compelling? Sure, money is great.
And the most delightfully vague part: theme. The bedrock. The moral. The grand philosophical statement. If only we could figure out the theme of our own lives by writing a story. But we can’t, because life is a teeming zoo of half-baked ideas and weird mistakes. Meanwhile, a story’s theme is supposed to be a single shining concept. Good luck condensing your existential dread into a tagline.
Then there’s the almighty conflict. Every writing handbook from here to the Moon says you need it. (mockingly) Do we really need it? The character’s already interesting, right? They have a goal; they have a theme. Can’t they just skip merrily toward the horizon?
What are the stakes? Medium well. next question.
If you’re like me, the very idea of planning it all out feels so mechanical. A story is felt. A good story just… is. Right? Well, it isn’t. Especially not if you’re writing it.
You see, if you’ve ever written a story for money — and then done it a few more times, you quickly realize a story never just “is.” My first few paid gigs were magic: I had the muse basically hijacking my brain and squirting brilliance onto the page. I naively thought, “Yes! This will continue forever, I’m unstoppable!” Then by my seventh client, I was taking multiple doses of caffeine every hour, cursing the blinking cursor, and piecing together random ideas to meet deadlines. My mystical story-creating cloud was morphing into a clunky factory line of “Okay, gotta churn out something halfway decent.” It was story manufacturing. Because that’s what it felt like: an industrial process, not a spiritual process like I thought it would be.
Get Be the Caravan’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
It starts turning into a job. A process. A 9-to-5, except you’re sometimes up at 3 a.m. googling “fastest ways to plot a murder mystery with dragons.” Or, if you’re extra brave, you type something like, “ChatGPT, write a story about a tomato that murders fruit.” And ChatGPT does it in .03 seconds. You stare at it, half in awe, half in horror, because you realize it’s not even that bad, just generically okay.
And that’s when it hits you: “We need some guidelines, or none of this will mean a damn thing.”
Because a story isn’t just felt while being written; it’s engineered to have an emotional and intellectual impact. Does that sound like cheating? Like you’re gaming the system by carefully constructing every piece? Maybe. But so is everything else we call “art.” Humans are messy, contradictory creatures, and half of what we do is manipulate each other’s emotions to prove a point. Why not own it and do it well?
When you express what you believe, when you express your art, you want it to land. You want someone to walk away inspired, heartbroken, giggling, or all three at once. You NEED that framework:
- Know your beginning, middle, and end, so the audience doesn’t bail before you say something meaningful.
- Give us interesting characters so we have a reason to stick around.
- Give those characters compelling goals, so the story builds up to actual change. Either they get what they want, or they tragically fail, but something shifts.
- Weave in a theme that resonates, so you’re not just rolling dice on random events.
- Introduce conflict because tension is the wire that hums through every decent plot.
- Raise the stakes so we actually care about the outcome.
That’s where it all leads. We want transformation for the characters and, hopefully, a little metamorphosis in ourselves. You don’t just want to “write a story.” You want to create an experience that hijacks hearts and plants ideas in skulls, like a gentle parasite of wonder.
In the end, that’s what every writer craves: the moment someone closes your book, or hits stop on your video, and goes, “Damn. That was worth my time.” If you can manage that, you’ve done your job. Because a good story doesn’t just exist in your head or on a page, it burrows into the audience’s mind, sets up camp, and occasionally rearranges the furniture.
And if that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.
