What Is The End Goal In Your Story?

There are a lot of times we as agents find a piece of writing where we struggle a lot. The writing is fine. The dialogue is fine. The characters are fine. And yet, something is not right. In most of these cases, I find myself questions, "but what is the point?"

Each of your stories you write needs to have an end goal. What is that big take away from the story you want the readers to leave with. This goes a bit further than simply the theme of the story. This involves really asking yourself, as you plan your story and as you write your story, "what is the point of all of this?"

For a lot of writers, when I pose this question to them, they will often respond in one of two ways. The first is to spout of the theme of the story, "This is a coming of age story." OK. So what? I get that we watch the characters coming of age but so what? Why is this an important story to tell now? Why is your story the platform to tell this story, and in the end, what was your whole goal of writing the story?

The second response I will get is often defensive. "Can't a story just be there to entertain?" Sure, that is an author's intent, but again, the question has to be, what is the point of the story. What is it that you want us to walk away with? It is that big question of why?

Now, when we read a story like this, we can start to see trends in the writing. There is often a lot of repetition in scenes or ideas. It gets pretty darn episodic. The same goes for a constant repetition of the same techniques and devices the writer uses. For example, the writer might frequently return to a banter between two characters that worked really well for a single scene, or one every now and then, but too much, becomes repetitive. As I write this, I am thinking of that banter we saw in the TV show Moonlighting. Fun yes, but it was almost predictable in each episode.

If you are finding your story is just sort of sitting there, the reason might simply be the lack of an end goal for your story. You simply do not know the "Why" of your story. This might help a lot.