Plot is how the events in the story directly impact the character.

Plot is made of three elements:

• Character emotional development (decide what the character's willing to give up to achieve his/her goal. This begins the character's emotional plot.)
• Dramatic action (the specific actions the character takes to realize his/her goal)
• Thematic significance (tie the character's private passion to a bigger, more transformative universal subject and a thematic plot is launched)

In great stories, the dramatic action transforms a character.

Plot planner: a visual line that represents the invisible energy of the universal story. It gives a visual accounting of all the scenes in the story. It helps compare scenes (tension-calm). It helps see the story as a whole and determine the causality between scenes and the overall coherence of the story. (Keep the p.p. simple).

Above the p.p. line: scenes with external dramatic action / below: passive scenes, backstories, sceneries, info-dumps

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Elements that can entice your reader sink deeper in the story:

• Characters with whom the reader identifies
• Conflict, tension and suspense that sustain exitement
• Just enough backstory to inform the particular scene
• Clarity about whom and what to cheer and mourn in the story
• Consistency in story pacing
• Strong sensory details
• Enticing foreshadowing 
• No author intrusion
• Turning points in the dramatic action and the characters' emotional arc

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Each scene has a plot structure of its own, and shows the character take a step towards a goal or desire. 

The scene's moment-by-moment action creates conflict and tension as shown through dialogue, facial expression, gestures, and every character's response.

• The scene ends with 
• Failure
• An unanswered question
• A cliffhanger
• A mishap that entices the audience deeper and deeper in the story.

On the other hand, a scene that shows the character achieving a short-term goal but fails to transition effectiverly to the next scene dissipates the story's energy.

Summary parts

In stories that take place over a long time or geographical span, one scene can't always smoothly move into the next. To avoid the story becoming episodic, you must make creative use of the summary in transitions. Also, a story made up only of scenes can inject too much conflict andd become exausting for the reader.

Summary helps move the story forwards quickly, so you cna concentrate on creating scenes that show the most important moments of your plot. Keep in mind, however, that a summary, no matter how well-written, ultimately distances the audience from the character and the immediacy of the story. 

Summary allows you to purge yourself of the story by keeping the intimate and sometimes painful details of your story at arm's length. To write in scenes, you'll have to relive it.

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A goal by itself does not create action that is dramatic.Obstacles to it do. Especially if the character stands to lose something significant.

Questions to help create a character's goals:

• What does he most desire?
• What does he most care about?
• What strongly motivares him?
• What keeps him going focused, committed when the act gets rough?
• What needs to be done, saved, protected, fixed, achieved, figured out, helped that only he can do?
• What's his plan to accomplish that?

A character's potential for growth reflects meaning. Meaning reflects truth.

The thematic significance of the story shows what all words in each scene adds up to.

At its best, thematic significance connects each individual reader and audience member to a moment of clarity about our shared relationship to a bigger picture through a wider complex of thoughts and relationships that exist outside the story.

You determine your own external goals while the Universal Story sets an invisible goal for you: to accept change. What goals will you put everything on the line for today?

Individual elements of the story's thematic significance statement can include:

• loss of family
• rejection
• abandonment
• loyalty
• responsibility
• brothers, husband and wife, father and son, mother and son

Communication at the thematic level is a complex composite of thematic systems. No matter how elusive, the deeper meaning of a story is rich and thick and holds magic. Writing a story challenges you to find what matters most to you.

The thematic significance reflects the story's own view about life and of how people should behave. Explore and develop the deeper meaning your story conveys about life or society and ultimately about human nature.

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Though it may be tempting to tell your readers about your strongly held beliefs, criticisms, and judgements, such thematic micro-focus can quickly turn into an infodump. 

Piling on large quantities of info creates a distance between you and the reader. Even when the info is thematically rich, unless presented elegantly and meaningfully through the character's actions, you'll alienate the reader. Rather than write the dramatic action of the journey the protagonist takes and his ultimate transformation, writers sometimes lecture and argue. When they do create dramatic action and reveal a glimmer of the character's emotional reaction through his actions, their own emotions twist him out of the here-and-now of the story.

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What separates good books from great books is the degree to which an author is able to voice something only she and her unique truth can tell. The deeper meaning of your story and your life fills you with energy to write and live a more fulfilled life. The thematic significance statement reflects the truth of your story. It's not necessarily a universal or eternal truth, but it's true for your story. 

Diving in the thematic significance - that's what the search for meaning looks like, diving in a cool, dark, mysterious pool of water.