Your story structure might be perfect on paper, but if it still feels flat, you’re missing the engine that makes it all work: your protagonist’s goal. Not just what they want—but what they don’t want to do to get it.

In this article, I’m breaking down the deceptively simple framework that captures this tension and becomes the driving force of every great story.

The Missing Engine Behind Your Story Structure

You’ve built your story so carefully. You’ve mapped out the story structure and you’ve been checking off every one of the six elements, from the inciting incident to the resolution.

But something’s not quite right. The turning point isn’t packing the punch it needs. Conflict happens, but it doesn’t seem to matter in the way you know it should. Each element of story seems to be doing its job on paper, but in practice, it feels weirdly disconnected and flat.

Here’s the thing: the six elements of story don’t work without an engine to drive them.

In order to make the turning point rock your protagonist’s world, the crisis a devastating all is lost, and the climax a cathartic payoff, you must understand what your protagonist is really trying to achieve. And that’s trickier than it sounds.

Most writers think the goal is simple: the character wants X. Save the world. Get the girl. Solve the crime.

But that’s only half the equation.

The other half—the part that gives your story its meaning and power—is what your protagonist doesn’t want to do to get X. What they’re trying to avoid. What would feel like failure even if they technically achieved their goal.

And in this article, I’m breaking down both sides of that equation. I’m sharing the framework that captures this tension and becomes the engine of every great story. It’s deceptively simple—and yet it will bring every piece together and bring your story to life.

The Story Can’t Turn Without a Goal

In our series of articles on the six elements of story, my favorite story structure framework, we’ve covered the inciting incident and progressive complications (and progressive complications again). Which means the next logical step is the turning point.

I was super prepared to put the turning point under the microscope for this article. I spent a month gathering my ideas and running them by Kim and Brannan, my editor colleagues. I had all the pieces—the things I look for, and the traps writers fall in, and examples. And then I sat down to write that article.

And within three sentences, I realized, we can’t talk about turning points yet. Something huge is missing:

The goal.

In order to understand the turning point, first, we have to understand the protagonist’s goal. Because the turning point is the event that makes it clear the protagonist cannot accomplish their goal in the way they wanted to achieve it. Which means we literally can’t have a conversation about turning points without talking about the goal.

And as you’ve probably guessed based on every other article in this series, I have a lot to say about goals.

So I set the turning point article aside. (We’ll come back to it, I promise.) And I set out instead to share the way I think about goals in a story.

The Goal Drives the Story

The goal is the engine that drives the protagonist through the story. It’s the conflict at the heart of the story’s purpose and meaning. It’s the glue that ties all the elements of story together.

It is essential.

Incredibly, it is also easily distilled into a simple and hyper-useful framework. This framework was codified by Shawn Coyne and Story Grid, and I absolutely love it.

So get ready for a deep dive into the goal. We’ll cover:

• A super-simple framework for a character’s goal
• A breakdown of each part of that framework
• The way this framework captures the meaning of a story by weaving the internal and external arcs together
• A bunch of examples so you can see how it works
• And a sneak preview of how the goal glues all six elements together

Goal = Want X Without Y

Let’s kick it off with the framework. Here it is:

A character wants X without Y.

That’s it. A character wants X without Y.

Told you it was wonderfully simple. Feel free to reading right here if you feel like you get it.

Want more? Let’s break it down.

What Does “Want X” Mean?

This is the thing the character is trying to get or achieve. It’s a specific, literal, external thing the character wants.

Every content genre has a stock goal that a character in that type of story is always pursuing.

In an action story, where the core need is survival, the protagonist wants to save a victim from a villain.

In a crime story, where the core need is safety, the protagonist wants to uncover the truth.

In a love story, where the core need is connection, the protagonist wants to fall in love or gain a relationship.

If those feel generic, that’s because they are. They are the broad categories that stories fall within, and there are many, many ways to create nuanced variations of those goals. The goal of a specific character in a specific story will be a narrower, more specific version of those stock goals.

Examples of “Want X”

Let’s look at some examples:

Pride and Prejudice is a love story. Elizabeth Bennet wants to marry for love.

Ender’s Game is a war story. Ender wants to protect himself at first, and ultimately all of humanity.

Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption is a prison break crime story. Andy Dufresne wants to get out of prison.

How to Train Your Dragon is a status story and an action story. Hiccup wants to gain the approval of his tribe.

Red, White, and Royal Blue is another love story. Alex, the son of the United States President, wants to date Henry, the prince of England.

Specific, External, Concrete Wants

Marry for love. Save the world. Get out of prison. Gain approval and respect. Get the boy.

All of these are specific, concrete goals. They can be externally measured—is Andy in prison, or out of prison? Does Hiccup’s community ridicule him or honor him? Is Ender alive, or are he and all of humanity obliterated?

And all of these goals align with the content genre of their story. Elizabeth Bennet doesn’t want to save the world; she’s in a love story. Andy doesn’t have an opportunity to get a girl; he’s in a prison break crime story. Ender doesn’t have time to solve a crime; he’s in a war story.

To be fair, Hiccup wants to gain respect, keep his community safe, and get the girl. That’s because he’s in an internal status story and an external action story with a love story subplot.

But one of those genres must be the primary genre, because three things is too many things to measure at once. And so we can distill all of that down to the thing Hiccup wants most: to gain the approval of his community.

So that’s the “want X” side: there is a specific, literal, external thing that the character wants to get or achieve.

What Does “Without Y” Mean?

What about the “without Y” side?

Well, the character doesn’t just want to get X at any cost. They want to get X in a specific way, under specific circumstances. There are things they don’t want to do, and it would feel absolutely horrible if they had to do them to get X. If they did Y, they might still feel like they failed, even if doing Y allowed them to gain X.

So the “without Y” side is the thing that the character does not want on the way to achieving X.

2 Categories of “Without Y”

I think of this in two categories:

The first category is avoid. The character wants to avoid doing something. There is something they do not want to do, an action they do not want to take.

The second category is preserve. There is something the character wants to maintain, an existing state that they want to keep. They like something about the way things are right now, and they do not want to break it.

Avoid and preserve are two sides of the same coin. The way characters preserve an existing state is by avoiding taking an action that would disrupt that state.

But I mention those two categories because they give you some flexibility around how you phrase Y in the “without Y” framework.

The character wants X without taking an action. Or they want X without disrupting an existing state.

Examples of “Without Y”

Let’s look at our example stories and see what our intrepid protagonists do not want:

Elizabeth Bennet wants to marry for love without changing her judgment of people. That’s an avoid—an action she does not want to take.

Ender wants to save himself and ultimately humankind without hurting his enemy. That’s another avoid.

Andy Dufresne wants to get the freedom he justly deserves without breaking the law to get it. This is phrased as an avoid—an action he doesn’t want to do.

But I think it’s actually easier to see Andy’s goal from the perspective of preserve. If you walked up to him and asked him what he wants, he wouldn’t tell you he wants to not break the law. He’d tell you he wants to get the justice he deserves WITHIN the law. He wants to preserve an existing external state—his innocence of the crime he was convicted of—and an existing internal belief—that the justice system provides justice.

Hiccup wants to gain the approval of his tribe without killing a dragon. This is another avoid.

Alex wants to date Henry without outing either of them or their relationship to the world. This is a preserve—he wants to maintain their safety within the closet.

Specific, External, Concrete Things to Avoid

So that’s the “without Y”: Y is a specific, literal, external action the character does not want to take or existing state they don’t want to disrupt.

They do want to get X, and they want to get X very, very badly. But just as badly as they want X, they do not want Y. Y might be too high a price to pay.

Stories Pit X Against Y

Can you see where this is going? The entire story will force the character to pit X against Y.

Sure, the character wants X without Y. But what if X is impossible without Y? What if Y is inevitable?

What will the character do when their goal is impossible to achieve in the way they wanted to achieve it?

The Goal Ties the Internal and External Together

Let’s add one more layer. Thus far, I’ve emphasized how both X and Y are specific, literal, external things. They aren’t feelings or thought experiments; they are actual, literal, tangible things.

But where this gets really rich and powerful, where it carries the meaning and purpose at the heart of the story, is the way it ties the internal and the external stories together.

The reason why characters want X without Y is because they believe that X without Y is possible to get.

They believe there’s a way to thread that needle, to have their cake and eat it too. They’re not out here dreaming impossible, irrational dreams just for the heck of it. They’re grounded in realism, in everything they have ever learned and seen and experienced, and based on all of that, they truly believe that X without Y is possible.

Pitting X against Y challenges not only their external circumstances, but their internal beliefs about themselves and the world.

Example of Internal and External Together

Take Andy Dufresne again. Andy wants to get his just freedom from prison without breaking the law. That’s because he genuinely believes that the justice system metes out justice. He believes that if he could simply present the true facts before a judge and jury, they would see the truth and act justly in accordance with it.

For as long as he believes that, he will not attempt to break out of prison. Because breaking out of prison would put him on the wrong side of a just system. If the system is just, it would be irrational to commit a crime to gain his freedom. In that case, the system that would have freed him would instead reincarcerate him, and this time he would deserve it.

In order for Andy to finally choose to do X with Y—to gain his freedom by breaking the law—he must first realize that his belief was wrong, that the system is not just and he can never gain freedom through it. That is an internal revelation that makes his external action possible.

And so that without Y side is a tangible, literal, external thing. But more than that, it represents Andy’s internal worldview, which will be tested throughout the story. In order for Andy to gain his freedom, he must first realize the truth about the justice system imprisoning him.

“Get X Without Y” Is the Heart of the Story

I point this out because I want you to see that the “without Y” side of the equation isn’t random. It’s not about some mild discomfort or annoyance or inconvenience. It’s about the core challenge that the character is being tested in throughout the story.

Elizabeth Bennet doesn’t want to marry for love without eating mediocre boiled potatoes, for instance. She wants to marry for love without having to confront her own proclivity to biased prejudices, snap judgements, and incorrect assumptions about people.

Elizabeth’s story is about what happens when we meet a person worthy of our deepest love and yet our judgments and pride prevent us from recognizing them.

Ender doesn’t want to save humanity without embarrassing himself by losing a battle at Battle School. He wants to protect himself and everyone and everything he cares about without hurting his enemy—because deep down, he cares about his enemy as deeply as he cares about himself, and destroying his enemy feels like destroying himself.

Ender’s story is about what it costs to protect ourselves and the people we care about, and how much we’re willing to destroy to guarantee our safety.

“Get X without Y” is the literal, physical pursuit that externalizes the essential, internal conflict of the character. The goal summarizes the heart of the story: the core conflict, the essence of what it’s all about.

A story asks whether it is fundamentally possible to get X without Y, and what a character is willing or able to do if it’s not. The goal is central to everything—without it, there is no story.

The Goal Glues All 6 Elements Together

And so that brings us to the goal as glue: the binding agent that ties all six elements of story together. I’ll dig deeper into this in each element’s individual breakdown. But here’s a crash introduction to the whole structure so you can see how the goal fits in:

The inciting incident kicks off the character’s goal. This is the catalyzing event that establishes the desire for X, the thing they want, and the constraint of Y, the thing they don’t want. The inciting incident sets the character in motion in pursuit of the goal.

The progressive complications are the space where the character attempts all the ways to get X without Y. Sometimes, they get the character really close to achieving X without Y, and sometimes, they take the character far away from X and call into question whether it’s even possible to achieve X without Y.

The turning point is the event that makes it inescapably clear that it is impossible to get X without Y. Which sends the character into . . .

The crisis. This is the central question at the heart of the story, a binary choice. When the truth is revealed and the chips are down, will the character:

Choose to do Y in order to gain X?

Or choose to sacrifice X in order to avoid Y?

The climax is the moment when the character takes action on their crisis decision. They do Y to gain X, or they sacrifice X to avoid Y.

And the resolution is what the world looks like afterwards. It’s the result of their decision—what they have gained and what they have lost now that they have taken action.

So that is why the goal is so essential. That’s why this framework is so powerful.

It is the engine that drives the entire story. It’s the glue that holds every element together. And it’s the core purpose and meaning the story is truly about.

We cannot use the six elements of story effectively without it.

Go Spot Goals in the Wild

And so I invite you to play a game. It’s called “What’s the goal?”

Think of your favorite stories and try to spot the protagonist’s goal. What’s X, the thing they want? What’s Y, the thing they don’t want?

When you put them together in the “get X without Y” framework, does that describe the conflict at the heart of the story?

This is great practice to start seeing goals out in the wild, in the stories you know and love, so you can then find them in your story. Plus, I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a really fun game.

So there you have it—your crash course on goals.

Congratulations. You’re ready for the turning point now.

Until next time, happy editing!