Complications

Read Amos 4-6

Amos 5:19 " As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him."

When the story first begins, we show our character in a typical day, but solving a problem. That may not be the crux of the story we want to tell, but our first complication should derail our protagonist off into the story problem.

The plot consists of how the protagonist solves the problem and we keep twisting the plot with more complications. Sometimes the complication is directly a cause-effect sequence, but other times it’s not.

When we want to throw other complications into the story—for instance a relationship issue that doesn’t directly affect the story problem, we have to be careful. We want even those complications that seem unrelated to affect our protagonist’s ability to keep fighting until victorious.