What is Your Story’s Engine?

Last updated on January 18th, 2025 at 01:02 pm

Understanding your story’s engine is essential to creating a good story. I recently wrote about writer intent and why it’s so important to crafting your story. One of the things I talked about in that blog post was your story’s engine. So, I thought I’d go more into depth about what I mean by “engine” and why it matters.

Understanding your story’s engine

“Engine” is a term I learned from one of my grad school professors. I’ve heard it referred to by many names, but engine is what made the most sense in my brain, so it’s what I’ve stuck to. It’s basically what you’re trying to say with your story or the questions you’re attempting to explore. Basically, what’s the point of your story?

The reason we call it the engine is because it’s the thing driving your story – it’s the system that makes the story work. I know writers who have said before that the only reason they’re writing the story is because they want to. It’s in their head, and they want to put it on paper. But something about the story is interesting to them, and that thing is the story’s engine.

Now, your engine doesn’t need to be intensely complicated. In fact, for a short story, it probably shouldn’t be. You also don’t need to have all the answers. It’s perfectly acceptable to put forth questions in your story that you don’t answer. But it does need to be interesting enough to help you shape the story and convince you to keep writing through multiple drafts.

Why does your story need an engine?

Without an engine, it’s impossible to shape a story into something functioning and compelling to your readers. Without a point, a reason for existing, your story is going to feel aimless because it is. Your reader might finish it and say, “What was the point of all that? Why did I spend my time reading it?”

More than that, if your story doesn’t have an engine, then how are you supposed to know what’s important to the story? How are you supposed to know if this scene needs to stay in or should be cut because it doesn’t serve the story? Going back to writer intent, if you’re not intentionally shaping your story, your reader can feel it. They’ll wonder if you know where you’re going and what you’re doing.

How do you find your story’s engine?

I want to reiterate that your engine doesn’t need to be complicated and also add that its best place is probably in revision. In fact, the best place to find your engine is in your first draft. If you don’t know what you’re writing yet, that’s completely okay. You can figure it out as you write or even after you review your draft.

Once you’ve written your first draft, you can go through and pull out threads. What are you interested in throughout the story? Are those things present enough? What are some things that the story is doing that maybe you didn’t expect? If you know exactly what you want to write and what you’re interested in, you can work on it in revision. If you’re not sure, you can always ask someone experienced to read it!

I recently wrote something for my MFA program, and after reading, my professor came back and said, “It seems like you’re really interested in female relationships and the impact they have on our lives.” And I hadn’t thought about it that way, but reconsidering my work, she was right. I was spending a lot of word count on my protagonist’s mother, mother-in-law, and best friend from college. I was clearly developing something about how our relationships with women affect and change us. That was my engine – that was the question I was exploring, and I didn’t even know it yet.

A writing exercise

So, now that we’ve got a general sense of what an engine is, take one of your stories and look at it closely. What’s the engine? What are you most interested in? What threads or questions can you pull out?

Once you feel like you have a solid grip on your story’s engine, go further. Does everything serve it? Do you have any scenes that feel pointless when you keep your engine in mind? Do you need a new scene to really push your point home? We don’t want to beat a dead horse, but we do want to make sure the questions we’re asking are pointed and present.

If it’s helpful, come up with a new engine and think about how you can craft a story around it. What characters would be impacted by these questions you’re interested in? How could they explore them?

It may seem like tricky and even unnecessary work to figure out your engine, but it really is crucial to creating a story worth reading.

Have questions? Drop them below! Looking for some more guidance on your work? Reach out to me!