Every story you write needs its “I Want” Song

I spent my time this week writing a story for Esquire that kept losing its pace.

It shouldn’t have. The story has drama.

A shark bites off the leg of an Hawaiian surfer and, after the attack, the guy can’t find meaning in life until a woman enters it, who happened to survive The Boston Marathon bombing.

That’s the story’s set up. (A lot occurred after they met.) I thought as a set up, the narrative should just proceed.

Only it wasn’t working that way. I could see it on the page. The story sucked.

It was all, This Happened, Then This Happened, Then This Happened, but there was no reason for the reader to consider, Well, What Happens Next?

My story was all external events, in other words. There was no internal conflict.

I realized my story needed its “I Want” song.

Last weekend, when my family was in town, we took the train to New York to see the musical Shucked. It’s about corn, and my family’s originally from Iowa, so we laughed. (Shucked will tour this fall and you’ll laugh, too, even if you weren’t raised on a farm.)

Early in Shucked, the female lead wants to leave Cob County for the big city while her fiancé, the male lead, wants her to stay. They each sing…