G enerally, I don’t read guest posts and I certainly don’t link to them, but I happened to see a guest post by Steven James on Brandilyn Collins’ blog titled Things Look Bad? Make Them Worse . You ought to read it when you get a chance. He talks about how many people think stories are a series of events, but they are not. He then makes the statement that “you do not have a story until something goes wrong,” and he talks about making things worse to increase the tension in the story. I’m sure those of you reading this blog already knew that, but it doesn’t hurt to repeat it. I do want to talk a little more about this concept of going wrong . We’ve talked before about Where a Story Should Begin , but when do things go wrong? I asserted in that article that we begin a story when the protagonist needs to change, but is unwilling to change. For our discussion here, the key phrase is needs to change . The fact that something needs to change tells us that something has already gone wrong. Le...