Many writers do not pay a great deal of time to the art of storytelling in their novels. But it is the creation of the story that will really catch a publisher's eye, and make them request your manuscript to read. Your story has to be fascinating, so your characters can flourish and maintain readers' interest and involvement.

There are four major parts of good storytelling, and if you follow these steps, you can construct a strong story that will be irresistible to the industry experts.

Every single person in the world has a goal they want to achieve in life. At this moment, yours could be to become a respected and successful writer, and you are attempting to accomplish that objective by continually creating new material or learning new skills, and so on. But how boring would this goal be to a reader? This kind of goal wouldn't be exceptionally intriguing to watch somebody achieve, would it? But what if your character had an objective which causes him to put his life in the balance? What if circumstances made it impossible for them to accomplish their objective and then watch how they react? There ought to be a point in the story where it appears as if the character will never accomplish their objective, but then you watch them pull out all the stops. When everything looks hopeless, they emerge triumphantly.

A story can only be engaging if you have built substantial conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist. Conflict basically consists of inner and outer forces. The outer force can either be the villain, or relationship difficulties, or a natural disaster of sorts. Any person or object that is preventing your hero in succeeding in his efforts is an external force, and this must make the reader wish they could step into the story and fight alongside your hero.

The inner force is the most important of all. These can be any phobia, negative thoughts, or self-doubt the hero holds within themselves that will prevent them taking the necessary action to succeed. This is a battle within themselves, and once they can overcome this fear, they are able to walk free and fight to regain control of their battle with the bad guy.

Your story should always be moving forward, and be written around your main character's journey to reach their desired objective. You must decide which challenges they are going to have to face; which one would be their worse fear? What could they learn from overcoming this fear? You must start your story at a point in time where the character is at their most vulnerable. Have they just lost a loved one? Have they just lost a job? Their life seems to be in the gutter, and then you, as a writer, are going to push them even further by constantly challenging them. At the end of the story, you would have made the character much stronger and given them the opportunity to learn a life lesson.