COG – Character-Obstacles-Goal

Many rules of writing are not helpful to the writer. (I’ve always hated “A story has a beginning, a middle, and an end.”) But one story rule I have often found genuinely helpful when I’m trying to invent a story, is this one:

“An appealing character struggles against incredible obstacles to achieve a worthwhile goal.”

I call it the COG rule. Character-Obstacles-Goal.

I’ve been wondering where this rule came from. People claim it’s an “old rule” – but writers are often careless when it comes to citing ideas about writing. If it’s old, it certainly doesn’t seem to have a long history in print, but there are many versions

Here’s a vanilla version:

“A sympathetic character overcomes obstacles to reach a worthwhile goal” ¹Connecticut Review, Volumes 5-6 (Board of Trustees for Connecticut State Colleges, 1971), 10

Sometimes the problems are ramped up:

“An attractive protagonist (hero or heroine) overcomes great adversity to achieve a worthwhile goal.”²Stephen M. Archer, ‎Cynthia M. Gendrich, ‎Woodrow B. Hood, Theatre: Its Art and Craft (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc, 2010), 93

Obstacles often become odds:

“An appealing character strives against great odds to attain a worthwhile goal”³Doris Ricker Marston, A Guide to Writing History (Michigan: Writer’s Digest, 1976), 176

And the odds can also be intensified:

“A likable character overcomes almost insuperable odds and by his or her own efforts achieves a worthwhile goal.”⁴Marion Zimmer Bradley, “What is a Short Story” accessed 28 August 2016, Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust, http://www.mzbworks.com/what.htm

Marion Zimmer Bradley’s version is particularly interesting. In her role as an editor of other people’s fiction, she’d obviously felt some frustration at the deluge of bad writing she had to deal with. Her addition of the words “by his or her own efforts” seems almost redundant – if a character is overcoming tremendous odds, it seems obvious that it should be by his or her own efforts, but even the writer who has gone to the trouble of creating a fascinating character, and given them a great goal and forbidding obstacles is still likely to throw the hero a magic helper or easy solution.

The fact that “by his or her own efforts” needs to be emphasized shows how powerfully the average author is pulled away from the very choices that will make the story a success. There’s an instinct to sabotage it, to lower the tension, and to make the story safer and duller.

We have an instinct to be entranced by stories, and we seem to have a matching instinct not to entrance others. Telling good stories is much harder that it should be.