In every story your main character must undergo an inner journey as well as outer journey.

In the outer journey, real material events happen to your character. In the inner journey the character changes emotionally, reaching the end of the story as a fundamentally altered person.

The balance between the inner and the outer journey is up to the writer. A crude distinction is that commercial fiction emphasises outer journeys and literary books emphasise inner journeys. Great books describe an outer journey that keeps the reader turning the pages, and supply an inner journey which affords a lasting sense satisfaction.

When writing a story, most of your hard work should be accomplished in the first half. This is because the first half of the narrative (1) introduces the main character(s); (2) poses the dramatic question; (3) sets up the answer to that question.

All narrative is about asking a question (what if this happened?) and supplying an answer (then this would happen)…

Example: In Anna Karenina, the dramatic question is: What if a dissatisfied wife runs off with the man of her dreams in socially restrictive aristocratic 19th Russia? The answer is: Society would be more forgiving of the man; Anna’s social sphere would therefore become restricted to her relationship and that she would become less interesting to her lover. NB The answer has to become apparent by about half way through the narrative. If in AK the first 90 per cent was taken up with the two lovers being absolutely delighted with themselves we’d be wondering from half way through what was the point, and ultimately feel cheated when it all goes pear-shaped in the last chapter.

All story-telling is the art of asking questions that rouse the reader’s curiosity, and then giving answers that satisfy it.

The way we move the reader through the narrative page by page is by making the reader ask themselves a question, and by then answering that question, but NOT before the next question is raised.

EXAMPLE: We open with a knock on the door.
(Q1: Who is it?)
If your character, Mary, opens the door and finds Mr Smith from next door wanting her to move her car to let him out the driveway (A1) we have answered the question and therefore created a closed story, which we have to get going again in the next sentence.
If you answer the last question BEFORE asking the next question it will bring your story to a temporary halt.

(Children use SUDDENLY a lot is because they keep accidentally shutting down the flow of the story and having to kick-start it. EG "I was walking down the road" (why?) "on my way to school" (question answered! Full stop.) "SUDDENLY a purple monster leapt out at me."

So in our story, when Mary opens the door, then let it be a worried-looking stranger (Q2: Why is he worried?) who says: “I’ve just moved into the area (A1) and I was wondering if… er…” (Q3: What does he want?). And so on.

If any part of your narrative has a flat feel to it, either it is serving no purpose (in which case take it out) or you are proceeding like this:
QUESTION 1, ANSWER 1;
QUESTION 2, ANSWER 2 etc
Instead of proceeding Q1, Q2, A1, Q3, A2, Q4, A3 in an overlapping sequence! etc etc etc!!!