Story Genius

Lisa Cron

84 annotations • Nov 2023 – Jul 2024 • data

Chapter 1

Story is about what happens internally, not externally.
But making a habit of writing scenes out of order tends to result in scenes that may indeed be beautifully written, but that can't pull their narrative weight, not to mention threaten to lay waste to your novel's internal logic. This is especially true if you're writing speculative or historical fiction, in which you have to keep track of not only the external rules of the world, but also your protagonist's all-too-human logic (even if your protagonist is the last unicorn, a fuzzy footed hobbit, or I, Robot).
Leap into it with reckless abandon, and revel in the messiness of it!

Chapter 2

Context is what bestows meaning and defines what matters, what doesn't, and why. Think of it as the yardstick that readers use to gauge the significance of everything that happens.
After all, a rose is never just a rose. It's a sign of love from the cute guy next door—which makes it a wonder to behold. It's a wilted last-minute gift from your husband on your tenth anniversary—which makes it a major disappointment. It's what you were supposed to bring your girlfriend, but forgot, so it's the reason she broke up with you—which makes it a thorny reminder of your flaws
What do all these examples have in common? The rose got its meaning based on things that happened in the past, before it was presented (or not) to the recipient. The past determines the present. And when you pants, there is no past. Without the past to provide context, that rose is just a plain old pretty flower, and who cares about that? In a novel, the past—the things that happened before it began—are what provide context.
It's no surprise that Dante began The Divine Comedy with Midway in our life's journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke up to find myself alone in a dark wood. With that in mind, into the woods we go…

Front

Every novel begins in medias res, a Latin term meaning "in the middle of the thing." As Horace pointed out three millennia ago in Ars Poetica, it's far better to begin in the middle of things rather than ab ovo—a fancy way of saying "from the egg." He was praising the work of Homer's The Iliad when he said, "Nor does he begin the Trojan War from the egg; but always he hurries into action, and snatches the listener into the middle of things…"3
As Joan Didion so famously said, "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see, and what it means. What I want and what I fear."
Here's the (very reassuring) skinny: at the beginning, just about every story starts with a cliché. A cliché is simply something that's so familiar that it feels old hat. It's the story's job to make it, um, new hat. As Samuel Johnson so aptly pointed out, "The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, and familiar things new."
Cognitive psychologist and novelist Keith Oatley, who's a tad more familiar with the digital world than Wincelberg was, defines fiction as "a simulation that runs on the software of our minds. And it is a particularly useful simulation because negotiating the social world effectively is extremely tricky, requiring us to weigh up myriad interacting instances of cause and effect."
JFK said it best. When asked how he became a war hero, he grinned and replied, "It was involuntary. They sank my boat."

Chapter 3

Surprise instantly commands our attention precisely because it defies our expectations. Once engaged, we're wired to immediately start figuring out what's actually going on, the better to gauge whether we're about to get whacked or kissed. This "sit up and take notice" response to surprise is a survival mechanism; without it, we'd blithely ignore every warning sign ever thrown at us, because we'd have no idea that anything out of the ordinary was going on.
Instead, surprise knocks us out of our dependable routine and forces us to consider as yet unexplored realities: You know you parked your car in front of your house, but it's not there now. You expect your significant other to be home by six, and now it's midnight. You were sure your dog was housebroken…uh-oh. The unexpected is surprising because it (1) challenges what we thought was going to happen and (2) puts a have-to-deal-with-it-now crimp in our well-laid plans
A broken pattern forces you to reconsider something that, up to that moment, you tacitly assumed you could count on. That's how the brain rolls. We have what scientists call an "avidity for patterns." That's why from birth on we're constantly scanning the terrain for reliable patterns. If I cry real loud, that nice lady will feed me. Got it! Patterns translate what would otherwise seem terrifyingly random and chaotic into a reassuringly reliable order we can make sense of. Think: If this, then that. It doesn't mean we necessarily like the pattern we see, mind you; it just means we know how to safely navigate it, which might explain why we tend to stick with the devil we know.
Because so what if Freddy discovers a castle or Martha finds a big box on her desk or Jane finds a message in a bottle? Unless we know why these things would matter to Freddy, Martha, or Jane, they're just a bunch of unusual things that happen, even if they do break a well-known external pattern. Not only don't they suggest an actual story, they don't suggest anything at all, other than the reaction: Wow, that's weird!
Even at the tender age of eight, we know when we've dug ourselves into a narrative hole so deep that the only way out is to do what the writers of the TV series Dallas did when they realized that an entire year's worth of episodes were just a bunch of things that happened: declare it a dream and move on.
Here are three writing prompts that sure do sound like the What Ifs those kids were struggling with. They were culled from one of the nation's most popular creative writing sites. They've been paraphrased for space, but the gist remains the same: • What if a wizard's terror bolt lances overhead? And so, dagger held high and ice shard at the ready, you tear toward the dastardly spell caster, and…? • What if you're awakened at midnight by your dog barking wildly and you look out the window, only to see a face staring right back at you? • What if a fortune teller at the local county fair tells you two things: something good that will happen, and something awful that will happen?
The trouble with these What Ifs is that although something odd and externally dramatic happens in each one, an unexpected problem alone cannot drive a story
By itself, it becomes nothing more than an in-the-moment external problem that, at most, demands a bit of surface derring-do to solve. This is because, inevitably, the plot will focus solely on the strange event, rather than the effect said event might have on a specific person. They are just—say it with me—a series of big, eventful, unusual things that happen. And that, my friends, is how we end up with novels that go nowhere.
What's your point? It's easy for writers of all ages to lose sight of one very simple, grounding truth: all stories make a point, beginning on page one. Which means that as a writer you need to know what that point is, long before you get to page one.
Especially since the point your story will make is what allows you to pinpoint the one thing all those surface What Ifs are missing: the source of your protagonist's internal conflict.
For instance: • Friends stick together when times are tough. • Believe in yourself even when others don't. • Think about how others will feel before you act.
All by themselves each of these very simple points suggests a potent internal story problem. To wit: • A group of friends will face a tough problem sure to challenge their loyalty to each other, ultimately teaching them the hard-won benefits of sticking together (or not). Think Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. • A character will want to tackle something tough that she's never done before, and when everyone tries to convince her that she can't do it, instead of giving up, she'll muster the inner courage to give it her all (or not). Think Mulan. • A character will really, really want to do something that, okay, might hurt someone else, and will have to struggle with whether to do it (or not). Think Indecent Proposal.
Each of these points gives us a glimpse of the hard internal choice that those big, externally dramatic What Ifs will force the protagonist to confront. Here's the key: 1. The point is what is borne out in the protagonist's inner struggle. 2. The What If centers on the external plot that will trigger that struggle, ultimately making the point.
For instance, let's say your point is: holding a grudge can have tragic unforeseen consequences. Here's a What If created to make that point with a vengeance (and yes, it's culled from a very famous tale of woe): What if two teenagers fell madly in love, only to discover that their parents are mortal enemies? (Romeo and Juliet.)
What's so great about this What If? The surprise that it's built around ("Your last name is what? Uh oh!") is personal, and guaranteed to shatter those starry-eyed teens' dreams, leading to inescapable conflict as they struggle to avoid an impending consequence that matters to them more than anything else in the world (including, apparently, life itself). The key element is this: the inherent, unavoidable external conflict implied in that What If (their parents' long-standing feud) is going to trigger inherent, unavoidable internal conflict (their intense desire to be together, despite their family loyalty). You can instantly envision scads of potential escalating action based on that one ongoing problem.
Ironically, that is exactly what people are interested in. Why? Because those common, everyday things like love, loyalty, and trust are things we all experience, and we're always looking for new insights that might help us navigate our everyday lives in a new and fresh way.
"What if a woman who was afraid of commitment realizes—too late—the error of her ways?"
"What if a woman who has spent her whole life hedging her bets against love (of people, of things, of dogs) is forced by grief into a relationship with a dog that proves to her—too late—the error of her ways?"
"What if a woman who's spent her whole life believing she's successfully hedged her bets against love (of people, of things, of dogs) is on the verge of losing everything—the one person she's felt close to, her lifelong career, and her grasp on reality? Mad with grief, she has one chance to set things right, but first she must convince those around her that she's not suicidal. So she devises a scheme to steal a dog for an hour or two, believing that 'getting' a dog will reassure the people in her life (who are dog lovers) that she's back on the path to emotional stability. But when she can't get rid of the dog, she's forced to confront the fact that the very thing she spent her life avoiding—connection—is what makes the inevitable grief of loss endurable."

Chapter 4

Our survival depends on making sense of the particular chaos we call home—not in the general "objective" sense we hear so much about, but in the much more practical, subjective, how-will-this-affect-me-personally sense.
Thus the evolutionary job of story is to funnel said chaos through one very grounding filter: the specific effect that chaos has on the protagonist, who becomes our avatar. The events by themselves mean nothing; it's what those events mean to someone that has us compulsively turning pages
Without a main character, the reader has no skin in the game, and everything remains utterly neutral and surprisingly hard to follow. While we might know what is happening, we have no idea why it matters or what the point is. Because the point doesn't stem from the events; rather, it stems from the struggle they trigger within the protagonist as she tries to figure out what the heck to do about the problem she's facing. That invisible, internal struggle is the third rail we've been talking about—it not only connects the novel's surface events to the protagonist's internal progress, giving those events meaning, but it's also what ultimately lets you know what those surface events will be (read: the plot).
That's why the question isn't what will happen to your protagonist now. It's, Who is she, really, just before it happens? Because your novel is going to change her. The question is, change her from what?
The point is, your protagonist doesn't start from "neutral." He starts from a very particular place, with very particular, deeply held beliefs that your novel is going to force him to call into question. So in order to figure out what those beliefs are, what that quest is, and how his expectations will, in fact, be upended, you have to know where he was before the quest began, when he had no idea what you have in store for him.
I knew I needed a woman who was going to have a bunch of things ripped away from her, so first I had to give her those things—a successful job, a deeply intimate relationship with a man she had refused to marry or even live with, a comfortable home she had lived in for a long time. And she had to be sort of smug about everything, so I kept thinking about a job that had an element of public success—not just money, but status and accolades, that kind of thing. I tried really hard not to make her a writer, because I'm a writer and I always write about writers—so I thought about making her the developer of an app or the founder of a super cool chain of coffee shops. But I kept coming back to a writer who has a writing partner (whom she is also in love with, regardless of what she's willing to admit to herself), and together they enjoy some massive success. I considered making them screenwriters on the cusp of a big film premiere, but the writing part of a film is finished long before the movie comes out, which is how I started thinking about a TV or web-based show, where the writing and the presentation of the show can be much closer together. (Which means much more room for things to go wrong.) I thought of my writing duo like Penn and Teller—the magic team. One is really loud and the other doesn't speak. I decided to make my protagonist the "quiet partner" who is not on social media and doesn't talk much during interviews, and so is constantly having to deal with accusations that she doesn't pull her weight, but she is, in fact, the one who does the heavy lifting. She's the one who puts all the words on the page. She's the driving force. (And I can imagine that her partner might have begun to resent that.) So my protagonist thrives on the life she and this guy have built together—they write together every day, they are known as a pair, they are seen everywhere together, they are lovers—but they never moved in together, never married. They came close once, at his urging, but she couldn't go through with it because she's actually terrified of the price you pay if you let people get too close to you. She secretly prides herself on the fact that she has this great relationship without—she thinks—having to risk heartbreak and without ever feeling foolish, vulnerable, or out of control.
Notice how this portrait didn't start with what happens in the What If, but rather just before it? There is no heartbreak or grief yet. Instead, it's about the things that matter most to this woman—the things that will lead to and then cause her heartbreak and grief. The sketch reflects who this person is just before trouble strikes, when, as far as she's concerned, life will probably go on like this forever, which is a good thing because she knows how to navigate it with dexterity. We know what this woman's job is and what her relationship with this man is like, at least in general.

Chapter 5

The essence of drama is that man cannot walk away from the consequences of his own deeds. —HAROLD HAYES
Look at it this way: your protagonist is not like an actor who's hired to play a role in a plot that's already been devised; rather, she's about to walk into the next day of her life, which she believes will go according to plan—her plan, the one based on all that past experience. But it won't. Your job as a storyteller is to make sure her expectations are not met, since that's what we're wired to come to story for: insight on how to handle the unexpected. Because that's when things get really interesting. So even if the exact thing your protagonist expects to happen does indeed occur, you'd better make sure it feels very different than she thought it would—and causes unintended problems that she never once anticipated.
That's why first we'll get more specific about your protagonist's initial agenda—what she enters the novel already wanting, and what specific misbelief holds her back. Then we'll tackle the most important question of all: why she wants what she wants, and why that damn misbelief has such a strong hold on her in the first place.
The comedian Louis C.K. neatly makes this point in a scene from his short-lived HBO series Lucky Louie, in which the main character's five-year-old daughter innocently asks him why they can't go outside and play, to which he replies, "Because it's five a.m. and it's dark outside." Should be end of story, right? Instead, with an impish grin, she asks "Why?" to every answer he gives. This takes him from the factually objective "what" (because the sun isn't up), to the sheepish personal admission (I don't know why the sun rises), to the specific why (I don't know why the sun rises, because I didn't pay attention in school; because I was high all the time; because I thought my life would come together on its own), until finally, exasperated, he blurts out what all this subjective experience has taught him: "Because we're alone in the universe."
So at the risk of being obvious, let me say that all protagonists stand on the threshold of the novel they're about to be flung into with two things about to burn a hole in their pocket: 1. A deep-seated desire—something they've wanted for a very long time. 2. A defining misbelief that stands in the way of achieving that desire. This is where the fear that's holding them back comes from.
The goal here is to go from the universal to the specific. The universal is "I want to be happy"; the specific is, "Here's exactly what would make me happy. I think." Point being, whether or not he's right about what would make him happy, your goal is to concretize his desire, so you can see it—it's real, external, and clear-cut. Meaning, he can take specific action to specifically achieve it.
If you're writing speculative fiction, fantasy, or historical fiction, that means creating the rules of the world in which the action takes place, and solidifying not only what is and isn't possible, but why. When you do, it's comforting to remember that the one thing that remains constant is the human element—the emotional, psychological reality that underlies everything. That doesn't change.
Why does she want it? This underlying why—the reason she wants what she wants—is a big part of what instantly snags the reader's brain. Because, just as in life, we're incredibly curious about what things mean to other people beneath what they're willing to show us on the surface.
The simplest story in the documentary is that of Mark Pierpont, who's gay. Mark grew up in a fundamentalist Christian enclave. Everyone was kind, and he felt very loved. Even so, as a child he sensed that he was different from the others, but he couldn't quite figure out why. He was more sensitive and spent a lot of time with his mom, who nurtured him and never made him feel out of place. But then one day when he was eleven or twelve, a kid at school said to him: "God hates faggots!" And he wondered, What's a faggot? So he did what his mom always told him to do: he looked it up in the dictionary. And he thought, God hates bundles of sticks? That's weird. But then he found out what the kid really meant, and his world crumbled. What mattered to him most was God's love. And so from that moment on his misbelief—if he's gay, God will hate him—drove every action he took. He married, he had children, he counseled other gay men to marry (women). It's easy to imagine, to feel, the intense inner conflict that this constantly put him through, even when on the surface his life appeared picture book perfect.
Only by knowing your protagonist's defining misbelief can you craft a story that will test it to the max, opening his eyes along the way (or, depending on the point you're making, tragically not). Which is why you must know what that misbelief is before you begin writing, even though it will take some time for your protagonist to realize that it is a misbelief, let alone that it's what has been preventing him from getting what he wants. Especially since misbeliefs aren't always something that everyone but the protagonist can see is wrong.
Try defining your protagonist's misbelief. As concisely as you can, write down what she wants, and what the fear is that's keeping her from achieving it. One question to ask yourself as you work this out is, Given her misbelief, what does she think the very worst thing that could happen would be?

Chapter 6

So in order to create your novel's command center, we'll first define what worldview and point of view actually mean (contrary to popular belief). We'll then explore where our worldview comes from, brainwise; how it develops; and why our analysis of everything is by definition subjective. Finally, we'll zoom in and begin to create your protagonist's internal filter, generating potent elements of the external plot in the process.
The very specific worldview you're going to unearth is the lens through which your protagonist will see and evaluate everything in your novel. It's her story-specific subjective point of view, which neatly delivers us at the doorstep of the second misconception we need to overturn.
Make no mistake, the lens through which your protagonist sees everything is never neutral, but always encoded with inside info—beliefs—that help her interpret everything she sees, and therefore what she does as a result.
Day by day, from birth on, as we interact with our immediate surroundings, our hungry brain swills down useful info that it interprets as the way of the world. But here's the game changer: what we're learning isn't "objective," so that everyone comes away with the exact same interpretation of what things mean. Rather, it's all learned subjectively, based on personal experience, so everyone has a different interpretation of the same "objective" thing. Point being: Meaning is always subjective, so even when on the surface we agree on what things mean, it's often for vastly different reasons (or, just as likely, one of us is wary of saying what we really think).
But what does that mean exactly? Let's try an exercise Bergen himself suggests. I'm about to give you two words, and when I do, I want you to close your eyes and form a full picture of the first thing that comes to mind—is it day? night? inside? outside? Okay, here are the words: barking dog. When I've done this exercise in writing workshops I've gotten answers as varied as these: • I saw the huge pit bull with the sharp yellow teeth who lunged at me when I was coming home from school in my gingham pinafore when I was six. • I saw my old basset hound, Fred, who always barked his head off and did a clumsy little happy dance when I came home from work. Oh, how I miss that dog. • I saw my neighbor's Jack Russell terrier, who barks all damn night. I haven't slept in weeks, I'm behind at work, I keep fighting with my wife…oops, did I say that out loud?
And notice that it's not just the image we see that's different; it's also how that image makes us feel, what we do in response, and how it's impacted our life, not to mention our belief system. If you were attacked by a dog when you were little, you may have religiously avoided dogs, and dog lovers, ever since.
Completely abstract terms like love, loyalty, hate, or trust are even more fuzzy, because they're completely, totally conceptual. Each of us is going to have a different interpretation of what they mean, different images, different rules of engagement, different beliefs, and different conclusions. These concepts—which writers are often encouraged to offer up as their theme—are only general categories, placeholders. By themselves, they're a big, empty "yeah, and so, what's your point?" Because the story, as I'm very fond of saying, is in the specifics. And the specific always comes back to your protagonist. The question isn't what does loyalty mean in general, but what does it mean to her? What is she loyal to? Why? What does it cost her? To figure that out, first we have to answer the question: what does "specific" really mean?
These are the same questions you'll ask yourself when writing—or envisioning—any scene. They are • What does my protagonist go into the scene believing? • Why does she believe it? • What is my protagonist's goal in the scene? • What does my protagonist expect will happen in this scene?
For instance, if her old belief is that you can always count on your parents to be there for you, it might be the time when she was sick, and her dad stayed home from work, made her chicken soup, and read to her all day. What you're looking for is the specific memory she'll instantly summon up when the misbelief smacks her in the face, and she thinks, wait, that can't possibly be true, because….
Without a goal, we'd slip into stasis, and hey, even stasis has a goal: to keep things exactly as they are, forever. Which, let's face it, takes work.
Regardless of what we humans want to happen, we go into every situation with a clear set of expectations of what we think will happen. How else could we gauge the meaning of what does happen?
Kid logic can be more sophisticated than adult logic, because it isn't yet hampered by social custom or euphemisms, nor jaded by world-weary familiarity. Kids see and unabashedly question everything precisely because everything is new and unfamiliar. Kid logic is more raw, and so often far more honest than the adult version. It goes just as deep, if not deeper.
Why This Scene Works: • Did you notice that we instantly start with something that surprises Ruby—how quiet death is? This lets us know immediately that this scene is about expectations that will be broken. • Did you notice that Ruby looks straight to the past to make sense of the present by accessing a very specific, very revealing memory—the bit about spaghetti night? A memory that also gives us a very clear picture of Beth's home life, not "in general" but in a vivid snapshot that reveals more about their family dynamic than a general explanation would. You can feel it because you are there. • Did you notice that Ruby compared her own family life to Beth's, providing us with a telling glimpse of the world Ruby lives in, giving us insight into her parents, and letting us know that she has an older sister? • Did you notice that the memory Ruby has lets us know why she believes what she does about the love she sees in Beth's family? • Did you notice that two layers of expectations are broken here? We begin with the expectation Ruby had that was broken when Mr. Anderson died—that he would read her play. And, as the scene unfolds, we watch a much more profound inner expectation bite the dust: that the love this family felt would keep them strong, rather than do them in. • Did you notice that Ruby had a very explicit goal in this scene: to try to put things back the way they were, so that Beth would be her normal self? • Did you notice that in the end, when Ruby's expectations were not met, her worldview shifted, and she was left feeling glad she would never have what she'd longed for: a closeness like what she'd seen in Beth's family?

Chapter 7

Once we want something, the fact that life says "uh-uh" doesn't snuff out that desire as if it had never been. In fact, it often stokes it. When it comes to your protagonist, over time his desire for the thing he wants might have done a bit of shape shifting; he might have even convinced himself that it's the last thing he'd ever want. Pony? Who needs a stinking pony! He's wrong, of course. Because if that were so, there wouldn't be any internal conflict to stir up, and you wouldn't have a story.
The same is true of his misbelief. You know the fabulous scene you wrote in the last chapter capturing the moment, buried deep in your protagonist's past, when his misbelief kicked in? Well, like his desire, that moment wasn't buried like a rock or an old shoe. It was buried like a seed—one that immediately took root and has been snaking through his life ever since, actively guiding his action, keeping him from getting what he really wants. In the process that misbelief has grown, twisted, and borne fruit.
Because by focusing on how what's happening is affecting your protagonist internally—what she's thinking, how she makes sense of it, and what then spurs her action—you're mastering one of the most elusive, least-taught facets of storytelling. Ironically, it's also the most important facet—the one that will actually capture your reader's brain. Literally.
Remember when we said that a savvy writer relentlessly asks why? Well, the answer to why something happened always takes us back to its underlying cause. In other words, as you are writing specific scenes in your novel, you're continually searching for the real reason your protagonist did what she did, rather than what it looks like on the surface. In real life, all is never as it seems, which is why a story's goal is to uncover what it actually is. That is to say, stories reveal the unsuspected cause behind the effect. And so just as life is ordered by cause and effect, so are your scenes, and so is your entire blueprint. That's why from here on out, cause and effect must underlie everything you envision.
However, two things remain reassuringly true: 1. There is always a reason for everything—not in the "higher power" preordained sense, but in Newton's humble, simple, hard-and-fast first law of thermodynamics: you can't get something from nothing. In other words, there is always a cause. Always an answer to why? 2. We turn to stories to find out the real reason, the actual cause of why something happened, and why someone did what they did. I can't say it too often: Stories are not just entertainment. Stories are the tool we use to navigate life—from your coworker's anecdote about his weird roommate to every article, blog post, and tweet your eyes land on—we plumb stories for information about the people and the world around us. Stories give us inside info into how "if" causes "then." As in if you're not giving your reader a clear, plausible cause-and-effect progression, illuminated by the why behind it, then you're not giving them a story they can follow or care about.
As no less a literary light than Trey Parker, cocreator of South Park, so astutely pointed out when he crashed an astonished and delighted NYU screenwriting class: if your scenes are linked simply by the words "and then," you have something pretty boring; what should follow every beat is either "therefore" or "but."
"So you come up with an idea and it's like 'this happens…and then, this happens.' No, no, no! It should be 'this happens…and therefore, this happens.' [or] 'this happens…but this happens.' "2 In other words, stories build based on the causal relationship between what just happened, and what's about to happen as a result.
Remember, like your protagonist, Ruby always has two goals: to find deep human connection (now, specifically, with Henry) and to remain true to her misbelief (that such a connection is too dangerous, and only for fools). Chances are in a scene like this, Ruby's desire would momentarily override her misbelief, causing it to go underground for a bit—gone but not forgotten.
Did you notice that her decision scared her? Fear sits right there next to longing.

Chapter 8

That's how stories begin. The protagonist thinks everything is on course—and then, bam! Life says, "Think again." That is the function of plot. Something happens that forces your protagonist's hand, leaving her no choice but to take action. And that, as it turns out, is a very good thing. Which is precisely the beauty of problems we can't avoid: they force us to make the changes we've always wanted to but—okay, let's be totally honest here—were too chicken to try.
If life doesn't pummel your protagonist hard, he can't figure out what's fair and what isn't, let alone muster the courage, moxie, heart, and smarts to survive in a world that can be so darn unfair. In other words, not only won't he have anything to teach us, but he won't be a worthy teacher. So fasten your seatbelt, as the fabulous Margo Channing said in All About Eve; you're in for a bumpy night.
That is why, as your novel begins, your protagonist has most likely spent a good bit of time downplaying, postponing, and often willfully ignoring the urge to change. In other words, he's rationalizing—sometimes consciously, but more often than not, as far as he's concerned, he's simply making strategic sense of the world, and acting accordingly.
While that tendency can get us through some very stormy nights, and we often make thirst-quenching lemonade from all those lemons, there are times when pretending things are fine when they're not is actually the very thing that does us in. Why? Because we get so used to things not being fine, that we forget what fine is, and so what we once recognized as a problem no longer seems like a problem at all. That's not good, because not only does it remain a problem, but it's now free to poke around, unobserved, and uninhibited. Thus it gathers force just beneath the surface, until at long last it erupts, blowing all our rationalizations to kingdom come.
Can the problem build? The problem that kicks into gear on page one must have the stamina to play through your entire novel, sparking the third rail and picking up speed as it thunders forward. That's a tall order, and why you can't pick just any old external problem.
To be very clear, this does not mean that something massive has to be happening on page one. The question isn't whether your problem is big enough—a tidal wave, an earthquake, a hurtling meteor—but whether your problem has the power to grow, intensify, and complicate. Legendary movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn is said to have advised: "What we want is a story that starts with an earthquake and builds to a climax." In other words, even if it starts big, the real question is, can it sustain growing momentum? That's why what's happening in your opening scene can't be something that merely dashes your protagonist's expectations today, and why we are working on the overarching problem first.
Not any old problem will do. And certainly not one that's easily solvable—although on page one it might seem like a cakewalk to your protagonist. In fact, it probably will. In reality, however, that problem must be the tip of an iceberg your protagonist has mistaken for a couple of ice cubes. Or, with apologies to Robert Frost, for those who favor fire, it's not about being able to put out a slew of small fires, one after the other—rather, it's about trying to put out one small fire that turns out to be far more potent than it first appeared.
So sure, a novel can start with a small fire. Novels often do. But here's the thing: a story is about how, in trying to put out a seemingly minor blaze, the protagonist inadvertently fans the flames, until by the end, it's a raging inferno.
Is there a real-world, specific, impending consequence that this escalating problem will give my protagonist no choice but to face? There must be something clear and definite that will occur if the protagonist fails or, worse, doesn't take action. It can't be vague, conceptual, or iffy.
Is there a clear-cut deadline, a ticking clock counting down to that consequence?
"Okay," Jennie said, "so what if the novel opens with Henry on his deathbed in the hospital, his time short—say, a week at most?" Nope, not there yet. Because as Jennie quickly realized, regardless how painful the consequences when Henry dies, there's nothing specific hanging in the balance, no quest, no problem that his impending death forces Ruby to solve. The only clear consequence from beginning to end would be that Ruby will be very, very sad. She doesn't have to do anything at all. She doesn't have to act. A key rule of thumb is this: if at any point your protagonist can simply decide to give up without suffering great personal cost due to her inaction, you do not have a story. In this scenario, Ruby has that choice, so it's a no-go.
Remember, your plot problem must have the power to ruthlessly spur your protagonist to change, or (figuratively at the very least) die trying.

Chapter 0

As T. S. Eliot said, "The end of our exploring will be to arrive at where we started and know the place for the first time." So it's no surprise that at the end of the novel your protagonist will return, either literally or figuratively, to the place where she started, but now she'll see things very differently.