The Foundation: The "Need" vs. The "Want"ArwenElysDayton, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Every story begins underground. Before a character ever speaks, there is a foundation of internal contradiction.
Think of a character's "Want" as the visible house above ground—the quest for the gold, the promotion, or the lover. But the "Need" is the foundation. It is the deep-seated psychological lack that the character isn't even aware of yet.
The Showing Style: Don't tell us the character is lonely. Show us a kitchen table with one placemat, a single plate, and the silence of a house where the clock ticks too loudly. That silence is the foundation. It supports the "load" of every desperate decision the character will make later.
The Pillars: Action and Consequence
In a building, pillars transfer the weight of the roof to the ground. In a story, Actions are the pillars.
Every time a character makes a choice, they are building a vertical support. If a character makes a choice in Chapter One, the "weight" of the consequences must rest on that choice in Chapter Ten.
The Stress Test: If your character achieves their goal without making a difficult choice, your pillar is made of straw.
The Structural Shift: A great story "shows" the character being compressed by their choices until they either strengthen or shatter.
The Joists: The "Causality" of Scenes
A "line" of a story is just a sequence: This happened, then that happened, then that happened. A "load-bearing system" is a chain of causality: This happened, therefore that happened, which forced this to happen.
The joists are the logical connectors. If a character loses their job in Scene A, that loss must be the joist that supports the tension of their bankruptcy in Scene M. Without the joist, the bankruptcy feels like a "random event," and the reader’s trust in your world-building begins to sag.
The Load: Escalating Stakes
Tension is the weight you place on the structure. A writer must constantly add "bricks" to the roof.
Internal Load: Guilt, secrets, and cognitive dissonance.
External Load: Antagonists, environment, and ticking clocks.
As the load increases, you must "show" the structure groaning. Show the character’s sleep deprivation, their fraying relationships, and their trembling hands. If the stakes are high but the character looks perfectly fine, the reader knows the "load" is fake—it’s just painted cardboard.
The Shear Force: The Impossible Choice
In engineering, shear force occurs when two parts of a structure are pushed in opposite directions. In fiction, this is the moral dilemma.
This is the most powerful load-bearing element in a writer’s toolkit. It’s when a character’s "Loyalty to Family" is pushed one way, and their "Desire for Justice" is pushed the other. The "showing" happens in the friction between these two forces. We see the character's hesitation, their sweat, and the slow, agonizing process of their old identity breaking apart to make room for a new one.
The Completion: Structural Integrity
The end of a story is the moment the last stone is placed. If the system is sound, the reader feels a sense of inevitability. They realize that even though they didn't see the ending coming, the "building" could not have stood any other way.
The story wasn't a line they walked; it was a space they lived in. When they close the book, the structure remains in their mind because it was built on the universal laws of human consequence and emotional gravity.
Use the following checklist to test the strength of your current scenes.
1. The Foundation Test: The "So What?" Drill
Every scene must rest on the soil of what has come before. If you can move a scene from Chapter Five to Chapter Two without changing a single word of the plot, that scene is "floating." It has no foundation.
The Check: Does the character enter this scene with a specific "load" (consequence) from the previous scene?
The Showing: Look for the "residue" of the past. If a character was just in a heated argument, they shouldn't just be "sitting" in the next scene; they should be gripping their coffee mug until their knuckles turn white, their mind still echoing with the previous scene’s dialogue.
2. The Pillar Test: The Agency Check
In a load-bearing system, the protagonist is a vertical support, not a piece of wallpaper.
The Check: Is the character making a choice, or is the plot happening to them?
The Stress Test: If you removed the protagonist from the scene, would the outcome remain the same? If yes, your pillar is a hollow decorative column.
The Showing: Watch the character’s hands. Do they reach for the phone? Do they turn the key? Agency is shown through the physicality of decision-making.
3. The Joist Test: The "Therefore" Connector
Joists prevent the floors from collapsing into one another. They are the logical links of causality.
The Check: Replace the word "and then" with "therefore" between your scenes.
Weak: He lost his job and then he went to a bar. (Linear/Thin)
Strong: He lost his job; therefore, he went to a bar to spend his last twenty dollars on a drink he couldn't afford. (Load-bearing/Heavy)
The Showing: Show the "linkage." If a character loses their job, show them counting the coins in their palm before they order the drink. The coins are the "joist" connecting their failure to their next mistake.
4. The Shear Force Test: The Moral Stress
A story without conflict is a building without gravity. The most resilient scenes involve "shear"—two opposing forces pulling at the character's soul.
The Check: Identify the two "internal walls" pressing against the character. Is it Safety vs. Truth? Loyalty vs. Ambition?
The Showing: Don't tell us they are conflicted. Show the micro-expressions of the struggle. Show the character beginning to type a truthful email, then hovering over the "Delete" key, their breathing shallow. That hovering finger is where the "shear force" of the story is most visible.
5. The Dead Weight Audit
In architecture, dead weight is the weight of the structure itself (the bricks, the roof). In fiction, dead weight is the "filler"—excessive description, redundant dialogue, and "travel time."
The Check: Read a paragraph. If you remove it, does the emotional or logical "load" of the scene decrease? If the answer is no, it’s dead weight.
The Showing: Instead of describing the entire room, choose one load-bearing detail. A cracked mirror says more about a character's fractured self-image than a three-page description of their Victorian wallpaper.
The Final Inspector's Report
| Structural Element | Indicator of Strength | Red Flag (Weakness) |
| Foundation | Scene is a direct result of prior choices. | Scene feels "random" or "isolated." |
| Pillars | Character takes a risk or makes a sacrifice. | Character is a passive observer. |
| Joists | Logic flows through "Because/Therefore." | Events feel like a "Then/Next" list. |
| Load | Tension increases with every page. | The character feels "safe" or "comfortable." |
