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Once you’ve come up with a list of meaningful plot points that should happen in your story, the Acts structure (generally three, but could be strengthened by turning it into five) is a proven method to organize those plot points in a way that makes the story more cohesive, and usually building up in tension.

The following list of questions should help you craft compelling and impactful crises and disasters for your story, ensuring that the plot points have consequences.

• What’s the worst thing that could happen in your story?
• Is there a point in this story, just prior to the resolution, in which the hero endures some deeply significant test?
• How does the story bring the protagonist face to face with their darkest fear, or weakest link, and at the crisis point, forces them to confront it?
• Can you set up the story so that at one point, it leaves the protagonist with no options, no detours, and no help, making them well and truly lost?
• Do the characters consistently have to choose between goods or between evils instead of choosing between good and evil?
• Can you apply pressure and time constraints so that the protagonist is forced to make a decision fast?
• For every significant event in the story, brainstorm a list of consequences.
• Try to ensure that all major decisions in the story have real consequences. Our heroes make painful choices and must live with the grave consequences of the risks they take.
• Could you weave into the story an example of what would happen were the protagonist fail to accomplish the overall goal?
• What are the death elements of the story (in which the protagonist could face an ultimate physical, psychological, social, and/or professional death), and when does the protagonist experience those realizations?