Most readers purchase novels by their favorite authors for the new and exciting plot. They want to follow their favorite policeman / CIA agent in their latest attempt to thwart the villain and save humanity. They marvel at the intricate twists and turns of the plot. In a mystery, the readers attempt to catch the clues that the author planted along the way. They want to be surprised at how the story concludes but also satisfaction in that they discovered the clues only to be revealed and explained at the end of the novel.

The conclusion of the novel must wrap up the mystery in a satisfying manner with the hero/heroine solving the mystery set forth at the beginning. In a thriller, it is the eternal question of will the protagonist discover the clues that help them unravel the villain’s dastardly plot to start WWIII or unleash a deadly virus?

However, most readers often confuse the two elements of Story and Plot. Plot is the surface events that happen. The car chase, how the villain plans to kidnap the children or wife of the hero, the hero is threatened with being fired for investigating a powerful politician. All plot elements add further layers of complications and danger to the protagonists.

However, the heart of the story is the protagonist or main character that is important element that drives and transpires to your character at end of story.

For example, In elementary school, children enjoy fairy tales because the children sympathize with the innocence of the main characters. In the Three Little Pigs. Will they wind up as the Wolf’s main meal or will they survive? Cinderella is sympathetic because she is the pretty sister in the family. She appears doomed to be a poor servant girl with a dismal future. Yet, yet at the end of the story, she winds up marrying the handsome prince and living happily ever after. Hansel and Gretel are sympathetic because they are innocent prisoners of the wicked witch. Thus readers root for the witch to be punished and get shoved into the furnace at the end of the story.

From middle school on to high school , the readers are drawn to fantasy and science fiction because it takes them out of their mundane world into a more interesting future. They don’t want to read about the perfect person. Harry Potter was a mega success because he started off the unwanted child of an abusive family and discovers his future as a wizard at Hogwarts. Most likely, if Harry had been perfect out of the gate, readers would have stopped reading the series after Book #1. In The Hunger Games, Katniss starts off as a poor girl in a poverty-stricken region of the country, she winds up over the course of the series of books to become the leader of the rebellion.

People would not be drawn to many novels in which you don’t root for the protagonist to succeed. The protagonist must have qualities that make them sympathetic to the reader. They face real life problems, hardships that the average reader can relate to such as family problems, troubled siblings or divorce.

Thus the essence of the story is the struggle of protagonist and how they overcame the issues and problems that they faced at the beginning of the novel. Story is how someone grapples with a problem and that they want to about how they struggle will it change in the process

The reader wants to feel this inner struggle. How do the characters react emotionally to the story events? Do they grow or retreat pressure of life events? Are they affected by the event happening to a secondary character?

For example, the popular Joe Pickett novels by C.J Box deals with a central mystery, but also traces the growth and personal issues of his wife and two daughters, often, they are intermingled with the storyline. Harlan Coben novels involve a family member who has died or vanished under mysterious circumstances. The other family member must unravel the mystery and unravel the truth behind the disappearance.

In one novel I read was called “ The Cabal”. The main character was simply called The Detective. He had no backstory that was apparent to the reader and was simply not a compelling read. It went back to my bookshelf after reading only a few chapters. The lack of a compelling main character sabotaged any interest the story might have generated in later chapters.

Thus Story is different and, in many ways, more important than the Plot.

Plot is the top of level of the story, but the essential story is the undercurrent of the flawed main character that grips the reader and makes them flip through the pages of the novel all the way to the end. They are searching for the protagonist to find the solution of the dilemma. In short, readers want to follow a compelling main character in the novel or it quickly is discarded for the next novel on your to read list.