012 | The (Not-So) Secret Story Formula

I pull back the curtain on the essential building block of every great story. I share a candid look at his own beginnings as a writer—blank page, big dreams, and no prior experience. Sound familiar? You’re in good company!

🗝️ 5 Keys You’ll Learn in This Episode

1. The Universal Story Formula: I reveal the foundational code that powers every story, from short fiction to epic sagas (04:56).
2. Try/Fail Cycles: Why your characters need to stumble before they soar, and how this cycle is the heartbeat of compelling stories (05:26).
3. How to Get “Unstuck:” The back-to-basics trick even veteran authors (30 novels in!) use when a chapter or scene feels impossible (05:57).
4. Comedy or Tragedy: The simple decision that sets the tone for your story’s ending (05:11).
5. A Christian Approach: How our faith tradition shapes the way we write stories—with hope and redemption at the core (12:02).

📖 Fun Fact

Did you know I wrote my first novel during National Novel Writing Month, with zero storytelling experience—and a crisis of faith as inspiration? Talk about diving in headfirst!

🔔 Outtro

Storytelling isn’t easy, but it’s something we get to do together. Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve written stacks of stories, there’s always room to get back to the basics (and maybe discover something new about yourself along the way).

🚀 Call to Action

Ready for more? Dive into the episode and then swing by the Gospel Wise Author Fellowship! It’s a free community packed with articles, coaching, and tools to help your writing journey flourish (13:39).

👉 Join the Fellowship & get all the episode resources!

Let’s write stories that last—see you inside!

Hey Creative Christian Jeremy Bauma here and welcome to Christian Author 2.0, the podcast for modern stewards of the written word with insights for your gospel wise author journey. For two decades I've watched authors struggle with their creative calling. That's why I built the gospelwise Author ecosystem to provide the practical training and high tech tools you need to thrive from deep dive insights to specialized apps and personalized coaching. I'm here to help you turn your manuscript into a movement.

So stop guessing and start growing your reach with excellence. Let's dive into today's episode and master the path together.

Hey Christian Creative Jeremy here with another author 2.0 insight that I hope will inspire you to tell stories but also give you some insight into how to tell them. I want to give a few of these insights for the next few few days, over the next few weeks, focusing in on the craft side of writing and particularly storytelling. I told or wrote, I should say my first story about 11 to 12 years ago. It was a full length novel, kind of a novelization of my own spiritual journey and I sat down for what is called National Novel writing month, this 30 day challenge to write a 50,000 word novel from beginning to end. Only problem is, I had never written a story in my life. I don't even think I really told the story in my life until that moment when I sat down to the blank page and was staring down the barrel of a yet to be written story and I didn't really know what I was doing. I had read some books on storytelling and had sought some advice from some storytelling friends, but all I had was this idea for a story that would sort of take a character through some of the similar highs and lows of a period of my own young adult life where I had this crisis of faith and this super heated spiritual development of my own spiritual journey and walk with Christ. My goal, my desire was to use and leverage those sort of insights, but those experiences that I had in my own personal life put them into a story that somebody else could read and maybe relate to in order to inspire their own journey and give some insight into the kinds of questions that people nowadays are asking.

So that was my heart, that was my goal, but I, I didn't know what I was doing.

And so I sat down and started writing. And I wish that I would have known what I know now, which, you know, 30 novels later, 50 short stories later, I'm going to know a lot more than I did at the front end. But there's one insight into storytelling that I wish I would have known back then that I'd like to share here in this Author 2.0 insight video. And that is this sort of, I guess you could say, formula for telling a story. Whether it's a short story or a long, big novel length story. This is the formula, the foundational code, if you will, that will help you tell a story and that every story follows. Here it is the insight, the secret sauce. All right, if you yourself have been dabbling with a story in your head and have interest of telling a story but aren't quite sure how to get it started, how to frame it, or if you have been telling stories and need to just have that reminder to.

To get back to the basics, especially when you're stuck and when you have to get into that storytelling mode and get your character from beginning to end sometimes getting back to the basics. The football, you know, in that sort of illustration of the coach who's like, this is a football players, when they need that, you know, back to the basics moment, the coach brings them back to what is basic to the game. And here's what's basic to telling a story. Here it is. A character in a setting with a problem who tries and fails to resolve that problem and in the end resolves it with success or failure. And if it's successful, it's a comedy. If it ends in failure, it's called a tragedy.

That's it.

That's the basics. That's the secret sauce, the formula, if you will, for a story. A character in a setting with a problem who tries and fails to solve the problem and resolves it with either success or failure. For me, often even 30 again, 30 novels, 50 short stories later, a few novellas in the mix there even I need to come back to that basic. When I start a story or I'm in the middle of a story, I have to remind myself, all right, here's what it means to tell a story. This is the basic. And I need to get back to that basic. When I'm stuck, even oftentimes in a chapter, when I start a chapter, it's very similar formula.

You have a character, you put him in a setting with a problem he has to overcome, and he tries to overcome it and either fails or succeeds. And that really actually just cycles through every chapter as well as throughout the whole overarching story arc. Think of it this way. Memorable story. All right, here it is. A young hobbit is gifted a magical ring of power and he must destroy it to save the Shire. Bare bones story of the Lord of the Rings. Right.

But that's basically it.

And the whole movie and really the whole series from book one or movement one through the final movement, the Return of the King, is that young hobbit Bilbo or Frodo Baggins, trying to and failing and trying some more to destroy the Ring of Power in order to save the Shire. And then he has a team around him cycle through those same try fail cycles, only to end in success or end in failure. And a lot of those characters either fail when they die or are brought over to sort of the dark side, if you will, or they succeed and they end at the, you know, the party at the end where they celebrate this reunion and the success of, of saving the Shire from the forces of darkness and evil. That's the story. That's the secret sauce. In one of my own stories, my first action adventure thriller, religious conspiracy story, the Order of Thaddeus's Holy Shroud, book one, my character, Silas Gray, was on the verge of proving the resurrection of Jesus Christ to be true. But standing in the way are the church's enemies come from the shadows to destroy evidence of the resurrection of Jesus. And so here is Silas put into the setting as a professor, going to this professorial academic powwow to give a speech to give his evidence to show that Jesus actually did rise from the dead.

And some things happen. And from that point he has to try and fail and try and fail some more to prove that Jesus rose from the dead and to succeed at his original mission while also preserving the evidence for the resurrection of Christ. And every story that I write in this series, every series follows this simple sort of basic formula. This is the foundational code to every story. A character in a setting with a problem who has to try and fail to solve that problem, and in the end resolves it with success or failure. And that try fail is actually a cycle that your character or characters, if they're a team, roll through throughout the story. If it's a short story, that try-fail cycle is usually a singular cycle in which the character tries and usually fails, but then in the end succeeds at his mission to resolve the crisis, the problem. If it's a novel, those try-fail cycles are multiple.

So you're going to run your character through a multiple series of try-fail cycle to the end the climax, in which they confront the villain, the wicked antagonistic force, and are called to that final precipice of resolving the original problem again, either with success or in failure. And I say resolve because it's not necessarily a solution to the problem, as it is a resolution to the problem, because it can. It can resolve in either a good or bad sort of way. Most modern stories are they kind of skirt the edge of the the good guys winning or the good overcoming evil. Nowadays, in the past, you know, the 1990s, or not the 90s, the 1900s, which is like the heyday of storytelling from the pulp era to the paperbacks to the golden era of the 90s, 80s, 90s into the early 2000s, the typical resolution was a very positive happy outcome. The good guys won. Good triumphs over evil. Whether it's a fantasy, sci fi, action adventure, romance has a very predictable structure in which the reader expects them to fall happily in love at the end.

And if you mess with that structure, then you're going to make a whole lot of romance readers very mad. But nowadays, many of the stories that are told often end with sort of a darker failing ending rather than a positive, successful ending. But as Christian creatives, as Christian writers, how do you think those should resolve themselves? I don't know. I think that our story, the Christian story, finds the ending to be a successful ending, don't we? The Book of Revelation. Jesus Christ returns to defeat his enemies, to finally make all things new and bring about an ultimate final redemption for his people and for the world. I wonder if we should maybe follow that same storyline in our own stories, in our confrontation of the fallout from rebellion, offering rescue leading to a final recreation and an ultimate eternal happily ever after. That's something I should think about. Maybe I'll address that in the next insight video.

Until then, I think that as Christians, we should contemplate how we incorporate this formula into our own storytelling. How does it look as Christian writers to cycle through this storytelling formula? A character in a setting with a problem who has to try often fails before bringing about that final resolution, either succeeding or failing. So there you go. A simple, basic sort of formula, foundational code you can use in telling your first story, perhaps, or getting back to the basics in your own storytelling journey.

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