The Bark Bites Back at 2012-11-15 14:01:21:

From a Dramatica perspective, which I've found extremely valuable, is to take those two realms, internal and external, and quantify their potential outcomes via two criteria: outcome and judgement. Outcome is regarded as the values of success or failure imposed by the story/external goal. Is this accomplished or not? Internally, the journey the main character goes on is ultimately expressed by a judgement of good or bad. Does the main character end up a better, or worse, person because of his perspectives? The combination of these can produce any number of meanings from the story. For instance, the main character in Gone Baby Gone can have SUCCESS in reaching the story goal, but ultimately be personally worse off, resulting in a judgement of BAD. Likewise, a story's outcome may end FAILURE, but the main character sees growth and/or changes for the better as what happens in To Kill a Mockingbird. Tom Robinson ends up dead, but Scout becomes aware of her own prejudices against Boo Radley and is able to apply knowledge Atticus passed on to her, giving the story a sense of a bittersweet resolution. Probably most popular are the SUCCESS/GOOD stories as they show positive outcomes often happening as a result of change, whereas real downers tend to be FAILURE/BAD, resulting in tragedies. The key to knowing how your story ends is to understand the argument you're making. Because meaning is derived from the outcome, what you're essentially doing via writing is communicating your argument back and forth, proposing potential outcomes along the way - and once you get there, those choices you impose on your story, the SUCCESS/FAILURE and GOOD/BAD, are going to encompass the meaning your audience takes away from it. Knowing how it ends and how those components work in tandem to give your story, and your audience, meaning will help craft a more compelling argument throughout the spine of the story. More compelling = more conflict, both internally and externally.