The best stories are those that can be summed up in one sentence.

Which is to say, a solid story hinges upon its Situation.

The Situation is not the whole story but the essence of that story’s conflict, which will in turn shape the events of your plot.

Here is an example of a situation:

On a certain summer evening, a charismatic priest, no longer young but not yet old, who has devoted his entire life to God, watches the last particles of his faith dematerialize before his eyes, when a mysterious woman in the confession booth convinces him that God is a logical impossibility.

This situation comprises the essentials of a good story because it carries with it the essence of the conflict.

Conflicts come from characters in the face of adversity.

Conflict is at the heart of every good story because conflict is what will hold the reader’s interest.

A conflict means that there is a clash, which in turn means that there are obstacles to overcome. These two things are what hold the reader’s interest, but why specifically?

Because there is an uncertainty of outcome.

The uncertainty of outcome creates the desire to learn what happens, and this is what it means to hold the reader’s interest.

Holding the interest of the reader — or, in the case of movies, the viewer — is the total goal.

If, for example, you’re thirsty and you look in your refrigerator and find soda pop and orange juice, and both sound good but you will permit yourself only one, there is a certain conflict here which you must resolve: i.e. you must choose between those two things.

But obviously this isn’t the sort of conflict upon which a story can be built. Why?

Because the choices aren’t important enough to be of real interest.

To be of real interest, the conflict must be of a certain importance. It must have enough gravity and relevance to justify in the reader’s mind his or her reading about it.

Of course, not everyone regards the same things as important — and that’s one of several reasons there are genres: romance, western, history, mystery, horror, fantasy, and so on.

In all genres, though, the basic principle remains the same: there must be a clash of values (which is to say, a conflict), and this clash must be in some way or ways universally relevant. The best stories can for this reason be encapsulated in a single sentence: because the storyline orbits around one and only one worthy well-considered conflict.

That one sentence is called The Situation.