A good story is like a rollercoaster ride, with many twists and turns and unexpected detours. That’s why people love reading novels, because the content of the plot in a novel is far more eventful than the average person’s normal life! Although, it is true what they say that life is stranger than fiction, but only a small percentage of the population ever have these strange experiences.
Before you begin plotting, it is important to decide on a setting for the story. Choosing a period setting is important too, does your story take place in the present, past or future?
At every stage of the book you want to be developing your characters and moving the action in the story forward. The action should be moving quite constantly, even if it is just internal, introspective action, without much happening in the exterior world. But your character needs to be changing, needs to be going through struggles of some kind, and reaching epiphanies through some kind of internal struggle.
It’s important for the stake to be high in your plot in order to produce drama. The sky really is the limit here. Some examples how how you can really turn the heat up on your characters include:
- Have their family be kidnapped or put in harm’s way somehow.
Curiously, and somewhat perplexingly, a big main purpose of the plot is to tell us more about our characters which, as we saw in step 2, is a huge part of writing enjoyable fiction. People want to become very intimate with the characters, to learn about them, that’s why advancing the plot involves character development, it helps keep the reader interested in the story.
Begin by writing your story in long form without caring too much about writing it in dazzling prose. However, make sure everything you write is introducing action and advancing the plot. Level out any filler!
Next, you should decide on which major conflicts and twists and surprises you are going to structure into the plot.
- Are there any love stories or romantic conflicts?
- Conflicts with a character’s job?
- Inner conflict, dealing with inner demons.
The best way to start writing your plot is to begin with that initial one sentence premise statement from step 1. Here is my example to remind you:
“An ambitious and career driven person is offered the job of a lifetime, but their workaholism is causing tensions at home which threaten to undermine everything they’ve worked for.”
Now expand these one long sentence into 4 or 5 paragraphs where you briefly explain how the plot progresses. For now, we are trying very hard to stick to the core plot points, the important kernels of the plot, and really efficiently telling all the important bits of the story in summary.
You will also use outlines while you are plotting your novel.
The number one pitfall more new novelists experience is they don’t write a proper outline before they begin the first draft of their novel.
Elements you need to have in your Outline:
- Story arcs for your Protagonist and Antagonist.
- Tell all aspects of the full story arc: beginning setting of the scene, conflict, rising action/tension, Climax, falling action, and end.
Other elements that appear frequently in the plots of commercial fiction:
- A gripping first chapter: They hook in the reader to want to keep reading the book.
- First Act Twist: Usually happens mid way through Act 1, or in the 4th or 5th chapter. The first few chapters set us up to think one thing about the character, and then we find out that things aren’t what they seem.
- Inciting action: this is like the initial conflict. It is the thing that happens to the character that begins them on their journey. Like Gandalf coming to visit Frodo in the Lord of the Rings.
- Accepting the mission: usually the protagonist is reluctant to engage with the conflict or inciting action, but once they do accept their mission, this is when the rising action/tension begins.
- First disaster: In a movie this usually happens in the second act, and it is like a mini-climax before the real climax at the end of the story. Typically, this seems like the protagonist has suffered an irredeemable setback, but it is actually an opportunity for them to face their biggest challenge yet, and evolve into the final character they are at the end of the story.
- Main Climax: Every story must have one of these, it happens in the third act, it is essentially the end of the story, before the falling action begins which leads down to the conclusion.
- The twist: Happens in the third act right before the climax. For example, it turns out the antagonist is the protagonist’s long lost sibling.
Focus on writing out the story, don’t focus on the actual prose yet. Work on your outline a couple of times and revise it, go through 2 or 3 drafts of the outline, honing the story each time. Use the outline to add more dramatic tension into the plot, adding more twists and surprises that may not have originally appeared in your 4 or 5 paragraph summary. You should include around 80% of the full story in the outline.
Your outline will begin to become a collection of scenes which make up the story. So, once you have finished the final draft of your outline, you can begin writing short scene treatments for each part of the story outline.
Turning the outline into a collection of scenes is also another opportunity to add more dramatic tension into the plot and how the story is being told.