McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Help planning the plot

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spikespiegel82:
Okay, so though I've never posted on this part of the forum before, I have looked here from time to time.  Anyway, I'm trying to get back into writing after taking a very long hiatus.  I feel the need to write, but I'm finally acknowledging one of my key weaknesses as a creative writer.  I can't seem to plan my story worth beans.  I've never been able to plan the in between of a plot and actually structure it very well.  I read on here that a good way to go about planning a story is to start at the end and work backwards.  That worked well for a bit, I thought of how I'd like to end the story and somewhat what to do in the climax, but I can't figure out where to go from there.  What I mean is, I can think of how to begin it somewhat, and I think of where I ultimately want the story to go, but I can't for the life of me figure out how my character got from point A to point Z.  I tried going back just one step and hit a brick wall again.  I'm really trying to work through this so I can actually get out of the planning stages and actually write the thing.  Can any of you more experienced writers give me any tips?

belial.1980:
I recommend checking out Jim's writing blog if you haven't already. He offers some great advice.

Also check out this guy's website:
http://johndbrown.com/

John Brown's an up and coming author and I've actually corresponded a few times with him via email. He's really nice and offered some great advice. I'll sum up the most import thing I learned from him. Broken down in its simplest form a story starts off with a problem. A big gnarly problem that the character wants to solve. If it's something that the character can solve easily in one fell swoop then it's not a good problem and not worth writing about.

So your story needs to focus on a problem that puts a lot at stake for your main character.

If you're having problems getting your character from point A to point Z, consider mapping out the stoyline with an outline of the scenes you want to include. I've found it helpful to break down scenes something like this:

Scenes start with a problem that the character wants to solve. The problem can be summed up in a yes/no question. The answer is always "Yes, but..." or "No. Futhermore..."

IE "Will the hero kill the monster that lives in the cave?"

One possibility: Yes, but he got bitten by the monster and now he has 3 days to find an antidote or he'll turn into a monster.

Another possibilty: No the hero fails to slay the monster. Futhermore, in attempting to do so woke up a dozen of its brothers and now they're all going to swarm across the countryside raising chaos. Uh oh.

After the scene comes the sequel. The sequel generally doesn't involve conflict but it gives the characters time to react to what's happened, allows the readers to follow the character's train of thought, and allows you, as the writer, to point your protagonist in the right direction.

So let's say the hero goes to the tavern to drink and mill over his problem. "Okay, the monsters are going to raid the countryside. I'll hire a mercenary crew to help me. But where will I get the money?" The character overhears some people complaining about how the crooked mayor raised taxes for the fourth time this year. Chatting with the other patrons leads the character to find out that the mayor has been lining his own pockets with this money. He decides that his conscious will allow him to rob the mayor to get the money to hire this mercenary crew to slay the monsters.

This sets up your next scene. Will the hero succeed in getting the money to hire this mercenary crew to hunt down these slobbering monsters that're running amuck? Let's go with the "yes, but…" clause. Yes, but the mayor finds out and is pissed and has put a bounty on his head.
So, in addition to having to worry about these monsters running amuck, the character has to watch his back because hired assassins will be after him.

And you can keep building from there, constantly giving the character more problems to try and solve as he gradually plods his way along to the big showdown at the climax.

Okay I'm painting with broad strokes here, and these examples are cheesy but what I'm  getting at is that you want to do your best as a writer to keep your characters in hot water. Conflict is what excites a reader. Problems cause conflict. So as your character goes off to solve this major problem that is the crux of the story he or she should encounter trials and tribulations that you can build scenes around. You can use these scenes and sequels as building blocks to get to this big climax that you've got planned.

Scene = problem in the form of a question, always answered as "yes, but…" or "no, furthermore…"
Sequel = reaction and goal for the next scene.

Now, keep in mind there is no scientific formula to writing. But I think you'll find this conflict cycle to be a useful tool, especially if you're not sure where to take the story. Just remember that whenever you're stuck, just think of ways to make things harder or more perilous for your protagonists.

I hope this was helpful. Good luck!

spikespiegel82:
Thanks a bunch.  I did read Jim's comments about the middle of course a while back.  That website was also great.  I'm just having trouble with even outlining the story at this point.  I guess that's a bad thing.  The ideas are coming and I'm sure trying to work through it.

Kali:
Actually, not being able to outline isn't necessarily a bad thing.  There are plenty of authors who don't; so many, there's even a term for them... "pantsers", for people who write by the seat of their pants. ;)

In a way, I wish I had outlined before starting what I'm doing now.  I wrote the original thing during NaNo, and went back to "edit" it.  Turned out that this edit has become a huge rewrite, with tons of added scenes most of which have made the rest of the already-written stuff unusable.  Knowing where I was going next would have been useful, I think sometimes.

The problem I ran into is that I'm simply not used to thinking in 80k+ chunks.  I can write a 25k novella without pre-planning much other than knowing about how it's going to end, but in this longer piece, my stumbling points in this rewrite have all been "I'm at Point D, I need to get to point G, but I have no idea how to get them there..."

I've found that sometimes Point G isn't what I thought it was.  In the words of first-readers, "What if it didn't work?" and "If you weren't trying to get to G, where would you go?"  So even the small bits of outlining I've tried to do as I went along haven't worked out for me. 

So I say write.  Just start.  Even if you end up having to rewrite everything you've written,  you'll come up with a plot as you write.  It's just how the human brain works; you almost can't avoid it.  It might not be a good one, but even if it's not you'll be honing your gift, working with your characters and getting to know them inside-out, and you'll get more ideas than you can use (also known as "plot bunnies", random bits that occur to you about how cool it would look at Point K while you've just passed Point M).

The Observer:
Something I've always done is started at the end, like you tried. Then skip to the the beginning. The beginning and end are, at least for me, the easiest parts.

Next, try working from the beginning, while keeping your ending in mind. What happens after the beginning? How does character A react? How does character B react? Does it lead them into conflict? If so, what would character C do about it? And on and on and on.

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