Creating A Plot
For many authors, creating the plot is the hardest part of writing a story
And that includes me. For me, the hardest part of creating a new story is coming up with a plot I can believe in, a plot I’m convinced will make a good story. If I don’t believe that, I’ll never convince the reader to believe the story is good.
Why is the plot so difficult? Well, a basic plot calls for the protagonist to attempt to solve the plot problem and fail. Three times. Then comes the climax and hero usually, but not always, prevails. To develop this plot, the author has to come up with three potential solutions for the hero to work on. The author also has to come up with three ways for the hero to fail. This stuff requires a great deal of creativity. Finally the author has to figure out the climax of the story and who wins; the hero or the bad guy.
Here’s a graphical way to look to at this issue. After the author develops an inciting event and the ending, (two initial steps in the plot building process) he has to come with a series of plot events that will led the reader from the beginning of the story to the climax. To illustrate this issue, I use an illustration I created called the plot cloud. Inside this cloud is every possible plot event and the cloud holds an infinite number of possible events.
An infinite number of events means there are an infinity number of paths through the cloud.
It now becomes the authors job to come up with a path through the cloud that connects the Inciting Event with the Climax. And that path has to the be the one path that truly fits into the story the author wants to create.
Often an author will come up with a path that, upon reflection, will be found wanting. In that case the author has to discard the path and start over.
In my own case, I have potential stories that have been sitting around for years because I have never been able to develop a plot path I believe in.
The value of the plot path concept is that it defines and illustrates the problem. Once an author can mentally picture the situation, it becomes a bit easier to address that situation. However, there still is a lot of hard mental work involved that requires a heavy dash of creativity.
Do you have a method to develop a plot? Can you share it?
Did you know you can access a free video on plot building? You can find it here: https://hanque.gumroad.com/l/xmygaa
On my Writers & Authors Resource Center home page, I have a new graphic showing all the resources available. https://writersarc.com