Here’s the second fasted way to construct a plot. It’s not the strategy I would personally recommend, but it’s the one everyone uses. In this article you’ll discover the secret to creating a plot from scratch. And if you’ve never been able to come up with anything more than a one line description of what your novel is about, this is really for you.
Remember your novel will start in a very dynamic fashion. No preamble, no warm up, not even any exposition to tell the reader why the person is being slaughtered in such a hideous and vengeful way, by such a macabre and thoroughly unsympathetic character.
Now the plot. Start with a premise, the basic fact of the book upon which everything is based and without which the story would cease to exist.
With Moby Dick, we have a guy who is obsessed with catching a particular whale. With the Da Vinci Code an evil man is bent on getting secret religious information. With the Wizard of Oz, a young girl wants to find her way home from a land of fantasy. And so it goes.
A particular person is placed in a particular setting and wants to achieve a specific goal. By the way, if you remove the goal you get a literary novel.
The plot comprises the series of obstacles placed in the way of the protagonist, causing frustration and character growth.
As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in the doctor’s office (an unremarkable visit for an unremarkable reason), so let’s make the receptionist the main character. Hey, I’m in luck. She’s wearing a headscarf.
Situation? She cures people just with touch. She has no idea how she does it.
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What’s the goal? What’s the quest? Her twin sister has been kidnapped and the kidnappers want her secret to curing people.
Remember, she has no idea how she does it and her sister dies unless she comes up with the answer.
Sub plot? A ‘good’ government wants to know how she does it, too, and shadows her journey to get the information first (and then kill her?)
Not let’s throw in some great geography. She travels to Florida, Syria, France, Ghana and Colombia (I love African and South American settings) to get the information she needs. But at the last second (naturally) just as she is about to put the final piece of the puzzle together, her …
Hey, it’s still a work in progress.
But we’re on our way. The more improbable the initial situation, girl cures people, guy falls in love with jealous possessed car (Christine), kid comes back from college to find his uncle has killed his father and married his mother and now owns the estate (Hamlet) the better it will be. As I’ve often said, if the premise of the book is so outlandish that even you have a tough time believing it, you’re close.
Next, you’ve got to have a quest. It’s essential. If you don’t have a quest for the protagonist, the answer to a question, catching the murderer, gaining the crown of Scotland (Macbeth) then there’s absolutely no reason for the characters to do anything.
The plot? Just one damn thing after another. One frustration, one obstacle, one problem lined up seemingly forever in front of the main character.
If you want an in your face, ‘now I get it’ example of that, go rent an Indiana Jones movie. And by the way, the problems keep getting bigger and more frustrating.
Now a final note. The plot, the story, whatever you want to call it, rarely appears before you fully formed. At most you’ll just get the premise. I guy is obsessed with catching a specific whale. From there you start to work.
There are many authors who say the entire story arrives fully formed before them. I don’t believe it for a second. You build it, and build it, remove a piece and insert a new element, rearrange things until you finally have the story you want to write.
So if you’ve been struggling and doubting yourself because the story is little more than a one-line concept, take heart. You’re exactly where you should be. Now the fun begins.
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