Have you ever met someone that could tell you about an argument they had at work and make it sound like an episode of a soap opera? Or someone that could tell you about a squirrel they saw in the backyard and make you wonder what happens next?
Just a few days ago, I was talking to my dad on the phone and he was telling me about how my grandmother’s cat had been such an angel since moving into my parents’ barn. The cat was affectionate and sweet. And then my dad called my grandmother to chat, and the cat happened to wander up while he was on the phone. So, he turned on speakerphone and leaned down to let my grandmother speak to her cat.
I was on the edge of my seat, let me tell you.
Then, the cat bit him!
I almost died laughing. I thought it was going to be a sweet story about how the cat meowed back, or how my grandmother started singing to it or something.
Nope. The perfectly behaved cat, who hadn’t bitten anyone since moving into my dad’s barn, bit my dad as soon as it heard my grandmother’s voice.
It’s a simple plot. Cat moves away from owner. Cat thrives in new environment. Cat hears previous owner’s voice. Cat bites new owner.
What a twist!
It turns out there are plots everywhere. There are plots whenever you tell a story about your day. Whenever you try to explain a dream you had. Whenever you see someone wandering down the street and wonder what they’re doing. Plots when you read the news. There are plots when you look out your window and see two birds fighting, or when your dog does something weird, or when you order your pizza and it doesn’t come on time, plus they put anchovies on it and you didn’t even order anchovies.
Plots exist all around us, and the goal of a storyteller is to make them not only make sense, but also concise and filled with excitement and tension.
As part of my faux master’s degree, I have been studying plot to the point where everything around me looks like a story waiting to be told. I have read through:
Save the Cat by Blake Snyder
Save the Cat Writes A Novel by Jessica Brody
Take Off Your Pants by Libby Hawker (hint: this was my favorite one)
The Anatomy of Story by John Truby
The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler
Story Genius by Lisa Cron
Not to mention, a lot of the more general books I’ve read have sections on plotting as well:
Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maas
Steering the Craft by Ursula K LeGuin
On Writing by Stephen King
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King
Magic by Gail Carson Levine
Indie Author Survival Guide by SK Quinn
Write. Publish. Repeat. by Sean Platt, Johnny B Truant, and David Wright
And the articles! Oh, the articles! Articles on the Snowball Method. Articles summarizing John Campbell’s book, The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Articles on story structure. On outlining. On discovery writing. On conflict and tension and character.
I even taught a workshop on plot.
The thing is, there are hundreds, thousands more books I could read. It’s an endless list, really. And the articles on plot will never stop coming—I’m writing one right now, in fact.
Part of that is because everyone thinks that when they finally understand plot, their way of explaining it is revolutionary. No one’s ever thought of it this way before!
Part of that is because stories change. What we look for and want in a story changes from culture to culture, year to year, era to era.
Part of it is because everyone’s brains work differently, so trying to define exactly how to structure a plot, down to the meter and tone, down to the percentage of the manuscript each element takes up—is never going to be a 100% surefire win.
Here are a few things that I learned from studying plot:
I hate outlining. I’m a discovery writer through and through. Outlining makes me want to scream and die. The most outlining I can handle is a beginning note, an end note, and maybe one or two key things that have to happen in the middle of the story. More than that and I hate the project and want nothing to do with it ever again.
The reason everyone thinks plot is impossible is because they haven’t figured out the best system to fit their own brain around. When I read Libby Hawker’s book on plot, it was probably the fourth or fifth one I’d gotten to. And the only reason I’d made it that far was because it was part of my fake master’s degree and I was forcing myself to keep going. All the others were a slog (and this is coming from someone who loves books about writing). I would read a chapter of one and either almost fall asleep, wonder why I was torturing myself, or think about quitting my fake master’s degree. But then I read her book (really just the first couple chapters was all I needed) and I was like, “YES. This is exactly how I want to think about plot. Thank you.”
There is no one “best” book on or article about or system for plotting. Yes, I liked Take Off Your Pants the best. That does not mean it’s the best book on plot. It is simply the one book that I happened to read, that fit my brain better than the others.
If you want to read a book on plot, I recommend trying several. If you get super bored or hate the world as you’re trying to force yourself through one book, put it down and try a different one. The way that we engage with and understand stories is a very personal thing, so which method works best for you is also going to be very personal.
Okay, but for real though, what is plot and how do you do it?
Now I’m going to prove that I have at least a vague understanding of how plots work by attempting to explain the way I think about it to you.
At its core, plot is nothing more than a sequence of interrelated events. But to tell a good story, we want to include things like characterization, conflict, and tension in a way that is believable (at least within the context of the story), engaging, and interesting.
The triangle is sort of like a road in perspective (see I even put lines in it), and that stick figure at the bottom is supposed to be me lol.
One of the things I noticed as I was working my way through books on plot was that I really liked pictures. I really liked the diagrams and visual structures for understanding plot. So I made my own!
My “method” of plot has three pieces. That’s it. Three.
A Character
An End Purpose or Theme
Objectives
I’ll be honest with you. I use this exact same system for marketing, business development, figuring out how to plan my day, and lots of other things.
I told you—plots are everywhere.
Character
Who your character is will define much of the plot.
Your character will have needs. Desires. Internal flaws. And these needs, desires, and flaws are going to drive their decision-making, which will then drive the plot. To construct the most interesting plots, the character should face challenges that they’re not entirely equipped to deal with, challenges that test them, that poke and prod at their weaknesses.
They should fail.
This is a sketch my friend James did of the main character of my Land of Szornyek series. Her name is Askari.
There are tons of articles and books on character development, but I recommend starting with one key piece: their main flaw. The best flaws (in my opinion) are ones that can also be strengths. Take stubbornness for example. Technically it’s a flaw—someone that refuses to change their mind or do anything other than what they want.
However, from a different perspective, stubbornness can look like determination, standing your ground, not letting the opinions of other people or the storms of daily life get to you. It can look like focus, perseverance, and strength.
If the character is wrong about something, stubbornness is a flaw.
But if the character is right about something, stubbornness is a strength.
Either way, stubbornness is an excellent way to create conflict—even though we have no idea what the rest of the plot looks like. Any person that comes into opposition with our main character is going to have to fight her—whether the character is right or wrong about what she believes.
But stubbornness is just one example. Here are a few more possibilities:
Confident/Arrogant
Humble/Pushover
Driven/Workaholic
Capable/Always Does Everything
Visionary/Impractical
Logical/Emotionless
Intelligent/Thinks Everyone Else Is Stupid
There are LOTS of possible character traits that are both good and bad. My favorite resources for the are the Positive Trait Thesaurus and the Negative Trait Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi.
End Purpose or Theme
One discussion I’ve heard people having is whether a story should be plot-driven or character-driven, or both. Plot-driven basically means that the story is about the things happening to the character; character-driven means that the story focuses on how the character changes based on what happened to them.
The Maze Runner – plot driven. The Fault In Our Stars – character driven.
Die Hard –plot driven. Citizen Kane – character driven.
(Quick confession: I have seen none of these movies nor read any of these books—I just pulled them off Google lol.)
Of course, it’s possible to have both, and in fact, I think the best stories have at least a little bit of both. Bones is my favorite example of this. It’s very plot driven, in that it’s a murder mystery in every episode. It’s about solving the crime, the Whodunnit. But it’s also very character driven. It’s about Bones and how she grows and develops not only as a scientist, but also as a person—and of course, how all of her friends and associates grow as people. I personally tend to lean towards plot-driven stories.
The truth is, you don’t have to decide whether your book is plot- or character-driven before you start writing.
My recommendation would be instead, to focus on the point. The goal. The endgame.
What is your book about?
Take my book, Tentacles and Teeth. As I was writing the first draft, my overarching purpose was simply to explore a post-apocalyptic world filled with monsters. And when I started writing it, that’s exactly what I did. A new monster every chapter. Action scenes upon action scenes. Details and descriptions about what the world looked like and what it would be like to live in it.
When I did my second draft, I shifted my focus slightly. Yes, I still wanted a world filled with monsters. Yes, I wanted to explore it and develop what that type of apocalypse would look like.
But I also wanted to explore the way we consume information in a sort of insular way, and how that impacts our decisions and identities.
So I fleshed out the characterization of the community my main character grew up in for the first book, and then in the second book, I tossed her out into the real world and forced her to come into contact with other people, which then made her step back and take a closer look at her own belief systems and start questioning what she was raised to think.
This theme continues in the third and fourth book, with the main character realizing that we get to choose the communities we want to participate in, and just because we are told something, doesn’t make it true.
So how do you decide the point of your book?
Excellent question, thank you for asking.
There are three ways to approach it (well, probably more than three, but three that I came up with).
The first is to ask yourself: What do I get out of my book?
For example, perhaps you want to write in a new genre. I started a whole series like this. I wanted to explore the idea of writing sci-fi fairy tales, so I did. Perhaps you want to learn something about yourself or parse out a question you have about life or the universe or everything. Memoir or biography are great ways to explore your own life; or perhaps you are curious about exploring the idea of truth, so you write about a character that only tells lies.
The second method is to ask yourself: What does my character get out of it?
This is especially excellent if you’re interested in writing character-driven stories. If you want your character to grow or change in a particular way, then the question becomes—how are they going to change throughout the course of this story?
For example, in Book 3 of my Land of Szornyek series, my first draft was focused much the same as Book 1 had been: it was really about exploring the widening universe filled with monsters, and looking at the different ways that people were surviving. But something felt off to me, so I went back to review the plot—only to discover that my main character had yet to change. So I shifted the focus and the purpose of my plot. Instead of it being entirely about monsters and survival, it became about her dealing with the consequences of the trauma she experienced in Book 2. Throughout the second draft, I realized that I needed a new endgame: it was no longer about the monsters, it was about Askari. I needed her to come to a particular realization, which is a spoiler and so I won’t say any more. 😊
The third method is to ask yourself: What does the reader get out of it?
It is of course helpful for you to have at least a vague idea of who your ideal reader is if you choose this approach, but even if you don’t, you can still use it as a springboard.
I think romance is an excellent example of this, particularly HEA Romances (Happily Ever After). When writing an HEA, the entire point is to leave the reader with a warm, fuzzy satisfaction at the end of the story. It’s to create a story in which the reader feels connected to the characters, roots for them to succeed in their romantic endeavors, and then feels satisfied when it all works out in the end.
Perhaps your goal is to provide your reader with an escape. Or to take you reader on a wild ride of insanity. To make your reader scared or hopeful or excited. To make them think. You can absolutely start here when choosing your endgame.
Ultimately, the endgame or the purpose of your book can be absolutely anything you want it to be. You can have multiple purposes if you want. You can change your mind about it at any point during the writing and revision process. There really aren’t any rules here, so whatever works for you can also work for your story!
Objectives
I put this one last because unlike the other two which can be decided simultaneously or whenever, objectives are most helpful AFTER you’ve decided the beginning and the end. Once you’ve figured out who your character is and where they need to go, then you can determine what needs to happen in order for them to get from point A to B.
Objectives can be viewed in several different ways. Some people outline every single detail, parse out every action, and decide every conversation before even starting in on drafting it, even down to calculating the percentages each section of the book should be. If you’re a plotter, then this is probably your preference.
But if you’re a discovery writer aka pantser (like me), we prefer to go light on the details and to figure it out as we go. I think of objectives more as lampposts. I can sort of see the next one in the distance, but the path between two is dark. I know what’s in the middle only after I’ve written the words.
An example of my own lampposts might look something like this (based off of Book 1 of Land of Szornyek, Tentacles and Teeth:
Askari fights a monster alone.
She fights another monster, but with other people.
She disobeys an order.
Punishment involves getting temporarily kicked out.
Alone for a while, fights more monsters.
Friends show up.
Completes terms of punishment with help.
Returns to find her community in trouble.
Fights to save community.
Plot isn’t that scary.
I must admit that I found plot to be one of the most overwhelming concepts in writing before I really started to dive in. And once I get up to my neck in it, I still found it overwhelming. The one thing I wish someone had said to me before I started was: “There is no one right way to plot a story.”
It kind of seems like a no brainer, looking back. Like, duh Ariele. There’s no one right way to do anything in writing, not even punctuation. So why would there be for plot?
Maybe, if they wanted to be even more helpful, this imaginary person might have added, “It’s okay if one method doesn’t work for you. Try a different one.”
But now that I’ve thrown myself into the deep end in order to learn to swim, I feel a lot more confident about it. Not all of my plots will work or make sense. Not all of them will be equally good. Sometimes I will feel like I know where I’m going and sometimes I won’t.
Ultimately, I think my plotting goals are to take a deep breath, be a little less critical of my work, and trust myself.
After all, someone actually wrote Sharknado. And it got turned into a film. Six of them, to be precise. And has a video game and a comic book series, and a seventh spin-off film.
We got this.
Writing Exercise
Pick a fairy tale, any fairy tale—one that you already know pretty well. Write out a description of the character and their major flaw, the purpose, theme, or endgame of the story, and a few objectives.
If a fairy tale is too easy, try Moby Dick. A Shakespeare play. The book you’re reading right now.
If you want an advanced challenge, do it for your own book—one that you haven’t written yet.