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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26912
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26912
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

You can set yourself a problem and then set out to solve it. Similar to how a modern composer might choose a 12 tone row and then start working with it. When you do this, as you play with your row, you manipulate it and transform it. For example, you might define certain characters or a certain conflict, and then put your characters on the chess board together and see what happens. And let's remember that a place can also be a character. Your plot can be subservient to figuring out, and demonstrating, who your characters are.

You can set yourself a goal, i.e. set up a milestone (that might end up being the midpoint or the endpoint, etc.) and then start writing towards it, either forwards or backwards or both.

You can have something in mind, such as a certain nostalgic feeling, or a feeling of magical realism, or a soothing feeling of keeping to a predefined formula (that is defined based on other elements besides just plot), or a certain type of silliness, or some stepping stones that you want to visit, etc., etc., and then try this and that to achieve what you're aiming for.

You could in principle set up a challenge for yourself of a certain prescribed omission. Like a movie from a while back, whose name I can't remember, in which a main character never appeared in a scene.

You could start with an unexpected combination of clichés and see where it gets you.

Those are just a few ideas that occur to me about the infinite number of ways you can set out the elements you wish to work with.

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