How do I construct a plot out of my many setting/character details?

I highly recommend The Writer's Journey, a writing manual which shows you how to create a Hero's Journey story structure. Seriously, you get about two chapters in and you have to stop yourself from dropping the book and rushing to your computer to start writing.

The Hero's Journey is one of the classic story archetypes of human literature, from The Odyssey to Star Wars. Read through the book and envision how you could put your characters into it.

posted over 13 years ago

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Lauren Ipsum‭

2098 reputation 13 1143 397 1

The most reductionist view of a plot is:

Equilibrium > Disturbance > Equilibrium.

Or to reduce it down to two words:

Something Happened.

Even trying to subvert it by making your plot:

Nothing Happened.

Is defeated by the fact that you noted down that nothing was what happened. In this world nothing happening is unusual enough to be noteworthy. So you find, in trying to resist the need to "plot" you have accidentally plotted on a meta level.

So plotting, to an extent, is inevitable even if all you are noting in your writing is the unnoteworthy nature of the notes you are writing.

As soon as you leave the arena of "Something" happening, or being satisfied that what you are describing is "something" or a series of "somethings" happening you instantly wander into an area of some permutational difficulty.

For example if your story is:

Something happened and that one complete something was made up of this something and that something happening each of which by themselves would have been less noteworthy than either but not both of these things happening somewhere at some time.

Then already you are playing games with the audience, even if you make the events in your two sub-somethings happen in different time periods on different continents you have still instructed the audience to view these incidents as a diptych. Any smilarities are fair game to be deemed thematic, any differences fair game to be deemed juxtapositional. You as author have spoken and bonded the events together even though there is fundamentally nothing about the events that should naturally connect them.

Any more complex plot is just a nested series of incidents which are inevitably related to one another if only by virtue of being described together in one place.

Much theory can be found about particular deliberate constructions of incidents that are deemed to be aesthetically more pleasant or congruous than others. You should view such assertions as like arguments between people who like impressionism and those who prefer surrealism. Solid structure is skilful application of technique and deliberate non-application of technique is just as valid. Poor application of technique is just as invalid whether you are trying to draw a photo-realistic landscape or a melting clock, to torture the metaphor a little.

Some people like a fine tuned five act story with impeccably separated rising and falling action. Some people delight in ferreting the hero's journey out of every protagonist's daily routine (or break from such). Some people just like describing people they deem to be "interesting" then putting them all into a situation they deem to be "interesting" and letting them bounce around until they have somehow "resolved".

There isn't a right answer about which is correct.

If you can produce an adequate fictional sentence then a paragraph is just the reproduction of that process a couple of times.

A page is just the paragraph process three to four times.

A chapter is the page repeated a few times.

Taking the average length of a sentence to be about 9 words contructing 6000 interrelated and adequate sentences will get you a novel.

How you plot is personal. For me I like to try to stick to well-worn arcs because I don't feel that I know them thoroughly enough to discard them. Maybe you feel that your writing is not that sort of writing. I am a genre writer and as such I want to be intimately familiar with the "rules" before I break them. I want to be a storyteller, an entertainer, not an artist, more a craftsman. Who you are as a writer is more down to what you want out of the experience. For that reason, until you've thought through your artistic aims a plot is just:

Something happened.

posted over 13 years ago

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One Monkey‭

210 reputation 4 17 41 0

Two suggestions:

1) Try flash fiction, as it has a low word count limit, and it sounds like many of the things you make would.

2) I often find that bringing together two story ideas that are vastly different often makes for a good, non-cliched, larger story.

posted over 13 years ago

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Ernest Pazera‭

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I agree with Capt Nemo. Try putting your ideas down on a paper. If you have a mind mapping tool it would be great as you can visualize the ideas and see the relations directly. Categorize the plot elements and the events that drive the plot forward.

A decent word processor with research and mind mapping features is Xiosis Scribe. Give it a whirl.

posted over 13 years ago

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Adeem‭

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I go brainstorming by mapping out different scenes on a page, and trying to connect them. Joining them often gives rise to better and new ideas as well, which would give you a complete plot. In essence, just write out whatever you can think of from these points, and try connecting them.

posted over 13 years ago

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Nemo‭

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A few strategies:

• Until you have a great plot, try writing "good-enough" plots. Better to be writing something with a cliche plot, than not to be writing at all. (Edited to add: Also, sometimes once you've got an initial "good-enough" plot in place and fleshed out, that gives you enough substance to twist and warp into something new and exciting.)
• Plot is conflict. Find the characters who might get involved in some conflict - whether it's "let's use our powers to fight crime," or "I don't like the way Justin's using his power to beat people up just because they stole a TV," or "I'm not happy in my relationship ever since I can read my girlfriend's mind." You say you've got detailed character sketches - I'm sure your characters have problems. If they don't, they could. If they do, they could be more complicated than they are. Pick a conflict, a problem, an issue to be resolved. Could that be a basis for an entire story? If not - why not? Could it be developed, complicated, or twisted into something that could carry a story?
• An antagonist is great for creating conflict, and hence, plot. Who, in your world and details, might make a good antagonist? If there are rules that must not be broken, or power resources that could be taken advantage of, or things that are important to the characters that might be taken away - any of these could be a goal of the antagonist; you could work backwards to figure out who might have such goals, and then work forwards from there to figure out what exactly he'd do to reach his goals.
• Look for any element that's unique to your world, your characters, your sketches. Throw around story ideas related to those - what could conceivably happen involving those characters and concepts, that's so well-tied to them that they wouldn't be able to happen with other people, or in a different setting? Those are ideas that are probably not cliche, that may be very original or at least unfamiliar - because your ideas are your own, unique creations, so any plot highly-tailored to them and them alone will be unique as well.

Hope these are helpful :)

posted over 13 years ago

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Standback‭

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