Plotting is my favourite subject to talk about, and although I could talk about any aspect of great writing for hours, I’d say that creating a great plot is the most important skill of any novel writer. It’s also something they’re not exactly teaching in schools when they claim to be teaching you writing – a novel is nothing like an essay.
If you’ve always been told you’re good at writing but you’re still struggling to write an entire story from start to finish, this is the piece of the puzzle you need to learn ASAP. And if you’re completely new to writing fiction, you need to figure this out before you start working on your first novel.
Since plotting is such a massive subject, I’m actually NOT going to write the longest blog post ever. Instead, I’m going to tell you what goes into writing a great plot and I’ll direct you to blog posts and other resources I’ve already written that give you more details about what you need to learn.
Ready? Great! Let’s start thickening the plot.
What should happen in your story?
The first step of plotting a story is figuring out what should actually happen. It’s probably the biggest obstacle between a writer with a vague story idea and their finished novel that actually makes sense.
It should be no secret that you need a plot. Why else would you read a post about how to plot your story?? How much of that plot you need to plan beforehand depends on how complex you want your story to be and how good you are at navigating a story without planning. Still, you ARE going to need a plot, because a novel isn’t just a cool idea with enough writing on enough pages, you know?
Why you can’t write without a plot
If you have loads and loads of time, then sure, start writing based on just a vague story idea and see if you might come up with something usable eventually, and then rewrite without all those random plotlines and fluff that didn’t lead anywhere. I don’t know who’s got time for that, though, and I prefer to talk about much more effective methods of writing your novel.
If you’ve got just a vague vibe for your story but no real plot events, this blog post gives you the steps to fix that. I know you’re excited to write your story, but a “vibe” alone won’t get you far. You need characters and places and plot events.
Your plot can’t have boring parts
I couldn’t decide where this should go in this post, so hopefully it caught your eye here. If your story has boring parts that you don’t really want to write, your plot has gone wrong.
Everything in your story needs to have a purpose, so boring parts with no point besides filling up the word count don’t belong there. In addition, nothing exciting in your story will mean anything if you don’t set it up correctly. (You can refer to the post about plot holes to learn more about settings things up correctly.)
Here’s more about why your plot can’t have boring parts and what you should do instead. It’s better you learn this now rather than later, seriously.
Your plot needs characters
And speaking of characters, they’re integral to your plot. They make it happen and it happens through them and to them. If a plot happens in a forest and there’s no one to hear it… does it make a sound? No. That’s the end of that philosophical conversation. This post explains how plot and character work together.
Something that’s extremely important are character flaws. You don’t need them just to make your characters realistic or interesting, they’re important plot fuel. Read this post to understand what character flaws really are for and how they actually create your plot.
Provoking your protagonist and their flaws with problems is the best way to create a plot, and that’s exactly what you do with the Troublemaker Method that comes with a handy plotting sheet. You could also get that unique method, learn how plots work AND get all my best outlining tools in the Genius Plotting Method.
Get inspiration for more plot events
Maybe you’ve already got the basics of your plot planned out, perhaps after using the Simple Plotter, but you still need more. You need to give more context to your plot events and show what your characters are like just a little more. But also, you don’t want to pad out your story with more scenes “just because”.
Check out this post for meaningful scene ideas. It’s going to help you come up with new scenes that actually have a purpose. I update the post regularly with new ideas, so keep it bookmarked for future writing inspiration needs.
Use story structure to plot your story
The people who most think they don’t need to know anything about story structure are generally the ones who know the least about it. Sorry not sorry!
And no, structure is not the same as formula. Formula would be “have your characters kiss on page 132”, while structure is “you need to push your characters together and pull them apart before they can get each other for good”. Your story needs a beginning, a middle and an end just like a house needs a floor, walls and a roof. Strangely, all houses in the world still aren’t identical.
Sometimes story structure is more literal where a character goes on an actual journey with actual dangers, and sometimes it’s more symbolic. Your story isn’t a random snippet from a character’s life, however, which is why your story needs structure. It needs to start from somewhere, more forwards and end somehow. That’s where story structure comes in.
How to structure your story
Here’s my main post on story structure. I don’t teach any specific plot format because I don’t see how that’s necessary. Instead, I’ve put together everything I’ve learned about structuring your stories and I’ve put it into my own words and made it easy to understand.
It’s not just your overall story that needs structure, you also need to think about scenes. Here’s how you can outline those smaller building blocks of your story.
How to avoid plot holes
A plot hole is something that doesn’t make sense in your specific story. Either it comes out of nowhere without you setting it up or it isn’t congruent with what you’ve already told your readers.
Whatever the cause of your plot hole is, here’s how to avoid them or fix them. When you understand how plots work, it’s easy to write a plot without holes, and you as the writer can make (almost) anything make sense. You can also get the Plot Without Holes workbook that’s probably my favourite plotting tool that I’ve ever created.
How to write a plot twist that makes sense
A plot twist that comes out of nowhere or doesn’t make sense is actually a plot hole – yikes! Fortunately, I’ve also written about the three easy steps to write a plot twist that surprises your readers and still makes sense in hindsight.
Yes, it all needs to make sense, and it doesn’t make your story predictable. How many things in your life lead to great, interesting or terrible things that you couldn’t foresee? (I wouldn’t have met my first boyfriend on the internet if I hadn’t borrowed that album by The Cure from the library and then seen Robert Smith on MTV. That actually goes in the terrible category of life events.) Your story should be surprising AND inevitable, and making it work is your responsibility.
How to plot a romance novel
Although everything that applies to plotting stories also applies to romance novels, you still need to pay special attention to your lovers’ journey when you’re writing romance. Otherwise, your story could fall flat and you could disappoint your readers.
This blog post about writing romance novels goes into detail about other stuff as well, but there are important points about plotting, too. A romance novel is more than just kissing scenes after all, and your readers won’t care about your chosen couple unless they have to work for their happily ever after. The plotting advice applies to any romance arc in a story of any genre.
And hey, maybe you’re writing a “from enemies to lovers” story, and fortunately I’ve written about that as well and how to plot that kind of story for maximum effect.
If you’d just like an expressway to plotting your romantic story, you could get the romance novel outline template or the enemies to lovers outline template from my Etsy shop.
Outline your story before writing it
If you’re figuring out your plot before you start writing your first draft, congratulations, that’s outlining. Whatever you might have learned about outlining your essays in school can just be chucked out here, okay?
There are so many ways of outlining a story that you can certainly find one that works for you. Here’s my master post on my methods of outlining that you should totally steal.
The best outlining tools for writers
Although my favourite way of outlining my stories is making lists on my notebook, I still love to create plotting and outlining tools for my fellow writers. We all work differently and I want to help as many writers as I can.
You can find all my plotting tools here in my Etsy shop, but if you’d like my best stuff bundled together much cheaper, you should get the Genius Plotting System.
But hey, if you’re just getting started, perhaps the Simple Plotter is exactly what you need today:
Protagonist Crafts is a blog about writing fiction, written by a published author and creative writing teacher. You can find more writing tips and inspiration in the blog and you can get the best author tools at Writer Lifestyle on Etsy.
Are all these graphics you put in the middle of your blog post necessary? They did a hell of a job distracting me from what I wrote. Or was that your original intent?