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How to Develop Fiction Plots

Two Methods:Plotting Your Story Like a MovieWriting Down Your PlotCommunity Q&A

With few exceptions, successful fiction needs to have a clear plot that takes your characters from their normal lives and through a series of battles. This journey leads to a moment when characters succeed or fail at some ultimate battle that changes them. One way to plot fiction is to imagine it as a movie, because movies have very strict plot structures.

Plotting Your Story Like a Movie

  1. 1
    Study some of your favorite fictional stories and their movie adaptations. Every story, no matter what it's about or when it was written, is adapted for film in the same way, with specific events that happen at specific times
  2. 2
    Imagine that your novel or short story is a movie, and you're looking in the TV listings to decide whether to watch it based on the 1 sentence you're given. Write that sentence down and keep it where you can always see it.
    • This 1-sentence description is borrowed from the film industry, where it is called a logline. Knowing the logline will keep you from getting so bogged down in interesting characters and situations that you forget what your story is about.
  3. 3
    Decide on a good opening. The first scene in a movie transports the audience in their imaginations from the theater to the world of the movie. In a book, the opening intrigues readers so they will commit to reading the rest of the story.
    • Introduce your main character, who will go on the journey, fight the ultimate battle and be changed by the experience.
    • Show your main character in his daily life, and make sure he is unhappy. If he's happy, there's no reason to go anywhere or do anything, and therefore nothing to write about. Another way to force the main character out of his life and into your story is to destroy his happy life.
    • Don't spend too much time on the opening. You want only enough to give your reader a good idea of who your main character is before you jerk him out of normal life and into your story. The sooner you do this, the happier your readers will be.
  4. 4
    Come up with a good ending. Filmmakers want the audience to leave the theater misty-eyed and satisfied that whether the main character ultimately triumphed or failed, all is as it should be. In your story, the reader should get to the last line and sigh with that same satisfaction.
    • Your main character should return to normal life, though not necessarily the life she was living at the start of the story. In many stories the character leaves her old life behind and begins a new one in which she is happier.
    • The ending, called the denouement (DAY-noo-mahn), is shorter than the opening because you don't have to introduce your characters or your setting. Once the main character survives the ultimate battle, theater audiences start gathering their coats and purses. Readers are no less impatient to see things wrapped up.
    • As you build on your story, you need to make sure that all subplots are wrapped up in the denouement as well.
  5. 5
    Describe the ultimate battle. This is the live-or-die moment for your main character, when it seems that there's no way to win unless the he does something that he has not been capable of doing before. In a movie, this is the scene that has the audience on the edge of their seats, worried that the main character might lose everything he cares about or even die.
    • The ultimate battle doesn't have to be an actual, physical battle against an enemy. It can be any sort of battle, even one that occurs only within the character's own mind as he decides to change his life in order to get what he needs. Keep in mind that this may not be what the character wants.
    • Give your main character a reason to fight the ultimate battle. It must be very important so he doesn't quit and go back to the life he was leading before the story started. However, it doesn't have to be important to anyone but him.
    • In this battle, as in everything that comes before it, the main character must be the one who takes the action necessary to succeed or doesn't take action and fails.
  6. 6
    Give your main character a black moment, when she seems to have lost it all, when the enemy seems sure to win and there's no way to survive the upcoming ultimate battle.
  7. 7
    Make a list of everything your main character needs to win the ultimate battle. Then make sure that he doesn't have most of them when the story begins. This includes physical things like weapons, allies and clues, as well as nonphysical things like courage or mercy.
  8. 8
    Connect your opening to your ultimate battle by giving your main character a series of challenges, obstacles and battles, each one more difficult than the one before. At the end of each challenge, there will be a period of calm while the main character reacts to the outcome and prepares for the next one.
    • At first the challenges will be easy, and the main character will win. But at about the midpoint of the story, the main character will start losing. In a movie, this point is easy to find because it's where the audience stops cheering for main character and starts worrying about her.
    • Study the list you created of the things your main character needs to win the ultimate battle. Have him acquire things or learn things after each challenge so he is missing only the most important one when he gets to the ultimate battle. He must find this last thing within himself just before he's defeated.
  9. 9
    Weave in other characters, subplots and story elements. All these must serve the main character on her journey from who she is at the opening of the story to who she is at the end.

Writing Down Your Plot

  1. 1
    Choose a title and write down your logline.
  2. 2
    Pretend that you're summarizing the story for a friend who has no interest in reading it but nevertheless wants to know everything about it.
    • Write in present tense.
    • Leave off everything but the bare bones of the story. Write the plot in a straightforward manner. Your main character is living his normal life, then something happens. He reacts, then something else happens. Continue in this manner throughout the story.
  3. 3
    Write in a series of short paragraphs separated by blank lines, each containing a single, small part of the story. This makes it easier to take something out and substitute something better or to rearrange the paragraphs.
    • If you like, write down each paragraph on its own index card, then lay the cards out in order and rearrange them.
  4. 4
    Begin writing your story only when you're satisfied that the plot is as good as you can make it.

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    Categories: Fiction

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