What Makes a Good Plot?
Ive been asked many, many times how I create my plots. Truth is, when I started out, it wasnt conscious. And thats how I got myself into a hole writing my first book and needed to retrospectively write everything down because I didnt know WTF I was doing. I had 14 books planned in the universe; I needed to track everything so that I didnt dig myself into a hole. So I started writing it down. Then, I started studying plot. It took reading and writing several books, but I found a system that works for me. Even now, sometimes my system changes because of the genre Im writing, the book itself, or whats going on in my life. Also, a caveat: what works for me may not work for you. But were not here to talk about planning systems. Today, were here to talk about what makes a good plot. There are three elements to a great plot. These elements never, ever change. You can break them down smaller if you want to, but, without these three things, your story will always fall flat. Challenge, conflict, and characters. Its that simple. No, really. Lets take a look:  Challenge  Imagine your favourite film. Chances are, the opening scene is either someone at work doing something menial, or another reflection of their everyday boring life. This is to establish the status quo. To give the audience a feeling of what the characters life is like right now. Before it gets turned on its head. Then, once youve established that status quo (quickly, in less than a chapter or scene, ideally), you need to challenge it. This is your inciting incident, if youre using the heros journey format. The more dramatic, the better. In a romance, its probably meeting their love interest. In an epic fantasy, its likely to be the call to adventure, when they get invited on their quest. In a sci-fi, it could be when they board the ship, or when something goes wrong on the ship. (Star Trek: Discoverys first episode is one big example of this. I wont say any more to avoid spoilers, but its worth watching/analysing.) Conflict  All stories must have conflict. I was so bad for not including enough conflict in my stories when I was younger. As I was writing for comfort, I was super nice to my characters. I wanted good things to happen to them! Then, someone gave me some writing advice that I may have taken a little too seriously: I needed to be meaner to my characters. Since that fateful day in Costa seven years ago, Ive hospitalised multiple characters, killed characters off, cursed them, given them stalkers, broken up relationshipsand enjoyed every minute of it   Some of my readers think Im evil. But they also keep buying my books. Readers care more about your characters when you put them through hell (literally or figuratively). The meaner you areand the more you explore the emotional implications of that meanness on your charactersthe more depth your characters will have, the more plot youll have, and the easier your book will be to write. Characters  The final component. Or, if youre like me, this comes first. It doesnt really matter which order you create these things in. I kept characters until last since this blog post is about plot, and challenge is the first part of your plot. But dont underestimate the impact of your characters. Ever. For all three components to work, you need characters people give a shit about it. If they dont care, it doesnt matter what you do to your characters. Theyll yawn and fall asleep, or give up on your book completely. If they do care, thats when they leave 5* reviews and tell all their friends about your amazing book. And that, my friend, is the foundation of any books success. One of the key elements of this is the relatability of your main character, or point of view character, if theyre not the same person. You can create this with the situations theyre in (or what their status quo was), their position in life, the way they think and feel, or something else. It doesnt really matter, so long as that common ground between your reader and your characters is there. This foundation allows your reader to empathise with your main character from the get-go, and is particularly important in comfort genres like romance and chick lit. If you skip this step, you risk isolating your readers. (Trust me on this one: Ive made this mistake myself.) Some readers dont mind if your character isnt instantly likeable or relatable. But if you dont do this, you have to know the rest of your genre conventions inside out and play them right so that you dont deter your audience. Conclusion  There are three elements to a good plot: challenge, conflict, and character. You can create them in any order; its really up to you and how you work. What matters is that you have all threeand give all three of them equal attention when youre writing. If your character lacks depth, people wont care what happens to them because they cant connect with them. If your conflict isnt great enough, your story will be boring. And if your challenge isnt there, theres nothing to kick the whole thing off, which means you dont really have any conflict because the status quo hasnt been challenged deeply enough. Id love to hear them in the comments 