So now we get to the nuts and bolts: the plot of your story. There are a range of ways to look at plots, ranging from the core of your story to the method you use to simply keep your characters moving through the story with the real spotlight on them. Regardless, it is an important piece of any story. Let’s start with the aspect that is most useful to any writer, first time or otherwise: how much planning you do.
Planning vs pantsing, or how you create your plot.
There’s a spectrum of approaches in coming up with a plot. On one end is planning everything out beforehand. On the other is making it all up as you go along, aka writing by the seat of your pants or pantsing. Both have their pros and cons and you really need to figure out which end works better for you, personally.
Planning
Planning is great if you like structure and want to avoid writer’s block, as you always know what’s coming next. You’ve already laid everything out, and now just need to make the story. However, it can be hard to break out of that mold if something’s not working, plus the planning takes time, and you’d need to finish it before you start writing. This can test the patience of someone who just wants to write. It also leaves less room for whimsy and spontaneity.
Pantsing
Pantsing, however, is great if you have an idea and just want to get down to writing. Last month’s post about that blank white screen is really a pantser’s advice at heart. It lets you create and adapt on the fly, without being stuck in a rigid structure, like planning creates, and lets you change plot on a whim if things aren’t working or you find a new direction to work better than what you were thinking of. That’s not to say it doesn’t have downsides of course. Writer’s block is the number one problem for a pantser. You haven’t planned ahead, so if you write yourself into a corner, it can be hard to see the way forward, especially if you can’t or won’t take a few steps back to fix the issues you’re suffering. It also has a hard time with foreshadowing by definition.
Me
Personally, I’m definitely on the pantser side of the spectrum, but I’m not without my hints of planning. I like to plan out key scenes and the ending in my head before I start writing, then work my way to those checkpoints. That way, I can have fun just adding characterization to my characters in a more spontaneous manner and make the journey more fun and spontaneous while still knowing where the hell I’m going. Also, I’m more than willing to backtrack several times if one angle isn’t working, and I need to try another. I should say something about the ending: I’ve seen several works where the ending has not been planned ahead. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t, but personally, especially for a first-time author, plan your ending out at minimum, so you have a goal to aim for.
Scope: How expansive do you want your plot to be?
Now a plot can cover anything from saving the multiverse to just finding a lost item, but it’s a good idea to at least have an idea of how expansive it should be. Understanding your story idea and its scope is really helpful in that it keeps you from biting off more than the story can chew, and simultaneously keeps your story from being unnecessarily constrained. For example, a murder mystery, which is rather small in scope, probably doesn’t need giant pitched battles, or long cross-country adventures. On the other hand, a story about killing a god is going to be very unsatisfying if finding the item to kill them and using it on them involves only a moderate amount of difficulty and remains in a small area, especially if it also ignores the god’s worshippers who obviously will try to stop the god killers.
Any scope can make a good story, so don’t think that a narrower scope is necessarily better or worse.
Plot structure, or how things should be set up.
You can find the chart for this all over the internet, and they may be copyrighted, so I’m not going to post it here.
Anyway, the basic plot structure is as follows: Exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement. Let’s go over these terms one at a time.
Exposition
Basically, you’re establishing the setting, the characters, etc. This is where the first parts of the plot will appear as well. For example, in a fantasy story, it could talk about the setting, introduce the characters in their daily lives before it all goes to hell, give the first signs that things are about to change in a big way, etc. Think of it as setting the scene for what comes next.
Rising action
The plot kicks off. Things start to happen. In the aforementioned fantasy story, maybe the big bad comes and destroys the hero’s village, sending them on their adventure and we follow them to their destiny to prevent the big bad from killing any more innocents. It’s where the plot gets established and largely plays out. It should make up the bulk of your story, and logically everything should follow from what happened before in some sense.
Climax
The high point of your story. The hero faces off against the big bad in a pitched battle, fighting to the death, and unless you’re going for a downer ending, succeeding in defeating him. You need to make this part satisfying for your reader, so it needs to follow on well from the rising action and have the proper weight. If your character is hunting for someone they miss, this should be where they finally meet, and should have some serious emotional weight behind it. For example, the hero should not be able to defeat the big bad in a single stroke if you established the villain as an extremely powerful foe. They should be able to put up a serious fight and maybe even physically hurt the hero quite badly before going down. Maybe even take the hero with them.
An anti-climax can work, but you need to handle it with great care, lest you insult your reader and make them feel like they’ve wasted their time. Subtle foreshadowing is your best friend here.
Falling action
What happens after the climax, obviously. This shouldn’t take too long lest you annoy your readers (I’m looking at you Stephen King). In the aforementioned fantasy story, maybe the big bad shares a final message with the hero, or the hero has to escape their collapsing lair. (By the way, why do they always collapse?) The former is a much steeper slope than the latter in terms of falling, but both can work, depending on how the story is structured. Here you tie up any loose ends that the story has, like any romance subplots, and prepare the reader for the ending.
Denouement
The ending. You’ve wrapped up everything and now just need to end things on a satisfying note. Again, to use the fantasy story, here we might see the hero settling down with their lover, as peace returns to the land. Or we could see that there is a new threat emerging and the hero needs to prepare to fight it, if you want a sequel hook.
In conclusion
No matter what you’re writing, whether it be comedy, drama, epic fantasy, romance, mystery, just try to keep the above in mind and your story writing will go much smoother.