I haven't written in a few years and this is my first project in a long while, so I'm a tad rusty! So far, I have a theme for my book, but no solid plot. Alas, my friends hate writing, so I have no one to toss ideas around with. I figured this would be the place to go for some brainstorming. I'd gladly return the favor if you ever have any plot issues you want to discuss too! I tend to create characters before plots, since I love characters and they're my inspirations for the stories I create. My main character is an 18-year-old male struggling with an eating disorder. He moves to a new school in his senior year and meets two other guys. One is caught up in chaos after getting his girlfriend pregnant, while the other is constantly fighting with his overly religious father. I want this book to be about the men forming a friendship and finally finding others who care about what's going on in their lives. This is a nice theme, but I feel as though I need something else to move the story along. I obviously don't want it to be merely fluff about friends comforting each other. I'm at a loss as to what the central storyline should be, though. I began to write the beginning of my story, which was fine and easy, since it was just a lot of setting the scene and introducing my main character. I don't want this whole book to be a sob story about some struggling young adults, though. I fear that without a solid plot, it'll go down the route. Hopefully I'll get some suggestions as to where I should take this storyline. Thanks to anyone who helps me get the creative juices flowing!
Hello and welcome. Just starting this thread is a great way to gather plot ideas. Sometimes they'll fill right up in a day or two, and after you've been around a bit you can vet the posters and decide if you'd like to work more one on one with a specific member through the PM function. The more you participate in the community on a whole the more responses and feedback you will tend to get. What you have sounds really good as far as characters and themes go, but you're right: without a plot or driving engine they'll be left spinning around a narrative vacuum. Not that it can't be done, there's plenty of highbrow literary fiction (particularly the contemporary "modern life" tales) that do exactly that, but it's quite a bit harder to write and usually appeals to smaller (albeit loyal) readership. I wouldn't try to talk you out of that approach, but you have to be big league to pull that off. For your idea, I would think that the male with the eating disorder would be the hook. That's what's most likely to stand out and be how readers describe the story to other readers. Unless, of course, you have aliens, car chases, jewel heists, or a string of volcano eruptions, but it doesn't sound like your going for that. And with a high-school senior moving to a new school it sounds as if you're angling down the YA path, whether you intend to or not. I would start there--with the new school thing--and see what evolves. There's plenty of conflict that can flow from that. The obvious gag would be a bully or a gang of bullies that find out about his eating disorder and taunt the shit out of him for obvious reasons (being a dude with an eating disorder). Then there's all the coming of age/going to college/what-happens-next/young men with adult problems stuff that can be drawn from... though those are more thematic that plot points. Somebody will come up with some ideas. I'm fairly useless in the YA department until somebody else gets the ball rolling.
Welcome to the site! I'm actually exactly the opposite – I need to start with a basic plot, come up with a set of characters that I feel can fit into the plot, and then I develop the plot and the characters from there – but I can offer two more general pieces of advice that have worked extremely well for me: Don't just try to come up with a good idea, try to come up with the opposite of a bad idea. Look for an idea that you don't like, but that you think is popular either in fiction and/or in real life, then come up with a scenario that counters this bad idea. Hold on to ideas for later, and don't be afraid to experiment with combining ideas that you had initially envisioned as being separate. Spoiler: Personal examples "Opposite of a bad idea" I don't like the idea that there automatically has to be relationship-tension between two people who are both single and for whom one's orientation includes the other (or the idea that romantic love is "more" than friend love), so the villain protagonists of my WIP are a lesbian, a straight woman, and a straight man who all love each other as friends more than any of them have ever loved anybody as a boyfriend/girlfriend. I also don't like the idea that a villain with loved ones is "less villainous" than a villain without, so I'm using the fact that these three protagonists care about each other to make it more horrifying how little they care about everybody else. I also don't like the idea that straight white men are disproportionately likely to be the main characters, so the first-person narrator of my WIP is the straight white guy, and he looks like the main character for the first two chapters when he's the only protagonist we see doing anything... but then his black lesbian friend shows up at the end of chapter 2, and it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly that she's the one driving the action against the protagonists. "Save ideas for later" I spent months working on a bank robbery scene and a year working on an Urban Fantasy world, but not having full stories for either... until I realized that I could tell a story about my bank robbery scene being in my fantasy world
Yeah, "slice of life" can actually be quite compelling as long as the conflicts are well developed a lot. You have a lot of potential just stemming from these characters. Consider exploring the whys of the story. 18 y.o. MC has an eating disorder... but why? Friend one is caught up in chaos because his girlfriend is pregnant... but why? Friend two is always fighting with his religious father... but why? Does the MC have body dismorphia? Was he in a relationship that scarred him? Was friend one going to break up with his girlfriend? Does one of them want an abortion? How does this affect them? Does friend two have a trait that makes him fundamentally opposed to his dad's religion? Is he, for example, gay and in a very traditional Protestant household? Then you ask how? As in, how do these whys affect the boys, both individually and as a group? And how does the world around them attempt to influence them? So does the MC meet a girl (or boy... maybe Friend Two?!?) and fall in high-school love, only to have the love interest find out about his disorder? And then how does this romantic interest react to that? How do they try to reconcile the fact that they LIKE MC, but MC is hurting himself (even though he likes how he looks). How does the stress of dealing with his life changing affect friend one. Does he take that stress out on MC and Two? Does that drive MC further into eating-disorder land? Can Two learn to understand his father? Can his father understand him? You can tell the story of all of these conflicts and how they interact. You don't necessarily need a single overall hook beyond "man, being a teenager verging on adulthood sucks," as long as the story you tell is convincing enough. But if you do decide to go with the alien invasion thing, I will buy all of your books.
Did somebody say engine? Anywho, yeah a story isn't a story without much in the way of plot. Maybe send them on a road-trip, with a plan for self discovery of how to handle the obstacles in their lives. Travel about, and meet people along the way that offer up bits of wisdom that is helpful to your characters. A 'its about the journey, not the destination', kind of plots. But it is a dual journey in the fact that they are traveling, and they are growing up through self discovery as well. Could work, in theory. Showing the hardships of the open road and learning about themselves along the way. So they would be able to do this as they are old enough to go out on their on. IDK, just an idea and a Mustang engine to mull over I suppose.
I've been in a similar boat. A few years ago, I got an idea and started brainstorming the novel I'm working on, and it just grew from there. Until now, I've only had scattered scenes, mostly flashbacks, and no ideas for my endgame or how to build a solid plot. It was only last week that I FINALLY got an idea for two ultimate goals I want to be related. You'll get there eventually. Try posting some of your ideas here, get some feedback and then see where you might want the story to go. I definitely like the premise you gave us in the original post, but try to consider how each of them individually, and their friendship with each other, might be affected by typical high school drama. You need to consider your character's surroundings. What kind of cliques are there? How and why might the MC and his new friends be considered social misfits? How does teen clique-drama affect the way they might act at home? Okay, so this may not be the best example, but try looking to the movie, "Mean Girls" as a source of inspiration to try to answer these questions. Also, early on in my writing process, someone told me something very helpful... It's your project. It doesn't matter in what order you write it. Now, I'm experimenting with a non-linear plot structure. Maybe as you build your own story, the process might lead you down this road. Good luck!
At least part of the plot should be about how each of the characters develop and change. You've given these three friends some lovely (in an interesting for the readers sense) issues to deal with. Your main plot could centre around the MC's eating disorder, how they cope with it, and what happens now. Few issues like this stay suspended in some sort of status quo, so your MC is likely to get worse, get better, or do both at some point. As has been suggested, as well as meeting two new friends, he may meet a gang of bullies who drive his eating disorder even further. Or he may need no further drive - once someone has an eating disorder, they generally tend to carry on with it because they/others like the way they look, and they just carry on until they collapse/have a heart attack/etc and are admitted to hospital. At this point the doctors interfere. Usually. If the patient survives. Or it might be noticed by friends before a medical crisis can occur - perhaps his friends don't realise he has an eating disorder and so they just slowly start to suspect it until they are certain and they tell someone. A good book that follows an issue that gets worse (albeit self-harm rather than an eating disorder) is The Manifesto on How to be Interesting by Holly Bourne. A lot of other stuff happens with the MC struggling to be "cool" but we also see her self-harm becoming worse. Spoiler And this eventually results in her cutting so deep she collapses in the bathroom, is taken to hospital, the cat is out of the bag and people start to help her get better. So the eating disorder may become even worse in a similar way until it is noticed and someone helps him get better. This could easily be the main plot itself, or, as has also been suggested, could just be weaved into the overarching plot (like in The Manifesto on How to be Interesting) like that of a road trip. Alternatively, the school bullies might target them all, and they all have to learn to deal with that. Or it could be something completely different. But you will also have your subplots, because the two friends of the MC need to develop, and so do their issues. So you will surely spend time seeing how the subplots of the abortion and the fighting with the religious father goes. And you might spend time exploring why these things are happening and how the characters got to this point. Once you've combined all of this, you may find yourself with a very rich plot anyway. Especially with a sprinkle of "starting a new school". Other good YA books to read that explore the development of quirky character issues like this, aside from what I've already mentioned, are All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven (depression and suicidal thoughts), Under Rose Tainted Skies by Louise Gornall (agoraphobia and OCD - if you want to look at something that focuses more on a mental disorder getting slightly better rather than spiralling out of control), and When We Collided by Emery Lord (bipolar disorder). Beautiful Broken Things by Sara Barnard may also be an interesting read about broken friends coming together and the effect they have on each other. And all of these books may really help you write this! Whatever you decide to do, good luck. Just hearing about the characters alone has me interested.
