~Hello Everyone~ I'm new here and I'm absolutely in love with writing!! I thought I would try posting something that I've been wondering about... When it comes to developing a story plot, I'm always inspired by a lot of things: cartoons, movies, Japanese anime, fantasy stories, mythical legends...etc. I have to admit, though, I'm not as organized as writers should be, but I think it can make the plot interesting too! Sometimes, I just think about the story genre, main characters, past background story the present depends on and the settings. That's it . I leave the story development in real time where ideas come to me while I'm imagining the story while writing, and twisting some events where the reader can't predict anything yet not disappointing him/her with too much sad or tragic events (I draw sometimes to imagine my characters better ) I'm still a beginner though, so I don't want to limit myself to one style of plot story development , therefore, I would like your advice on how can improve plotting story, and suggestions for other methods are appreciated too . Please give me some tips for better twists and organization in a way that can make the reader unable to stop reading the story Thank you, S_T
Well I do the same. I got this huge story that's sort of my dream to get down and I'm constantly drawing in inspirations and evolving the story as time goes on. But how to develop plot story development? Divide your story in 3 to 4 acts. Write down a full list of characters you plan to explore and write anything you can about them. Before you start writing, you will need to "blueprint" your plot. Doing this will navigate you as you write. Outlining your entire story will help, because if you suffer from writer's block, this is kind of the solution. Sometimes, I write a story and get stuck because I do not know what to write on next. An outline will tackle those moments out of the way since you already made a plan on every event you want to explore in the development on your plot. Good luck and hope you take my advice.
You don't necessarily have to plan everything out. A few months ago I wrote a comprehensive plot overview for my current novel. I'm under 10k words in and already I look back at that overview and it is unrecognizable. You don't need to know the big picture but having stepping stones can help. The best twists aren't the forced ones that you put in purely to make a twist in the story they're the ones that make sense because of your characters. You need to decide whether your stories are plot or character driven and that should tell you where to start. For example my plot is very dependent on my characters, I start with characters and a gist of what is going to happen. From there I work out the beginning and how my characters react to the beginning. Then its how they react to the scenarios that drive them to their ultimate destination. You need to know your characters really well, even in a plot driven story they're instrumental in making the story appear to unfold naturally.
One method which I like (I'm not sure if others use it) is to imagine two versions of the same character, with at least one profound difference between them. Then imagine what would have to happen to transform the one into the other in a realistic and believable way. That's your plot.
Getting into the head of my antagonist has always been a critical step of my plot development. If I'm going to come up with a solid story, I have to understand his (or her) motives, goals, and drive, and from there I can find the decisions he makes that creates the crisis and driving force of the story. Know your bad guys well enough to know exactly how they will respond to your protagonist all along the way. One thing that I have found adds depth to my stories is letting those antagonists be humans with reasonable motives and priorities. There's plenty of conflict that can arise from conflicting priorities and miscommunication without making him intrinsically evil. Quite a few of my antagonists have ended up being some of my favorite characters, actually.
Tips? Well... if I can't summarize the plot when pitching it to an agent, there might be a problem... I think it's fun to embark on this twisting and turning, aimless journey, no goal, no arc, but eventually, at least to my experience, the story grows a spine, I have something tangible that can be called 'a plot' in my hands. And yeah, it can be interesting not to do as writers "should" do, or it can be a terrible mess, or it can be a masterpiece. You never know Good luck with your story and remember to have fun (don't get stuck on the shoulds! They can sometimes be awfully limiting).
The novel I'm writing now is the first one I've felt will actually see completion. I've done several things differently this time, and I'll offer a sprinkling of ideas here for you. 1) I prepared an outline. Nothing really rigid, but a basic organization of the who, what and where in some sort of chronological order 2) Throughout the story, regardless of where I may be with writing it, if I have an inspiration while imagining a 'scene' I'll jot it down. Since my story is mostly character driven, I've made notes of dialogue that comes into my head so I don't forget it. It's amazing how some really clever stuff will come at you out of the blue. However, I've also found that I can't 'force' the dialogue into a place in the story; it has to naturally fit. Trying to force it is like the square peg and round hole; it's not going to work. 3) I also got to a point where some character conflicts and revealing discussions had to be placed on a timeline so they would make sense in the story progression. This is in addition to the outline I did before I began. 4) I had a situation where a character made a point, and then asked a question of my MC...that I couldn't answer! I tried 'inventing' answers that would work, but none did. What finally worked was having the MC admit he couldn't answer, because he didn't know. It's a simple concept, but one I was trying to ignore in my belief that I RUN THIS SHOW, not my characters. 5) The outline is a guide. A major part of the book originally has now been diluted to probably being only a chapter or two. As my characters grew, evolved, and made their own problems (bless them, the little dysfunctional buggers) some things you thought you needed may be unimportant. Don't be afraid to chop stuff. Let the story go where it wants (which is what you seem to do already). But, it must have a direction, and some sort of attainable conclusion. The circumstances and timing of my ending have changed multiple times, but the conclusion, or what I want the reader to take away from it at the end, remains the same.
I really liked #3. I could have been doing that all along. I came up with excellent dialogue in my head but when I put it down on paper on my draft, I kinda forgot the lines and it wasn't as amazing as I'd imagines. I guess keeping those special discussions would help!
I love it when this happens (I write with @T.Trian btw, not alone). In our sci-fi ms, two characters were not supposed to get together too early. We needed a reason why they wouldn't boink at one point, the reason was really superficial and stupid; she had just won a bareknucle boxing match and gotten a few bruises, so she's like "ow, my face and midriff, we can't do it" and then the guy is like "ok, we'll do it later", but then I'm like "wtf, like, she'd totally sleep with him, ever heard of the cowgirl? Spooning? Like what is this, Hollywood? This 'reason' blows!" So yeah, they boinked. Sometimes the characters write the story, it's fun.
Wow! I didn't expect to get many replies so fast, moreover, these advices and tips are amazing!! Thank you very much for all of your contribution and I might as well summarize some of these advices into an organized document (crediting everyone who said them of course) and share it with you as a gift in my next post! I'll definitely take these advices into notice when I start working on my stories (I have many of them). Also, thank you for making this post a place for discussion and sharing information with each other. I should do more of them in the future . Thanks again! and I hope you would check out my stories when they come up.
