Plotting 101

Is a plot the same as a story?  Not exactly.  When you tell a story, you simply 

chronicle the events of the tale: this happened and then this, and then this.  

The End. When you plot, however, you are also interested in why the events 

happened.  Where a story is a simple series of events like beads on a string, a 

plot is a chain of cause- and-effect relationships.  It involves the reader in the 

game of ‘Why?'  

A story requires only enough curiosity to want to know what will happen next; 

a plot requires the ability to remember what has already happened, to figure 

out the relationships between the events and the people, and to try to project 

the outcome.

Our own lives are stories, not plots.  Life is often a series of loosely 

connected events, coincidences and chance, without any strict adherence to 

logic.  In real life, stuff just happens.  We expect more than that from fiction.  

We want order.  Even the ‘surprises' within a plot must have some kind of 

inherent logic to them, some foreshadowing and should make sense, in order 

to give us an ending that is sensible and satisfying.

It is that ongoing question of ‘Why' that keeps us writers up late at night.  

Once you create your characters, setting and initial set-up, everything that 

follows has to make some kind of sense.  A plot must also be a unified 

whole made up of those three familiar phases: the beginning, middle 

and end.                                                                                                                                

The Beginning, or set-up, defines your characters and, most 

importantly, what they want.  Wanting something leads to motivation - 

why a character does what she does.  Begin with someone wanting 

something they cannot easily have, and you are well on your way to 

creating a plot that holds a reader's interest.

The Middle, or rising action of the plot, is when your character 

pursues her goal.  The action comes directly from the intent, clearly 

growing out of what happened in The Beginning.  First cause, now 

effect. 

To keep the plot interesting, your character should run into one or 

more problems or obstacles that keep her from successfully 

completing her intention.  These obstacles, or reversals, cause tension 

and conflict because they alter the path the character must take to get 

to her intended goal.  If nothing stands in her way, there is no conflict 

or tension and your story fails as a plot.  It is merely an empty story.  

A good plot does not make things easy for the characters or the reader. 

From conflict and tension comes the suspense that makes the reader 

want to read on.

Later in The Middle should come a moment of recognition, when 

the relationships between the major characters change as a result of 

the obstacle or reversal.  A reversal is an event, but recognition is 

the irreversible emotional change within the characters brought on 

by that event.  Both the reversal and recognition must come from 

within the story being told, not out of the blue.  In the old Roman 

and Greek dramas, playwrights often solved impossible plot problems 

by introducing a god or angel at the end to make everything right - a 

‘Deus ex Machina'.  Modern audiences have little patience for such easy, 

convenient endings.  Without miracles to rely on, writers have to depend 

on what is possible and already established within the plot.  Your problems 

and solutions have to make sense.

The End is the final stage of the plot.  It contains the climax, the falling action and 

the denouement.  The ending is the logical outcome of all the events in the first two 

phases.  Everything that has happened to this point inevitably leads to a final 

resolution in which all is exposed and clarified.  Everything - who, what and where - 

is explained, and everything should make sense.

There are many good books available about plotting, each containing excellent advice,

but these are some of the basics you will find in all of them:

Lowest Common Plot Denominators

1. Make tension fuel your plot.  Without tension there is no plot, only

   a short, boring story: 

2. Create tension through opposition. 

3. Make tension grow as opposition increases.               

4. Make change the point of your story. 

5. When something happens, make sure it's important. 

6. Make the causal look casual. 

7. Make sure you leave Lady Luck and chance to the lottery. 

8. Make sure your central character performs the central action of the

   climax.

While by no means complete, the following list shows most of the basic plot themes.  

For more detailed descriptions, analyses and examples of each, check out 

Ronald B. Tobias' book "20 Master Plots (And How To Build Them)".

 1. Quest

2. Adventure

3. Pursuit

4. Rescue

5. Escape

6. Revenge

7. The Riddle

8. Rivalry

9. Underdog

10. Temptation

11. Metamorphosis

12. Transformation

13. Maturation

14. Love

15. Forbidden Love

16. Sacrifice

17. Discovery

18. Wretched Excess

19. Ascension

20. Descension