Plot in Fiction Writing

Plot answers three questions: what happened, how it happened, and why. It’s the relationship between events in the story, their causes and consequences. Harold Hayes: “The essence of drama is that man cannot walk away from the consequences of his deeds.” Remember, characters are people and therefore make decisions, mistakes, take actions that all have consequences. Josip Novakovich: “A perfect character is a dead equation.”

Plot deals with characters’ yearnings and passions, and how the characters struggle to fulfill them. What does your character treasure most? You can put it at stake in the story and let the character fight for it.

Often, plot can be seen in terms of conflict. What is in conflict with your character? Who is in conflict with your character? How is your character in conflict with him or herself? What is the central conflict in your story, the one that drives the characters and the story itself?

The story can revolve around a character’s epiphany, or sudden insight or realization. But that’s probably not the end of the story. What does that insight then lead the character to do?

Avoid trick endings, where everyone but the reader knows what’s going on until the end. Also, avoid the “And then he woke up” ending—makes your work come across as a joke with a punch line rather than a rich, textured story.

Where do you begin your story? The answer is, when the important, relevant stuff starts to happen, and not before then. But you have some choices as to how to arrange your structure. You can begin with the beginning of the conflict, maybe a precipitating incident, and then accumulate incidents and complications toward the final climax (Freytag’s pyramid). You can begin in medias res and put necessary (and only the necessary) information in a few well chosen flashbacks. A few recent writers have begun at the end and worked backwards scene by scene. Each option has its advantages and disadvantages. The overall question is, how close to the final climax to begin in order to achieve the effect you want the story to have.

Remember, the readers have got to be able to figure out what happened when, and how. How much work can you ask them to do? (Answer varies).

The principle of “Chekhov’s gun”: if you mention a gun in the beginning, it’s got to have some relevance later. If you make a big deal about said gun, it’s going to have to go off at some point.

In a short story, every single thing has to relate to the central incident/central conflict. Same goes for a novel, although that relationship can be much looser, more indirect, and you might have more than one “central” conflict. In a short story, everything can revolve around one conflict, one character, one event, one moment of revelation. In a novel, we’ll need more than one character, more than one event, several turning points and crises, etc.

Most writers, I’d guess 90%, advise that you not outline plot first and write from that. I concur. Tried it, didn’t work. In fact, it’s the reason I quit working on one novel project that I had been so excited about. You can start with vague ideas about plot, but when you start drafting, let the story (character) go where it needs to go.