How to Write a Novel: Plot: What happens in the story?
“Every story is about a character who gets into trouble and then tries to get out of it.”
—Kurt Vonnegut
Plot is what happens to the characters in your story. It’s the events of your book.
A plot point can be small, like receiving a letter and showing the emotional impact of its contents. Or it can be significant, like a bomb going off in central London. Your plot points will be determined by the type of story and your creative vision.
Some writers start with story ideas about plot and work backward to character, theme, and everything else. Others come to plot later. It doesn’t matter. However you do it, your book needs plot!
How do you come up with plot ideas?
Every writer has their strengths and some are brimming with ideas about plot. But what if you’re struggling for what happens in your story?
Consider the following places to start.
If you have a character already, what do they want? How can you stop your character from getting what they want? What obstacles can you put in their way? How can you make things more difficult? How will they overcome those obstacles or challenges in order to achieve their goal?
How does one thing lead to another?
In The Hunger Games, the inciting incident is when Prim, Katniss’s sister, is chosen for The Reaping. Katniss volunteers to take her place. This one decision (plot point) leads to the events of the games (a load of other plot points).
Each action by a character (or plot point) can lead to unexpected consequences. In A Game of Thrones, Cersei Lannister goes up against the High Sparrow, a religious leader who humbles her in front of her people as punishment. As she walks through the streets naked, pelted with rubbish by the people of King’s Landing, we know this moment (plot point) will lead to some kind of violent retribution (plot point).
Cersei’s revenge when it comes (plot point) is a double-edged sword. Every action — every plot point — leads to something else. Every choice has a consequence.
Setting can also inspire plot. If you have a setting in mind, what kind of interesting things could happen there?
I was inspired to write my crime thriller Desecration when I visited the Hunterian Museum in London. The atrium has glass cabinets full of macabre anatomical specimens in jars, and I imagined a recently dead body lying in the middle of it all. The story idea started with the setting, which then inspired aspects of plot, which then gave rise to characters.
If you’re interested in a topic, research it through books and documentaries and note down events that could turn into plot. A Game of Thrones draws inspiration from the bloody history of medieval England. Fifteenth-century prince Edward of Lancaster inspired the character of King Joffrey Baratheon, and various battles in the novels were based on the Wars of the Roses.
The relics of the Apostles inspired my thriller Stone of Fire, and some of the bones lie in cathedrals around Europe and the Middle East. Morgan and Jake have to retrieve powerful stones carried by the Apostles in a race against time, so the plot was driven by the places they visited on the adventure. My research drove both setting and plot.
Consider your favorite books, films, and TV shows. Many of them might use similar plot points, but the originality is in the characters, the world, and what the writer brings that is unique.
Plot is also determined by the reader’s expectation for your genre. If you’re writing a mystery, there will be a murder and the plot points will relate to finding the murderer. If you’re writing a romance, you need specific plot points around how the characters meet, what obstacles they face, and how they overcome them to reach a happy ending.
Go fill the creative well. Read, watch movies, check the news, or social media. Notice what is happening in the world — then turn those things into plot ideas.
The main plot and the subplots, or A and B plots
There is usually one overarching main plot that drives a story.
In A Game of Thrones, it is the fight for the throne of Westeros. In The Hunger Games, Katniss must win the games in order to survive. In Map of Shadows, Sienna and the Mapwalker team must find the map before the Shadow Cartographers use it to open a portal and reclaim Earthside.
The subplots are everything else that goes on, and there are usually lots of subplots involving different characters.
In A Game of Thrones, one subplot is Tyrion’s relationship with his brother, Jamie, and with the rest of the Lannisters. This relationship enriches the characters, introduces new plot threads, and intensifies the overall emotional resonance of the novel. We all understand family conflict! Tyrion also has a comedic subplot with the mercenary Bronn who starts out as a sword for hire but ends up as a loyal friend.
In The Hunger Games, Katniss’s relationship with Peeta is a romance subplot. In Map of Shadows, there is a romantic subplot between Sienna and the rebel Borderlander Finn, as well as a subplot involving Sienna’s mastery of her Mapwalking magic — and the price she must pay to use it.
You can use subplots to develop character and introduce other elements that engage the reader in the world of the story. Many authors end up developing side characters and subplots into stories of their own.
Raise the stakes
“Story is about how the things that happen in the plot affect the protagonist and how he or she changes internally as a result.”
—Lisa Cron, Story Genius
There has to be a reason that characters are driven into a plot. They have to be motivated enough to go through with whatever you throw at them. The stakes have to be high enough.
What might they lose?
What might they gain?
In the opening chapters of my thriller Stone of Fire, a shadowy group of assassins attack Morgan Sierra at her office in Oxford, seeking the powerful stone her archaeologist father gave her before he was killed.
Morgan fights back, but her only goal is to get out alive. She has no interest in joining the wider mission of the ARKANE secret agency investigating the supernatural mystery of the stones.
But then her twin sister and little niece are abducted and Morgan must find the stones before the clock ticks down to their fiery end. The stakes are suddenly much higher and Morgan will do anything for her family.
I write thrillers, so the stakes are often life and death, but stakes can be emotional or social or psychological as well. One reason YA novels are so powerful is because when we’re young adults everything feels so intense and life-changing. I still have my journals from age fifteen, and the stakes were clearly high, even though I look back and think differently now.
Will the boy I fancy ask me out? Will I get good grades in my exams — and if I don’t, is my life over?
Does God have a plan for me — and if I have sex before marriage, am I going to hell? (I was in an evangelical Christian youth group at the time, so much of my journal is about God — and boys!)
The stakes in your novel will depend on the genre you write, your characters, and your creative direction.
Try/fail cycles
A story won’t be satisfying to the reader if your character wants something, tries to get it, and achieves their goal straight away.
The character needs to go through multiple try/fail cycles.
They need to attempt to get to their goal, fail because something or someone stops them, then try again, and so on, until they finally achieve their goal, or fail completely — depending on the kind of story it is.
The TV medical drama House has these try/fail cycles in every episode. A patient is admitted to the hospital with a horrific disease. As the clock ticks toward their gruesome end, Dr House and his team must discover what’s wrong before it’s too late. There are try/fail cycles each time in the diagnostic process until the final attempt when the patient is treated successfully.
In your story, make sure the protagonist doesn’t get what they want the first — or even the second — time.
Plot twists and other ways of surprising the reader
Plot twists are elements of a story that surprise the reader. The twist might delight them or it might horrify them, but whatever it is, the story goes in a direction that they did not expect.
James Patterson goes into detail on this in his MasterClass video course. As he outlines, he considers multiple endings to each scene, and says, “When there are big plot points, discard your first idea, and your second, and your third. Otherwise, it will be obvious to the reader.”
The end of the first book (and TV series) of A Game of Thrones has a twist in the form of a main character dying unexpectedly. No spoilers! We are led to believe a particular character is the protagonist and the most likely victor for the throne. When the brutal twist comes, it scatters the other characters to the wind and sends the story in a new direction. This happens so many times in the TV adaptation of A Game of Thrones. It really is a masterclass in twists and misdirection.
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn starts out as a murder mystery, but the use of an unreliable narrator turns it into a psychological thriller. While this technique was surprising when the book came out, the number of subsequent ‘lookalike’ books has made it much harder to surprise readers with an unreliable narrator.
But it’s okay — not all stories need twists and surprises, and you don’t have to supply them to satisfy readers. So if it’s not your thing, don’t worry!
Obligatory scenes
Expectations about a book shape how your reader experiences the story.
If they bought a sweet romance with a happy couple on the cover, then they expect something different to an epic fantasy, a horror novel, or literary fiction.
There are conventions in every genre; in The Story Grid, Shawn Coyne describes these as ‘obligatory scenes.’ The reader expects them and will be disappointed if they are missing from the book.
As a thriller reader, I expect a scene where the hero is at the mercy of the villain. A classic mystery reader will expect a scene where the dead body is discovered, and one near the end where the detective unmasks the murderer.
Romance readers expect a scene where the lovers meet, then various events stop them getting together, and at some point, a first kiss, or something more explicit if it’s erotica.
In horror novels, genre fans know that when the protagonist thinks evil is vanquished and everything is going to be okay, evil will probably return one more time.
Consider what you expect as a reader in the books you love the most. How can you incorporate such obligatory scenes with an original spin?
Tropes
Tropes are part of what readers enjoy in a genre. They are an aspect of the story that makes a reader feel like this is the book for them. They are more granular than the obligatory scene, and can have aspects of character, plot, setting, or theme.
A character trope might be The Chosen One in fantasy — for example, Harry Potter, Neo in The Matrix, or Luke Skywalker in Star Wars.
A setting trope might be a ruined castle on a moonlight night for Gothic horror.
A plot trope might be ‘enemies to lovers’ for a romance.
But tropes will not make your writing cliché. As ever, it is the personal spin we bring to a story that makes it original.
We all have different aspects of story that we love, things that are catnip to our reader’s mind and creative soul. Dr Jennifer Lynn Barnes has a wonderful talk she gives on the topic of the “Id List,” teaching writers how to identify the elements of story that make it irresistible to you and your readers. The Id is the most primitive and instinctual part of us, the aspect that shouts, ‘Yes, I love this!’
We all have different things on our Id Lists. Some of mine include tombs and crypts, relationships between sisters, violent thunderstorms, ancient manuscripts in hidden libraries, religious relics, maps and cartography, priests and nuns, fathers and daughters, ancient Egypt, scars, apocalyptic evil, and much more!
Create your own Id List and include aspects of them in your novel.
Flashbacks
Readers experience your story in a linear fashion, from beginning to end. If you halt the forward momentum with a flashback, you interrupt that flow. You drag the reader out of the moment of the story.
There are sometimes good reasons to use flashbacks, but many new writers overuse them to illustrate back story, when it isn’t necessary.
If you want to write a scene from the past, consider whether you really need it, or whether there is another way to portray that aspect of the character’s back story — for example, provide hints in different places, or memories that emerge during the plot, rather than all at once.
Open questions and open loops
“Don’t give the audience four. Give them two plus two.”
—Andrew Stanton, filmmaker, WALL-E, Toy Story
Readers are smart, especially voracious readers in a particular genre. You don’t need to hit them over the head with the obvious. You don’t need a huge signpost spelling out meaning.
In fact, you want to do the opposite.
Open loops leave the reader desperate to close them.
Provoke questions in the reader’s mind and they will read on to find the answer.
When you close one loop, open another.
If you answer a question, make sure there are others still waiting to be dealt with.
This desire to close the circle and answer all the questions will drive the reader through the novel, and by the end, they can feel satisfied that everything has been tied up with a neat bow. Unless, of course, you’re writing a series and want to pull them into the next book with more open loops.
Read one of the books you love and note the open questions and open loops that pull you through the story. Where are they placed? How many open loops does the writer have at one time? How can you use the same technique with your plot?
Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is including something earlier in the story that makes sense later on. When the reader gets to that later point, they have a satisfying ‘aha’ moment.
But don’t worry, it’s not complicated to do this.
The reader experiences your story in a linear fashion, but you don’t need to write it that way. Once you’ve finished, go back in during the editing process and add foreshadowing to deepen the reader experience.
In Destroyer of Worlds, Asha Kapoor wants to use a mythological weapon at the Kumbh Mela, the largest Hindu pilgrimage in the world. The weapon is hidden on a statue of Shiva Nataraja, where the Hindu god dances the universe into destruction surrounded by a circle of flames.
In Asha’s first scene, she trails her fingers through candle flames at the bedside of her dying father, and I use the metaphor of flame throughout, foreshadowing her ultimate fiery end.
You can also set up your character for later aspects of plot. In The Hunger Games, Katniss uses a bow and arrow to keep herself alive. In the opening chapters, we see her hunting for food, demonstrating her expertise with the weapon, so it’s not a surprise when she later uses it to kill.
Losing the plot
If you’re an outliner, you might never experience this. But as a discovery writer, I tend to ‘lose the plot’ at some point in every first draft.
I usually have enough in my head to write to around 20,000 words and then I grind to a halt. The story is a chaotic mess and I need to figure out what the hell is happening.
I print out what I have so far — often a load of random scenes — and read it through, noting down anything that might be a jumping off point to something else. There will also be open questions about characters and conflict, or I consider how a setting could be used more effectively for the story, or anything else that comes to mind.
You can also put the story away for a week to get some distance and then read through what you have again. Or do some more research about the ideas, places, and people that fuel the story. Trust the creative process and something will emerge. You will find the plot again!
Questions:
• If you aren’t already brimming with plot ideas, how might you come up with them?
• What is your main plot?
• What are your subplots?
• How can you raise the stakes so the plot is more engaging to the reader?
• How can you incorporate try/fail cycles into your plot?
• Do the books you enjoy incorporate twists and surprises? How could you work a plot twist into your novel?
• Consider what you expect as a reader in the books you love the most. How can you incorporate such obligatory scenes with an original spin?
• What are some tropes that you love in books, film, and TV? How can you incorporate tropes to satisfy readers while still making them fresh?
• What are some of the story elements that are catnip to you as a reader and as an author? What aspects go on your Id List?
• Do your favorite books use flashbacks? When might they be effective in your novel? Are there other ways of presenting the same story elements?
• Read one of the books you love and note the open questions and open loops that pull you through the story. How can you do the same with your plot?
• Which elements of your plot or characters could you foreshadow early in your story?
• What questions can you ask yourself or your novel if you lose the plot?
Resources:
• Mastering Plot Twists: How to Use Suspense, Targeted Storytelling Strategies, and Structure to Captivate Your Readers — Jane K. Cleland
• Plot and Structure: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting a Plot that Grips Readers from Start to Finish — James Scott Bell
• Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel — Lisa Cron
• The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know — Shawn Coyne
• List of TV tropes — www.tvtropes.org
• MasterClass video course with James Patterson — www.TheCreativePenn.com/masterclass
• “The Clues to a Great Story,” Andrew Stanton TED talk — www.ted.com/talks/andrew_stanton_the_clues_to_a_great_story
• “Writing for Your Id,” Dr Jennifer Lynn Barnes talk for Romance Writers America (RWA) — www.TheCreativePenn.com/idlist
• “The Shapes of Stories” video with Kurt Vonnegut — www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP3c1h8v2ZQ
