The Wattpad Advice Corner

How To Develop A Story Plot

So you have an idea which you think is pretty cool, but where do you go from there? Ok, I have a warning about developing your plot, there are two things that could happen during the process of developing/ planning:

1) you get completely bored of your idea because you have to plan out the whole story and that can be dull.

2) you go completely off track because you're stressing too much about what will happen so you write some random stuff on your plan.

Now if you're the type of person who refuses to write a plan because you want to just go with the 'flow', come back to me in a few chapters time when you've already killed off two main characters and your story is now based on a random planet even though your book was a romance book set in Paris.

Plans are important. Knowing what happens in each chapter is important, but planning is very dull so try and make it interesting by playing some music and then get down to the thinking side. DON'T rush your plan because then you end up making some stupid decisions about your plot.

Plan your characters first, and then plan the actual story. Why? Because you can't have a story without characters (I don't think you can... Can you have a story without any characters?) and you need to know the personalities of your characters to determine how they will react to events.

You don't need to write copious amounts of detail in your chapter plan (yes that's right, I highly recommend planning what is in every chapter, even though that is painfully dull. A general story plan can leave room for you to get stuck on what to write in chapters and you don't have any idea of pacing). You just need a few lines saying what will happen in the chapter, any major things to remember.

So what to take away from this: PLAN. Take it from me, I wrote a few books on Wattpad a while back that weren't planned and they ended up being some of the most random, fast paced, confusing books that I've ever seen.