Plot is one of the hardest things to explain. You don't want and overly simple plot like a girl falls in love with a vampire, the vampire kills a bad guy and they go to prom. But you also don't want a way-over-the-top confusing plot where a flock of human bird hybrids are fighting against The School, and then suddenly there's these Itexicon people who are planning world domination, then they think it's a good idea to go to Antarctica, I mean Antarctica, why Antarctica? And who the hell is this Uber Director and what did they have to do with anything? Who's the real bad guy? Why is there a voice in the main character's head? Who is the voice? Were they really just dreaming the whole time? Then there's all this Fax-ness, what? Where is this story going?
Yeah, you don't want a plot line like that.
The three major points I have on the topic of plot are:
1. Conflict. This is by far the most important aspect when it comes to developing a plot, there is absolutely no plot unless you have some sort of conflict. When working on your plot always make sure to ask yourself, is there any struggle here?
2. Don't throw in random junk. Like I said in the first paragraph, random junk makes the plot line very confusing and people will stop reading after awhile.
3. Don't be cliché. I'm very tired of reading your vampire stories. If you're going to write about a popular topic, make it your own. THE WORLD DOES NOT NEED ANY MORE VAMPIRE ROMANCE BOOKS.
For all you writers struggling to come up with something original -- it's not your fault. There are only so many ways to construct a story. In fact some people believe that there are only seven different plot line.
[wo]man vs. nature [wo]man vs. man [wo]man vs. the environment [wo]man vs. machine/technology [wo]man vs. the supernatural [wo]man vs. self [wo]man vs. god/religion
Can you think of one story that doesn't fall into one of these categories?
Other than that I'd say make sure that you have an exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution (I'm sure you learned that in school.)
Research
Research. Research. Research. Research. Always research. Research everything. If your writing about faeries, research faeries. Writing about WWI? Research WWI. Spend hours, days, months doing research when it comes to writing.
YOU ARE READING
My Guide To Writing
Non-FictionI automatically leave a story when it starts out, “i wuz 10 wen i fell in LOVEEE.” It literally burns my eyes to read something like that, so one time I asked a person why they would write like that and their answer was, “I’d rather get my story out...
