Thread:ThisIsXenon/@comment-36433141-20191207014927/@comment-32273133-20191209165104

Hey! I’m not sure how much information that I can give will be helpful or coherent but I’ll try my best.

First and foremost: Character motivation drives plot. Your characters want something. Your job as a writer is to make it as hard as possible for them to get it.

How to do that? First, focus on yourself. Investigate your goal. What do you want to accomplish with this work? Tell an alternate story? Practise character development? Give info into backstory? Expand on a really good idea? Figuring out what you want to accomplish will guide your plot. If you’re telling an alternate story, you’re going to have a similar premise as something that’s already happened. If you’re doing character dev, your plot is going to be very character-centric and you’ll likely have a character dev arc included. If you’re writing a backstory, you likely have events in mind based on how you created your character. If it’s just an idea, then the sky’s the limit, but there’s more to do than just plot [if you want me to go on about the other three parts of story writing after this ((characters, setting, theme)) let me know]

For me and the GGaD fic, my purpose was telling an alternate story and character development. Telling this alternate story has helped me figure out plots for the actual rp as well as doing serious character dev. It was also a writing exercise of sorts, since I’m writing other people’s characters and am trying to stay true to them.

Next, focus on your characters. What do they want? What’s their heart’s desire? What are their petty wants? What will they do to satisfy those wants? How far will they go? These can change as the plot goes on, but they don’t have to. Usually, the plot is started by a character’s want. The first thing that came to mind was the hunger games:  katniss’s initial want is to protect her family, so that’s why she volunteers to go to the hunger games in prim’s place. it changes over time to winning the tournament so she can see her family again.

The other plot starter is putting a character in a situation and seeing what they do. There are two ways to do this:  ordinary character in an extraordinary situation [a la Harry Potter and Percy Jackson] or extraordinary character in an ordinary situation [like the book Wonder].

Most works combine these two methods.

Now the hard part:  starting. Usually when I start outlining a plot, I have a good idea of where I want to start and a less coherent and less concrete idea of where I want to end, as well as some linking stuff. For example, in the ggad fic, I knew I wanted to start with Micah stealing the book of corruption, and I want to end this arc with Micah getting the Freedom sword and battling Oganesson. I also wanted to add in a romantic subplot with Micah and Damian, as well as a character arc with Micah’s trauma.

If you don’t know where start, jump to the middle of the first moment you want to happen. Don’t infodump. Don’t start with a description of the main character.

Examples Another note:  there’s nothing that says you have to keep your beginning. Feel free to start earlier, or later, or somewhere completely different if you feel the story isn’t going the way it should. I have a work where I’ve been poking at its beginning for almost four years and I just figured out that I don’t like where it’s going and that’s why I can’t get more than five thousand words on it.
 * Arc one starts with Micah running away from a group of soldiers. There’s no leadup to it, he’s just running away and grumbling to himself about the circumstances [which is how we figure out how the heck he got here].
 * Arc two starts a couple minutes after someone gets shot. Again, there’s a little “how the heck did we get here” but it’s not infodump

Once you have a good idea for your beginning, ending, and kinda sorta a middle, you get to the in-between points. The details and the in-between is the hardest part for me, but usually I can get somewhere by asking “what does the character want?” And then “what goes wrong?” For example, in arc 2, there’s a group of characters going on a mission somewhere, and I needed an event in between them meeting up and then getting to where the mission takes place. “What do the characters want?” To get to their destination as fast as possible. “What goes wrong?” I believe my plot outline says “uuuhhh forest monster?” and then I just ran with that idea. It works because the cadre of characters are in a forest and that monster reveals an important plot point later.

If there’s a gap that you have no idea how to fill, then timeskip! If there’s a week or a couple where nothing happens, skip the nothing and keep going. You can give a short description of what happened.

There’s no good way for me to explain generically how to plot the middle of something, usually when I help people I do it with their story specifically.

The ending? Is never solid until you get there. Don’t stress about making it perfect until you get there, because there’s a high probability it could change. Focus on getting there.

Short note on plot lines:  having more than one major plot line and then tying them all together near the end is the coolest fucking thing ever, if you can pull it off. But it’s hard. Most everything I’ve ever written is single plotline; the only ones I can think of that are multi are this one poorly executed and never finished work I wrote when I was in middle school, and arc 2.

In terms of format, bullet lists are my favourite. The structure looks something like this:
 * Big idea


 * Supporting part

Sometimes I’ll go straight from big idea bullets to the dialogue bullets if I’m getting ideas in dialogue or narrative form. Most of the GGaD fic arc 2 plot is like that
 * More support or dialogue I want to use

Examples:
 * A bad thing happens


 * Details about bad thing
 * More details

vs...
 * “Yikes! That’s a bad thing!”
 * A bad thing happens


 * “Yikes! That’s a bad thing!”

To conclude, random tips and general info I can go into more depth on other stuff if you want, just let me know.
 * Details
 * Plotting a long work can take years, and every plot point can change, even the major ones. It took me almost two years to write the Arc one plot outline, and I changed some pretty major plot points along the way
 * Read as much as you can! Analyse the plot structure of Books you read! See how the author keeps the story moving. [books I recommend with good plots:  six of crows, ink and bone, cinder].