*cracks knuckles*

ALRIIIIIGGGGHHHTTT. Let's do this. A crash course in plotting, because there's one important thing I think people overlook when it comes to plotting.

Plotting doesn't start with BAM STORY.
Instead, it is beginning with *structure*. https://twitter.com/TreyStoneAuthor/status/1263843154324791299

Technically, it doesn't begin with structure.
You have to have some idea of what sort of story you start with.

Now what that initial idea is could be a LOT of different things. I made a video about this; I call it the Fundamental Axiom of Prewriting.

So, books have lots of elements.
Your idea is probably one or two elements.

Next step is to start fleshing out those remaining elements you don't have. I do this by a combination of freewriting, brainstorming, and also by expanding a synopsis.

(I explain how I use a synopsis to develop those elements here:
)

Okay but right, you have a vague idea of what the story is about. You know your characterish - at least ish, you have a vague idea of your world.

How the FUCK does that become a story?

GOOD QUESTION. *HERE* is where structure comes in.

Right, if I'm looking at a plot, I'm not starting from "OKay here's the beginning of the story, what next? What next? Okay then what next?"

I start from a bigger skeleton.

That formal skeleton is three act structure () but you don't need formal.

So like. I start thinking in terms of try-fail cycles. That's really all plot points are: the characters try something, to achieve a goal, and they fail, and hopefully make things worse in an interesting sort of way.

Let's say you're writing a heist story and you know you want a heist annnnnd... that's all you got.

Alright. Big picture structure time:

Well, the culmination of this, the climax, should be the big payoff heist itself.

There's the inciting incident: why this job?

And then I start thinking about this from a structural perspective. I like 3 big try-fail cycles as a starting off point, but you can obviously have many more (fewer makes it harder to fill a book).

So they need to try things. Alright. What can they try? What comes up?

This is where knowing your genre matters - you know what tropes are fresh, and what tropes are cliche.

Classic trope of the heist story is getting the team together.
So our structure start's looking like this...

THEY WANT THIS JOB
-Get the team together
-Plot Point 2
-Plot Point 3
-Big heist
----> It goes wrong
----> But they get away anyway.

See how I'm starting from this broad skeleton? This broad skeleton helps me know that, in the big picture, I'm constantly raising stakes and implicitly building in reversals.

Maybe Plot Point 2 is they do a smaller heist together, and it doesn't go well because the team isn't gelling and there's infighting. They get away, but it's bad.

Pencil that bad boy in there.

Plot point 3? We need to escalate the stakes. Maybe they got away from that heist in pp2, but because they got away roughly now the RIVAL EXPERT is brought in on security.

OH NO! THINGS ARE *EVEN WORSE*.

We can also season other elements in there to taste.
Maybe one of the team turns traitor but comes back.
Maybe the rival is moving the goods much sooner than they expected, so they suddenly have to do a rushed version of the job.

The point I'm trying to illustrate with this off the cuff example is not that specifics, but the process.

I started with a rough skeleton of a structure and started figuring it out from there big try-fail arcs.

And mind you, try-fail can go all the way down to "they try to get through a door and it trips a small alarm...".

Like, at the micro scene level individual beats are try-fail arcs.

This is DEFINITELY not how I started writing books. I had several failed approaches.

I started from the beginning and went what next?
This failed because I didn't really know what I was headed towards or how I was raising the stakes.

I took deep deep dives into my characters to "feel them out and let them live in the moment."

Yeah that didn't work because characters by themselves aren't subconsciously considering good dramatic structure.

(You can see this in the works of Stephen King, for example, a SUPER notorious pantser. His more complicated stories? Their plot just... kinda... lands... weird.)

I did rigorous scene-sequel-scene-sequel one after the other after the other.

That was fine. But those beats weren't building to anything larger.

WHAT PLOTTING IS NOT:
Formula.

It's absolutely not a formula. 3 big plot points is a nice rule of thumb to start with, but you can do more or less as appropriate. I've found 3 is enough to get me ~80 - 100k.

And like, what goes IN those plot points? That's where you get to really be a writer.

Do those heist tropes sound boring to you? Brainstorm more interesting ones. Come up with clever twists on it.

It's FREEDOM to make something AWESOME.

And that's really why I stopped pantzing my books, tbh.
I could spend my energy figuring out what the cool big parts of the structure were, and not spend my worry on the immediate "What's next?"

It let me spend my energy where I liked to.

Now, DISCLAIMERS:
People who pantz stories are not "wrong." There is not one way to write a novel; I've found through iterating a lot of approaches and falling on my face a lot this is what works for me. Ymmv.

I also think it's really important to acknowledge what we consider a "good" plot (like solid 3 act structure) is very much a cultural construct.

Other people tell stories differently, and they're equally valid.

If you have any questions feel free to fire away because like, plotting and systems and all of that, that is my JAM, and I love talking process.
#writingcommunity