Best Techniques To Make A Story Plot

You are a talented writer, but you just can’t find that right idea that makes a lightbulb light up?a good story plot? You have a good idea for a story, but you can’t seem to make it work quite right? Or maybe you can’t even figure out where to begin in your story? you only have the part about the hero being a talented sword fighter figured out. Maybe you know everything there is to know about the protagonist, but you just can’t figure out why the antagonist is an antagonist. It could just be you’re missing one small thing, but you don’t know what.

It’s fine. You’re not the only one who’s had trouble writing the plot, knowing where it’s going, and knowing where it will end. In fact, the most common problem for authors is that they can’t quite figure out their own plot.

I know it sounds silly, I mean, how hard can it be to write a plot? How hard can it be to know what happens in your own story?

But it can be hard, so without further ado, I’m going to give you the best advice to craft an amazing plot, structure your story, and create a basic story arc.

Story Plot Questionnaire 

All stories start from one stray thought. Perhaps you had it flit through your brain when you were watching TV. Maybe it occurred to you while you were at work. Or while you were reading a book. Wherever it happened, your story came from one stray thought. That one stray thought is your story’s premise.

A premise is the thought your whole story will be built up from. Whether is was something as simple as ‘A fairy should become a police officer,’ to something as complicated as ‘What if a dragon got turned into a human and had to learn how to live with humans, but then after they get married to a human and have kids, they turn back into a dragon?’

As great as a premise is though, that’s not all you can use for your story. If you want it to be really amazing you need the whole plot at least most figured out before you start writing. That brings us to the Premise Solution.

The Premise Solution is one of the easiest and best ones to use when crafting a plot. It is actually very simple to use. All you need to do is ask these questions:

Who is the protagonist?

What is the situation?

What is the protagonist’s personal condition at the beginning?

How will that condition be changed, for better or worse, by the protagonist or the antagonist?

What is the protagonist’s objective at the beginning?

What does the protagonist want at the beginning?

What moral (or immoral) choice will the protagonist have to make to achieve that goal?

Who is the opponent?

Who or what stands in the way of the protagonist’s objective?

What misfortune will befall the protagonist as a result of them trying to achieve their objective?

What’s the conflict?

What is the logical flow of cause and effect that will keep the disaster to continue throughout the plot?

How will the problems be resolved?

Will the protagonist achieve what they want?

As you can see, there are quite a few questions, but they will help you turn your premise into a whole plot. You will know your main character, your main villain, the challenges your character will face, why they face the challenges, and you’ll know how the story needs to end.

Knowing all this makes it easy to craft an intriguing story that will capture the attention of readers everywhere. And it makes in one-hundred percent easier to plan everything. All you’ll need to do after you answer these questions is use them to form a plot. Figure out what you want to happen, when you want it to happen, and how.

From there you will also know what type of story you’re writing, and that will lead us to the next step…

Story Plot Structure

Structure is very similar to plot, but where plot is the events that make up your story, structure is the overall design of your story. Structure determines the the amount of time your story takes to finish, the time it takes place in, and the arc it takes.

To have a good structure is to have a good story, so double check it. Does the direction of your story make sense? Are there any characters or scenes that don’t contribute to the plot at all. Are there any areas that seem out of place?

It is okay to have one or two scenes that don’t contribute to the action, adventure, romance, or anything in between, as long as they contribute to character growth for later in the story. After all, it would be pretty boring if your character didn’t learn anything, wouldn’t it?

Another thing is to make sure that if you have multiple story arcs, they all fit up at the end. You don’t want to end a story with loose ends, unless there is a sequel to the first story, in which case you’ll need to have a story arc for a series, and then create a story arc for each individual story and tie them together.

Long story short, the structure and the story arc is important. So when you create it, ask yourself these questions:

Does the story arc match the direction I want to head?

Does the structure of the story match with the type of story I’m writing? Fast paced for adventure and action? Suspense building for mystery? Tense for thriller? Terrifying for horror?

Can I keep this story arc and structure throughout the story?

Once you have the answer to these questions, you have everything you need to know for your story arc and structure.

And there it is. You’ve crafted a plot and figured out the structure for your story, all without any brain melting thinking sessions that demand attention and take up lots of time.