Elements of a story
Every scenario of a plot has been written.
So what will make your story unique is you, and your writing style and unique point of view.
A plot is a series of events that make up a story. Writers usually link these events chronologically in a cause-and-effect sequence.
We should not view plotting as a creative passion killer.
Plotting is a creative process
You’re creating an entire story in short form, providing an outline framework that will have the blanks filled in during writing.
What can be more motivating than when you have a complete outline for your novel to guide you from, “once upon a time”… to … “They lived happily ever after”?
What can be more discouraging than coming to a grinding halt on a manuscript 30,000 words shy of your target with nothing left to say?
Plotting is an excellent helper to the writing process.
Plotting ensures your novel has a balanced beginning, middle, and end.
The writer must divide the story into 25% beginning, 50% middle and 25% end.
The rule of thumb is that the beginning accounts for 25% of the length of the story, as does the end, with the middle making up the bulk at 50%.
A writer’s worst nightmare is to discover he or she has run out of things to say well before the end of the story.
You either have to trash the story, rethink the story, hope inspiration strikes or the worst of the worst options, just slap an ending on the thing and just hope no one notices.
By plotting out your story, the “what happens now?” We eliminated the scenario.
Let's work on scenes
Estimate upfront how many significant scenes you’d like to occur. Let’s say you pick a hundred. To maintain the portions of classic telling, the beginning would have 25 scenes, the middle would have 50, and the end would have 25.
Next, work out what will happen during those scenes.
You can do this in many ways. You can write the scenes out on index cards, or some people prefer to use a spreadsheet.
Writing your scenes on index cards allows you to move the scenes around as you feel necessary to keep the readers intrigued, so they keep turning those pages.
You may want to color-code your index cards or spreadsheet.
By color-coding each card, you can see if the subplot or a single character dominates the story. You may think this is overkill, but it’s better to think your story through now than to have 50,000 words and be totally lost.
A well-planned plot ensures a smooth transition.
This is especially appropriate to novel-length fiction where there are main storylines, subplots, and multiple points of view characters.
When switching between plotlines, you don’t want that subplot becoming the story’s primary focus or the main plot to becoming the subplot.
In juggling changes in point of view, the protagonist and antagonist points of view should be the dominant voices the reader hears, so keep the voices of secondary characters in check.
Again, maintain the balance. Don’t let the major story or subplot take over for long sections, and don’t let point-of-view characters dominate the voice of the book while others go into hibernation.
If you know the story’s development and plan, you can easily visualize where the story is going.
You can eliminate silences in the story
If the subplot or a particular character’s viewpoint dominates the storyline, trim it back. If you do an excellent plotting job, then the story will build tension from its initial conflict to its eventual climax.
Following these elements of a story will make your story transitions effortless and will lead you to write “page-turners” that will leave your reader breathless.
