Finding a Plot

I have always struggled with plotlines for my stories, especially short stories. I have never had a problem creating characters or settings, but plots have always stumped me. However, this year, thanks to a lot of help from my wonderful dissertation supervisor, I have started to understand how to find a plot within a story.

Firstly, there needs to be a conflict. This is pretty straight forward and probably quite obvious. But there won’t be a plot without a conflict.

Secondly, there needs to be a narrative arc. This means that at least one of your characters has to change by the end of the story. Even if it’s a short story, even if the story is set within a day or even a few minutes, a character must change or there is no narrative arc. The change can be something small like a character learning something about themselves or deciding to let another character help them rather than stubbornly shutting them out. It could be a decision that is made after the character has spent the whole story struggling to make it.

Bear in mind that having a character change doesn’t mean that your story needs to have a resolution. The change in your character does not need to be something that fixes everything in the story. The resolution of the story can easily be that there is no resolution at all. But, whether or not the conflict is resolved, at least one of your characters does need to evolve in some way.

So you need to ask yourself, what is the conflict in my story and what about my character would change due to this conflict? I also read somewhere that it is helpful to write a logline for your story by condensing these questions into one sentence. In that sentence, you will find your plot. 

This all sounds like very simple advice, but I assure you it’s important. Without conflict or a narrative arc your story will sound more like an extract from something longer than a story in its own right.

I hope this was helpful. Thanks for reading and I hope you all have a wonderful new year.