Are you struggling to move your story forward?

8 Tips to get your plot from beginning to end

This is not an uncommon problem for most writers of any level. Sometimes just some very simple suggestions can help to take you to that breakthrough moment you need to get your plot working for you.

1. Fiction needs a Dark Night of the Soul. Move your story to the moment when things look impossibly bleak for your protagonist. This is usually a chapter or two before the end of your book.

2. Create conflict that counts from page one.

“A plot is just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what.” Margaret Atwood.

3. Start your book when something meaningful happens. This is called the inciting moment. It should be shocking, exciting, and interesting.

4. Start with a detailed biography of your protagonist and antagonist. This is essential. You need to intimately know who these people are that inhabit your fictional world.

5. Tell a story in scenes. Scenes hold a story together. The number of scenes depends on your chosen genre, and your novel’s length.

“Years ago, someone said to me, ‘Jackson, your books must be printed on scar tissue.’ I was pleased.” Richard Jackson

6. Show motivation. Great characters want to achieve their goals more than anything and will pursue them at any cost. What are your characters most afraid of losing? Make them fight for it. Desperately. Irrationally.

7. Your characters need problems and reasons to solve them.

“Get your character in trouble in the first sentence and out of trouble in the last sentence.” Barthe DeClements

8. What are the chances you’re going to inflict pain on these two characters?

Pain can be a motivator in your book, whether physical or emotional. Use the tools you know in real life. You want your characters to reflect real life. Think about your own life and what has moved you from one place to the next with the people and life circumstances you have experienced.

Happy writing