How to Refine Your Plot
AKA Kick Them When They're Down
You’re doing something mundane and suddenly are hit with story inspiration! It’s brilliant, wonderful, and will make you the next [insert famous author here]. Fully formed and fabulous, what could you possibly do to make it any better?
Make the situation worse.
frost to fireSeriously – whatever problem your character has, give them a bigger one. Then an even bigger one than that. Being nice to your characters does them no favors. It’s boring if everything goes their way all the time. Conflict is the heart of story.
People are paying for entertainment; they want to grip the armrests of the chair then sigh away the tension in their shoulders. The more trouble your character gets into, the more the reader wants to know how they get out of it.
And sometimes, so do you.
Whatever corner you write your character into, you have to be able to get them out of it. The first answer is probably obvious. The next one will be better, and number three or number four is likely when you start to feel you’re onto something worthwhile. It may take some time to come up with that final solution. That’s fine; better a realistic victory than a deus ex machina.
Don’t cheat yourself or your readers – make it bad, in a good way.
@longshotauthor: Ah! Ah hah! There’s the problem right there!. Not enough doom. It needs must be doomier.
- Jim Butcher, 5:17 PM Aug 19th from TweetDeck
Sep 17, 2009
Categories: writing
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