3 Dead-Simple Ways You Can Use The Concept of Plot to Create Memorable Stories
Published 8 months ago • 4 min read
Hi Friend, Welcome to the new edition of The Storytelling Wizard!
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Plot is like a container that holds everything together.
It’s also like a cohesive force.
Whatever metaphor you use, the importance of plot is inescapable. Without it, the writers would drift aimlessly.
Three thousand years of plot creation have given us some simple and least intelligent ways of plot creation as a rule. It’s important to understand the lower bar to raise the bar of any story.
“We must learn the rules to know how to break them. — Pablo Picasso”
1/ Make Tension Fuel Your Plot
Without tension, there’s no plot.
There is only a very short story, and a boring one at that.
Without tension, a basic plot scenario, “Boy Meets Girl!” would go something like this:
Boy meets girl.
Boy asks girl to marry him.
The girl says yes.
End of the story.
What’s the point? You ask yourself. The main character’s intention (or goal) is to marry the girl. So what? Now, add tension.
Boy meets girl.
Boy asks girl to marry him.
The girl says no.
“Why not?” he demands.
“Because you are a drunk,” she answers.
The tension comes from her denial. We get an explanation of her refusal. What he does next will create an effect on the cause (his rejection).
Whenever an intention is denied, the effect is tension.
2/ Create Tension Through Opposition
The purpose of an antagonist is to oppose the protagonist’s goals.
This opposition can take two kinds of forms:
External: a separate person, place, or thing (e.g., an enemy, rival, or competitor)
Internal: within the protagonist (e.g., doubt, fear, or a character flaw like alcoholism)
Let’s go back to the “Boy Meets Girl” example:
The girl rejects the boy’s marriage proposal, creating a local tension.
Local tension: a conflict that arises from the immediate circumstances and has limited impact beyond that moment.
The boy now has two choices:
Walk away from the girl, ending the story.
Decide to overcome her objection, creating a new cause-and-effect sequence.
Writing an entire novel based on the initial rejection would be challenging, but it might work for a short story.
Novels and screenplays consist of both local tensions and multiple overarching tensions that drive the plot.
If the boy decides to marry the girl, he may need to overcome his alcoholism to address her objection.
The tension of being an alcoholic (the desire to drink vs. the desire not to drink) is a long-lasting conflict.
The girl’s refusal leads to a larger conflict: the underlying reason for the boy’s drinking.
As a reader, I would want to know this inner conflict and how the boy will deal with it.
The real conflict of the story may be the boy’s struggle to overcome what drives him to drink, which he must do to marry the girl.
3/ Increasing Tension As Opposition Grows
A story requires constant tension that increases as it builds toward the climax.
Relying on local tension alone is not enough; a larger conflict supporting the story is needed.
The Boy’s Decision and Inner Conflict:
The boy decides to give up drinking, but it’s not easy.
The story now focuses on fundamental questions of character:
Who is this person?
What causes him to drink?
Will he overcome his dependency?
The writer’s job is to address these questions in an interesting and creative way. The central conflict of the story is if the boy can confront his demons and transform into a person who’s worthy of the girl’s love (in the context of this story).
Keeping the engagement alive:
To keep the story from getting stale, the main character should encounter a series of barriers that deepen the opposition.
Each conflict should gain intensity, thrusting readers toward the climax.
Local tension alone can’t build intensity; it creates equal roadblocks that can become boring.
Serious conflicts that deal with characters in fundamental ways are the foundation of the plot.
Example of a Story without Plot:
Boy meets girl and asks her to marry him.
Girl refuses because he’s an alcoholic.
Boy goes to a rehab and gets cured.
Girl agrees to marry boy.
This story has a beginning, middle, and end, but lacks tension and a deepening crisis.
Developing Tension and Deepening Opposition:
To create a plot that works, tension must be developed at a deeper level by investigating the character of the hero in crisis.
Motivating action gets the story going, but the character must be continually tested through each phase of dramatic action.
Example: “Fatal Attraction”
A boy-meets-girl story with a twist.
Michael Douglas’s character has a one-night stand with an unbalanced woman who becomes fixated on their relationship.
Despite his efforts to distance himself, she reaches into his family with catastrophic effect.
Fatal Attraction is a perfect example of how tension can be incrementally raised with the help of challenging opposition.
Last
It’s important to understand that no plot is without a character. And there’s no character without a plot.
If a writer says, I have an amazing character, and I just need to crack a perfect plot for his/ her journey. He has no idea what he’s talking about. If I say plot is a dynamic looming obstacle in the life of a character at all times, the obstacle has to be challenging to the character.
Character is a context for the plot, and vice versa.
If a plot doesn’t have the strength to challenge the character so much that the character ends up transforming (either themselves or the world around them), then the plot is not appropriate for this particular character.
These learnings come to the writer once they’ve written enough fiction.
And I hope this overview will help you understand and apply it to your stories.
I would love to read them. So, feel free to share it with me.
