#how to plot

The advice I've given before is to write every scene you think of, no matter if it gets used or not. Its always a great idea to go back every once and a while and edit these scenes, or revise them.

Never force inspiration or a scene. If it isn't coming naturally, take a break and come back later or the next day. it's important to give yourself time to think. use your break to day dream about your story and what could come next. if your brain is happy, this should be relatively simple. If your brain isn't happy, then you need to take a longer break, stop writing for the day all together, or write something else.

if you're a pantser, like me, and it's hard to plot. You can practice reverse plotting, and plot your story as you go. make notes of things that happen in your story, changes in a character, changes in the plot, changes in the setting, dates for events, timelines, important information that's been revealed, anything you deem important to your story.

always reread what you've already written. don't try to edit it. turn off your editor brain and reread your story so far before you resume writing, so you can get into the voice and tone that you've already established.

if you're finding it difficult to start writing or keep writing. try turning off your internal editor and free write. it's good practice to be able to write down your unfiltered thoughts or daydreams without having to stop and edit while you're writing. it helps with your writing flow, getting the scene down onto the page, and increases your writing intuition.

before you write, always take time to daydream or think about your story beforehand. it helps things go much smoother in the long run.

if you've been working on something for a long time, don't pressure yourself into confinement. if you want to work on something new but you're worried about what you've been working on, don't. stop worrying and write what you want. forcing yourself to keep writing something when you don't want to is just going to make you burn out faster.

don't be afraid to create visuals or playlists that help you with what you're writing. It's an enviable talent to be able to write something off a photo you saw on pinterest, or a song you really like.

the age old question of "how do i plot?" is one that has floated around the rpc for as long as i've been around (and that's a long time). i wrote quite a comprehensive guide for a discord rp, but i thought it would be worth putting out into the community just in case other people find it worth while. it's a guide to provide everyone with some good foundations into plotting, how to get the best out of everyone when it comes to plotting, and give a bit of a steer for those who might be struggling to come up with some ideas.

No problem at all!

Basically, for a flow chart I list out everything that is supposed to happen, in order. It looks like this:

The point is to have a visual representation of what happens in what order. Of course, if you have multiple plotlines going on simultaneously, it might look a bit more like this:

Or, if your plot is REALLY complicated, like this:

Again, the point is just to make a visual representation of how the events that take place in your story flow from one to the next.

As for the bullet points, I stick to a method that looks like this:

There are probably countless other ways to organize your information, I just personally like to use these two methods. I’ll typically start with a flow chart when I’m first getting an idea and then when I’m ready to get more in depth with the fine details of what happens, I’ll use my boxes from the flow chart as “big plot point” bullets and break them down from there.

I hope this helps! Plotting is a funny thing because it’s not something that most writers spend a lot of time on. Once you start writing, I find that plotting things out becomes less and less vital. It’s a great thing to have a system for, though. If anyone else has any other methods they like, feel free to comment them or reblog, I’m always interested to hear how other people are doing things.

✨Let me guess—you’ve struggled to write a fantasy novel before. You started one but got lost in the weeds and the overwhelming thought of this task. Perhaps you laid down your sword mid book and walked away, never to return.

✨Or perhaps, you've never begun this journey at all. Perhaps you've had an idea for the perfect fantasy novel in your head for years, but you've never possessed the tools necessary to summit this mountain.

✨You were overwhelmed by the thought of building a world from the ground up, or developing a stage for your characters to stand on, or by the sinking dread that once you start the draft, you won't ever be able to finish it. Writing fantasy is too hard. No matter how much I want to, I'll never be able to slay the dragon, perhaps.

✨I understand. I was there, once. But after years of toil, I've written dozens of fantasy novels set in unique sandbox worlds, as well as aided other weary travelers with their own beastly projects. I notice the same mistakes over and over, a pattern of self defeat.

✨I've learned. I've refined. I've advised. And now I stand at the summit of the fantasy mountain, fearless. Writing fantasy novels and finishing them is easy as breathing for me. It's exciting. It's fun. I have answered the calling of my soul and brought my dream worlds to life.

And now, you will too.

I think the key is to just realize that the first iteration of a story is like the base of a recipe. If you obsess over all of the little details before you lay down the foundation, the story isn't going to be edible. If writing is a cupcake, it's like adding the sprinkles to the batter instead of adding the milk or eggs, then looking at your half-formed sludge of a creation and going "god this looks terrible'" and shoving into the crucible.

Putting it in the oven of your criticism before it's ready. When you take it out, it's not going to be an intact cupcake, and you'll feel even worse.

Convoluted food metaphors aside, a good thing to keep in mind is that good writing isn't what is perfect, which is something that can never be achieved.

Good writing is what works.

You're never going to able to articulture the exact picture you have in your head into words. Nor has any author in the history of ever. We were human, and our communication with each other and the outer world is limited.

If you are a perfectionist, your art is never going to live up to your expectations, because it can't. The emotional scene you write on paper might feel inferior to the majesty you've envisioned in your head. You might feel like there's something missing, that's it doesn't perfectly encapsulate what you imagined, and you might be frustrated by that.

But that doesn't mean its bad at all, just human. Most people underestimate how impactful their words are. Just because it's not an impossibly perfect replica, doesn't mean that the emotions and thoughts won't register with the readers. Oftentimes, we're biased against ourselves.

A Handy Guide to Plotting RP Scenes

Sometimes, you’re just overflowing with creativity and a whole heap of ideas. Other times your mind might be coming up blank. Plotting can be tricky for some, just as much as it can be easy-peasy for others. Here are some tips to plotting so that everyone can feel like they are contributing to the planning stages of RP. This avoids folks feeling like they are the one doing all the heavy lifting, avoids burnout, and may even result in a little bit of pride for knowing that you could bring something to the table.

Option one: Start with a general theme that you might like to explore with your character. Below are just some very vague examples, but they should give you an idea of what I mean:

Do you want to explore how they handle loss?

Could be a sudden passing, or maybe they lost a battle/fight/etc, maybe a friendship fell apart, there is more than one type of loss.

How about getting some really good news?

Maybe it’s something they have been waiting to hear for a long time or maybe it’s an unexpected surprise.

What if someone they had a falling out with in the past comes to mend fences? What if someone they thought died actually lived, or they have a run-in with a person that has it out for them?

Do they secretly have a warrant/bounty out for them? Are they wanted for something? Maybe it was legit, maybe it was a mistake or a ploy to frame them.

Maybe your muse uncovers a huge secret and needs to share it with someone else, or wants help looking into it.

Option two: Pick a time and a place for them to be and go from there:

What would they be doing at this point in their lives?

Who are some people they might run into?

What are some major events happening in this location, at this time? Maybe you can find a way for this character to be involved, or do something loosely related to it.

Option three: Pick another character or player you are interested in engaging with:

What muses do they have?

Why are you interested in those characters?

How does your character relate to theirs, and does it make sense for them to meet?

Option four: For media based RP, take an existing plot within the game/books/comic/etc.:

How would you modify it to fit your muse(s)?

What other characters would you like to be involved in this with yours? Why?

Option five: Lastly, you could just use a prompt generator!

Find a good plot or prompt generator, or a prompt list and tweak it to fit your character. Follow the above suggestions on time, place, etc. to help retrofit it to your muse.

I hope that folks will find this useful. Feel free to reblog and if you repost you MUST CREDIT. Thank you and happy plotting! ❤️

And struggle I have.

I feel like it’s not an unusual struggle.

When a person first starts writing, there’s a ton of information out there on how to make your sentences work, how to create characters that aren’t wooden, grammar, spelling, the art of fiction, putting your soul into it and not boring your reader, how to create a habit of sitting down and putting words on the page. All of that. Everywhere, for the choosing.

And then, once you’re no longer a beginner, all the information pretty much dries up.

You hear words bandied about like “3-act structure” and “theme” and “arc,” but what those things are and if you need them (you do!) never seems to come up. Or if they do come up, they’re very nebulous and it’s hard to get a great feel for them.

Last year, I realized I didn’t actually understand or know jack about plot, beyond the nebulous “arc is what your character goes through,” etc., so I figured I’d better get on that. “Trying to be professional” and all that jazz. It only took me four books to figure that out!

So first off, a Google search led me to a lot of articles about how many acts a plot should have. Apparently, there are a lot of choices. Every article I came across essentially said the same thing: “Shakespeare used 5-act structure, The Hero's Journey uses 7 acts, and Hollywood uses 3-act structure. Do whatever you want!”

Great. Not helpful. What IS an act? What goes into it? How does one know when one has a complete act? What’s the DIFFERENCE between the different numbers of acts in a story? If I can use anywhere from three to seven acts, why should I choose one over another?? I think the number six is pretty, should I use six acts?

So I tried Googling “what is 3-act plot structure.” I found a LOT of articles that stated “Three act structure is simple! The first act is your story’s opening. The last act is the story’s climax and end. And the middle act is everything else!”

Say what? Easy?? How is that easy? Why does so much advice on story telling have to be so damn vague? Is it because so many authors actually have no idea what they’re doing? It is, isn’t it. Ah, damn.

Interestingly, there were a LOT of articles that discussed authors complaining about the “soggy middle” of their story. Well, yeah, if they know how the story starts, they know how they want it to end, but the middle is “everything else,” what the hell is a person supposed to WRITE?? “Everything else” is not a direction! Are the characters supposed to sit around and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes and discuss the meaning of human existence? Hibernate? Run around screaming? What, what, what??

Well, silly, they’re supposed to arc. You know, what happens to your character through the course of the book.

Oh, yes, okay. Got it, got it.

(For the curious, a character arc is the world view/state of being a character starts out with, and how that shifts to something different for better or for worse through the course of the story. Usually better, but dark stories will sometimes have the main character lose all hope or something like that.)

I did manage to stumble across a couple actual books about plot. I bought them. One of them was very helpful. One of them was most certainly not. And I found one — count it — ONE article that broke plot structure down into FOUR acts AND explained WHY the authors of the article liked four acts and WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN in each act. HOLY SHIT!! That article has since been removed from the website where I found it. Good thing I copied and pasted it to my own computer before it vanished!

(For the curious: Act 1, we meet the MC, they are invited to adventure, they almost certainly refuse, and then they are forced into it somehow. Act 2, they strike out in a new world, making friends and enemies as they go, learning about how things work in this new place and gaining confidence until it’s shattered by something crazy happening. Act 3, they have to maneuver in a new way, figure out what they were doing wrong before and deal with the crazy thing that happened at the end of act 2, they will come face-to-face with the main baddie and they will lose. Act 4, everything has come to a head, the MC is trapped, on the run, pushed to the brink, with the baddie right on their heels, and when it finally looks like all is lost, the main thing they need to face or learn about suddenly becomes crazy clear, and they are able to defeat the baddie/situation using their new knowledge/skill/emotion.)

My favorite book on plot I found was “The Story Grid, what good editors know.” It’s not a book on act structure as much as what scenes need to do and how a book needs to flow. But man, is it helpful and insightful! It breaks writing a book down into concrete steps that you can check and follow, rather than all this woo-woo business with “the middle is everything else” and “arc is what happens to your characters.”

Armed with this new knowledge, I set about dissecting some of my favorite books and movies.

Man, four act structure and the mechanics of making a scene work is totally IT! Every book I re-read, every movie I re-watched, the acts lined up and made sense, the scenes turned and kept the plot moving, it all flowed. It all WORKED!

I feel so satisfied when someone who knows what they’re talking about can point out how things work. I hate when people offer squishy advice that doesn’t actually make any sense or that you just have to “feel.” Either it’s real and you can damn well put it into words, or it’s fake and you’re making it up. JEEZ.

I used my new knowledge to edit “The Winding Road Between,” and am very satisfied with how it shook out. I’m working on a new book called “Night Falls,” and it is coming together just slick. I’m super happy with the 4-act structure and even more happy with the leeway and wiggle room I’ve found inside of it. It’s far less rigid than it first appears, while offering a scaffolding to hang the scenes of my story on so it all makes sense. As long as it goes 1-2-3-4, and each act is roughly the same length-ish, it all comes out in the end.

I love a good fuck around and find out meme. But something perhaps I love more is the use of fucking around and finding out in character development. Great characters, believe or not, will start somewhere on the proverbial fuck around scale. And they’ll eventually find out, for better or worse.

Think about it - character and plot development is contingent upon a character’s willingness or unwillingness to fuck around and find out. The entire purpose of a book is to demonstrate a character’s growth or lack thereof in response to what happens, and the rate at which a character responds (or even regresses) is the key driver that makes your characters intriguing.

So, how does one employee the fuck around and find out process for character development? There’s a Fuck Around and Find Out Graph for that! Below is a graph I made for reference if you need a starting point for mapping out your character(s) development and how it fits the main points of your story.

Main Takeaways:

All characters have a starting point on the Fuck Around axis

Negative number = characters who are slow to change, resistance to growth. These are your reluctant, passive protagonists, or those disinterested or unaware of the plot’s main conflict.

Positive number = characters open to change, more self-assured at start. High positive numbers are well-intended characters but overconfident and impulsive; they may care about the conflict but struggle to know how to help.

Type of Character Growth (plotline)

Character A is an example of writing linear growth, Character B is a character who has growing pains. Character A consistently grows at a steady rate, while Character B experiences more ups and downs.

You can have characters who have a horizontal line (e.g. character Fuck Around starts and ends at 4); these are best for secondary or supporting characters who act as a ‘stable’ influence. Compelling stories have a range of character ‘plotlines.’

Find Out - these are the main plot events/decisions where the character’s level of fucking around will be put to the test.

Use each number on the X-axis to represent an event/decision in your story. Your characters will either grow, regress, or remain the same (flat line). There’s no right or wrong way to pick!