#plotting help

5. Do you know how your story ends before you start writing?

When I first come up with the concept? No. But, before I get too deep into the story, I create a W-Plot with 7 major events: 

the starting point 

inciting incident

first dip

climax

the big black moment 

creating the new normal

resolution

And then I just build bridges between each major event. I call it my dumbest version plotting tool. 

I sure can jellybean! I’m just gonna give you an entire run down of what I do when I attempt to plot.

So, I first start off with a concept, can be as broad or narrow as you like. For MS the concept was this, ‘Luca and Tommy plan to stop bloodshed and vendetta through marriage between one of their sisters.’ Silver Spoon’s concept line was, 'Mancunian female gangster causes problems for the Peaky Blinders in Birmingham and the Jewish gang in Camden town’. Once you have concept write or type this at this top of your page.

Notice how the tag lines are very open ended? This gives you space to come up with any OCs if you want too. Imagine an MS AU where Tommy marries Bianca instead, the concept is broad enough for this.

So come up with your characters and who you want interacting in your fic, write or type it all down so its saved for later.

Now you start with plot points, which are any events or moments you want to happen in your story. But you need to do this chronological order. So you start where you plan the story to start and you keep going until you resolve a problem (or even complete a whole timeline for your fic.) Write them in bullet point form so its easier to read.

In this part you can include dialogue or completed scenes. You’ll definitely be rewriting this part anyway as you change your mind about certain things.

When your timeline/plotline is done, all you have to do now is write! follow your bullet points from your timeline, which will guide your chapters or episodes. You can write a few bullet points in each chapter, MS currently takes between 4-6 bullet points for each chapter while Silver Spoon, based off the one chapter has taken only 3. It is your choice on this part. You could do 10 bullet points if you wanted to. Do what feels right.

Step One: What kind of worlds do Character A & B inhabit?

If it’s the same one, you’re in luck.  If it’s not, you need to figure out how to transport one to the other’s universe or an option I see rarely used: transport them both to a new universe (that way unlikely allies might have to be formed.  Or perhaps your characters allied themselves with indigenous people at war with each other?  Go crazy!).   Hell, this is also when AUs come in, those are tons of fun.  Never be afraid of AUs.

Step Two: Same world now? Good, how’re they going to meet?

Compare the twos favorite hang out spots.  Any similar?  Meet up there.  Maybe they have a friend in common.  Maybe they’re supposed to broker peace talks.  Maybe they’re going to fight each on gladiator combat.

Step Three:  Okay, but what are they going to do?

Talking is most often what it devolves into.  But hey, your characters don’t always have to talk.  Come on, maybe they’re gonna fight.  Maybe they’ll play some sort of game (chess, rummy, etc), maybe they’ll just talk.  

Step Four: When’s it end?

The hardest part (in my opinion) is figuring out when the damn thread ends.  Talk to your partner about this one.  Sometimes it seems like this doesn’t have to be the end but you can’t figure out anything more to say.  Talk, communication.

Bonus: Don’t want to put them in the same area?  

Letters, e-mails, cross universe communications.  They’re all fun.  Maybe your characters are interstellar pen-pals.  Maybe they’re long distance lovers.  A series of voicemail left on each other’s phones. Maybe they signed up as army pen-pals.  Hell, maybe they were assigned to talk to each other in fifth grade and kept in contact.

Thank you for your patience! Here is the answer to your question! Hope it helps! 

I need help plotting out this story. I have some of it but then I get stuck because its not a paranormal romance. I'm so good with those; having the bad guy, the characters motive but not this one. Anyone out there in writer land up for helping me brainstorm?