Sooner or later, every writer seems to have trouble with plot, even writers for whom plot “comes naturally.” Part of the problem, I think, is that over the past twenty or thirty years, story structure has become thoroughly confused with plot. (I blame this largely on the fuss over the people who have taken Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero’s Journey” and turned it from a questionable after-the-fact analysis into some kind of recipe, but that’s a different rant.)
A plot needs two things: a major problem or obstacle for the main character, and a desirable solution/outcome that the character can, theoretically, implement. The “theoretically” is because of the existence of tragedies—stories in which the main character fails to solve the major problem or overcome the obstacle. (Absurdist fiction, by this definition, doesn’t have a plot; the whole point of absurdism is that the main character is wandering around doing random things because they have no purpose.)
Writers who have problems plotting seem, in my experience, to have trouble with one or the other of these two main things. Much of the time, the difficult comes because they have very specific ideas of what a “major problem/obstacle” should be, or what a “desirable solution/outcome” should be, and those ideas do not fit the non-negotiable story they want to tell or the material they have in hand.
For example, a writer has a character they want to write about—quiet, a little shy, a little eccentric—and they have a situation: the character is meeting their new boss for lunch to go over a new assignment. The author wants to write a novel, and there’s obviously nowhere near enough material in what they have. So the non-negotiables are the characters, the luncheon, and the new assignment.
Many authors in this situation jump straight to “big” plots involving action—buildings catch fire, ninjas leap through the window, the new boss is an evil mastermind. Most of the time, though, the author really needs to dig deeper into the non-negotiables without thinking about what a major problem/obstacle or desirable solution/outcome “should” look like. They need to consider what could happen, how it fits the character/situation, and what kind of story they want to tell.
Digging further into the non-negotiables can be done a number of ways. I find that plot-noodling with another writer is useful, because they ask questions I wouldn’t think of. For those who don’t have such a person handy, or who can’t really talk about their work with someone else without losing all their impetus to tell stories, a more methodical approach can be useful.
Problems, obstacles, solutions, and outcomes can range from something personal and internal to something societal or environmental and primarily external. An introverted character who really doesn’t want to get involved with drama and excitement will need a central problem/solution that is either mainly personal/internal (finding a romantic partner, for instance, or recovering from alcohol or drug abuse), or an general/external problem that the character cannot avoid no matter how they try (family members who expect the character to solve their drama and won’t take no for an answer; a resemblance to a spy or famous adventurer that leads that person’s enemies to keep coming after the character; a flood or an asteroid strike that the character is going to have to cope with no matter what their personality is like).
It therefore follows that one needs to poke through whatever non-negotiables one has, looking for both personal/internal and general/external problems. What Mario wants/doesn’t want/has trouble doing can be, for him, a source of personal/internal problems; what the boss or the organization they work for want/don’t want/are having trouble with is one source of external problems. The larger environment is a source of even more external problems (see floods and asteroid strikes, above).
One can also poke at non-negotiables from other perspectives. Why are these particular things non-negotiable? What is it that’s drawing the author’s backbrain toward this apparently innocuous scene? Does Mario have a history with the “new” boss? What kind of boss/job/assignment is this, anyway? If Mario works as a data analyst for the CIA, there may be ninjas in his future, but if he works for a Fortune 500 corporation, that’s less likely, and if his boss is the Commander of the Evil Dark Hordes, his boss and his assignment is going to look very different than if the boss is one of the Jedi Council sending him out to find potential recruits.
Looking at what absolutely does not work can be as useful as focusing on what does. If one thinks “Mario and his boss work for a Fortune 500 company…oh, no, absolutely not!” the next question should be “What makes that so automatically wrong?” This is not an attempt to persuade one’s backbrain into using the Fortune 500 company; it’s trying to take the reason why it doesn’t work (it’s modern-day; it’s too hierarchical/political; the author finds corporate politics repulsive/uninteresting) and then reverse engineer what might work instead (future SF or medieval-fantasy instead of modern-day; hey, how would you create an organization that was aggressively non-hierarchichal/apolitical…what would it look like? Wait, maybe it is modern-day, but the organization is run by vampires who are hiding in plain sight…)
Poking at backstory can also provide plot hooks. How long have the characters known each other? How did they get into this situation (this applies not only to each individual character, but to the organization they work for, and to the culture/society they live in, especially if the story is not set in a time/place/culture that’s familiar to its expected readership)? Do the characters, organizations, etc. have personal enemies? Who supports their ideas and practices, who tolerates them, and who really wants to undermine them or tear them down?
Finally, there’s looking at what’s obvious and whether/how it could be more interesting. Mario and his boss are having lunch; that means they need something to eat. In a short story, having Mario agonize about what to order to impress the new boss might be enough plot. There’s also the question of just what that new assignment is going to be and why the boss decided to give it to Mario over lunch instead of at the office. None of this is big-picture stuff, but it can lead in useful directions.
I feel that unspoken rant: I struggle mightily with plot but adore story structure. Truthfully, my biggest struggles with plot is I just plumb plain like character emotional arcs passing through life stuff, but not a single coherent external plot. I much prefer world shaking to happen in the background of a very long character emotional growth cycle.
I have a weakness in coming up with Obstacles to be Overcome. In my novella and first novel, the protagonist simply wants to get back home. It worked for Dorothy, but I feel the need for a more compelling motivation.
It’s fine as long as there are serious obstacles in the way.
I’ve got stories where the big issue is wrestling with how stuff happens in the middle, where the character and the problem go head to head without resolving things. So they remain in half-outlined state.
I especially like the focus on the “non-negotiable.” I often find it fruitful to work backwards, so to speak, from the key situation. If I want the characters to be *here*, what must have happened, what must be the case, to get them there?
It can work even better if you have a couple of disparate things you want to get into the story; this can be an impetus to creative worldbuilding. If I want the story set in the future, but I want exciting sword-fights, how can I have both? (Cue the semi-permeable force shields in *Dune*.) You might find you can’t, after all, get all the “non-negotiables” into the same story; but trying to do so may kick up some unexpectedly complex and interesting ideas.
Rick
The fun part is trying to turn yourself into ignorance again. If the climax of the story turns on a discovery, the characters have to be given enough clues to reasonably guess it, and have to act in ignorance while they pick up clues. That YOU know is no excuse.
A major problem I have with plot is calibrating the obstacle. If the problem or obstacle is too easy or too routine for the protagonist, then it’s boring. If the problem or obstacle is too difficult, then the protagonist’s ability to solve or overcome might get TOO “theoretical.” The protagonist’s success might require absurd amounts of luck, the writer being on the protagonist’s side, or an outright deus ex machina. Or the protagonist might decide that the desirable solution or outcome isn’t practical, given the high costs and low chance of success – and so becomes a reluctant protagonist who makes his refusal stick.
Oh yes.
Once wrote a story and realized that the solution at the end was too pat and clever, and so too easy. Especially given his troubles before.