Creating A Plot

All stories need a plot, right? Kind of.

Some stories are character driven and some are plot driven. Regardless, there are going to be conflicts in your story. And those conflicts are where you can began to form your plot.

Plots, in their simplest form, are conflicts. You have a conflict that needs to be resolved, be it who gets to sit in the front seat or whether or not someone saves the world.

So, to make a plot, you get a conflict. Let’s say your main character doesn’t want to go to school. Find a way to elaborate on that. Why don’t they want to go to school? Is it because of a test? Is their teacher an alien?

Let’s say their conflict is because they lost their best friend to another friend group. This not wanting to go to school is now a secondary conflict that will probably be resolved. The main conflict is around their best friend not being friends with them. This plot could continue throughout the rest of the story, or you could introduce a new plot.

So you introduce a new conflict around your character having some sort of flaw that caused their friend to join another friend group. You could keep that one as the main or you could keep adding new conflicts. If you keep adding these minor conflicts and subplots, though, make sure they don’t bog down the story.