Plot
Plot is what happens, sometimes called the story line. Boy and girl meet, fall in love, marry, and live happily ever after. Or boy and boy meet, fall in love . . .. Or girl and girl meet . . .
A story line can be long and detailed and unfold over many generations, or it can be as short as what happens between the time your hero or heroine wakes up in the morning and the time they brush their teeth. It can have many characters or one character. It can unfold here on Earth or in outer space. In the future, present, or past. It can be about the lowest of the low, the highest of the high, or anywhere in between.
Remember that if you set your story in the future, our society changes so fast your story may not have the impact you want when you finish it. Generally, these days, if you can imagine something happening, it probably is about to happen or has already happened. Just look at what’s happening to transportation technology, communication means, etc. It’s been barely a century since rockets were invented. Driverless cars, travel to Mars, etc. Cell phones were unusual not so long ago.
I decided once to set a book in what was then the near future. By the time I was done, what I thought was a clever detail got overtaken by real events, and wasn’t so clever anymore. I always to anchor plots in a date in the past, either 2021, which will very soon be the past, or farther back, such as the 19th century, the Stone Age. I just wrote a play about the pandemic in winter 2020, but once vaccinations become more common, I may have to reconstruct it. Even the past, though, lives in our imagination, and can change as our view of it is transformed by every day that goes by. Writing a science fiction story set on another planet, though, all bets are off. But then things are so weird these days, daily events occurring outside my window sometimes makes me wonder if it is another world.
You usually need to build in a central conflict into your story. Even if you are writing a memoir about your life for you grand children. There has to be something you were conflicted about, or a sibling that your mother liked better than you, and do. I have a friend who is the submissive partner of two identical twins who came out of the shoot 15 minutes or so after her dominant sister, Her twin has never let her forget it. It can also be intergenerational conflict, a character trying to get something that they can’t have, a person on trial for having committed a crime, competitors trying to win a championship, so on. Stories without conflict and tension are not usually interesting.
Your plot must have the ring of truth. You usually can’t get away with an un-credible story line, even if it actually happened. You must have seen movies to you reacted, “Oh, yeah, like that would actually happen.” You can’t have a bootlegger selling booze during the depression of the 1930s. Roosevelt had prohibition repealed almost as soon as he took office. You can’t have someone standing on the coast of Connecticut looking at Cape Cod Bay. You’ve heard people say, “If I put it in a novel no one would believe me.” I’ve also heard writers, when challenged, say “But it actually happened.” No matter. Your plot must feel true to the reader. If you are writing non-fiction, it can help to say at the very beginning: “What you are about to read may not seem credible to you. But, it actually happened, so bear with me.” You could also start out a novel that way, too, if you do it right.
Your plot also should be something you know about. If you don’t know about it when you start out, you should do a lot of research and talk to actual people who know about it. You should also consider not writing stories dealing with areas in which you’ve had no experience. For example, if you’re a rich white privileged person, you shouldn’t write about a black person growing up in the projects. If you were a white person who grew up in the projects, that could be an interesting story. You already have racial conflict baked into it. Or your main character could be someone who knew nothing about something at the beginning but, because the things that happen to them, make them an expert by the end.
Remember you are the god of the world you create through your story. You can put anything in there as long as it is believable. Rabbits in outer space, for example.
Next: Character