From Idea to Plot

[thomas1965]

Very often I struggle to get an idea into a plot.
Has anyone some advice how to transform an idea into a plot ?

 

[ElectricBlue]

Write something, just let it flow. See what happens.

All of my stories start from something simple, a scene, an image; and the plot arrives along with the characters. It's rare for me to have a plot in mind ahead of the first sentence.

Others here will weigh in with stuff about story notes, outlines, character sheets, and so on. I'd die a natural death before I used any of those things, they just don't work for me.

 

[BuckyDuckman]

My advice is much like electricblue66's - you pick a spot and start writing, it doesn't really matter which spot you pick because a story has to start somewhere and you can always change it.

That's a secret a lot of writers apparently deploy - changing something after they write it down, like where the story begins, or tightening up the working, or a myriad of other things. I believe it's a practice referred to as "editing?" Remarkably, all the people who do this strange practice seem to refer to their stories in the same way: "first draft." :-D

 

[SimonDoom]

You're getting yourself into a maelstrom of conflicting advice! Good luck sifting through the probable mess!

Unlike EB and Bucky, I'm not at all into the "just start writing" method. I like to plot and overthink.

Here's how I do it.

I have an idea. It's always an erotic idea (for Literotica stories). Something sexual or erotic is at the heart of the story. I don't ever write stories of the type "I'm gonna write a story about a space adventurer who has lots of sex during his travels."

I get an idea. "What if a teddy bear showed up one day on a woman's doorstep as a gift from an anonymous person and it turned out to be a talking sex toy?" That was my idea for Teddy Bear.

I have to think more about the details of the teddy bear--how it works, its features, etc. It becomes a character, sort of.

I have to think through the woman character. What's she like? What's her backstory? How do I create need and conflict and lust?

So she's a little uptight. She has a loser of a boyfriend who is insufficiently attentive, so she has unfulfilled needs that will make her more receptive to a crazy experience with her new teddy bear.

She has an office job and people that she doesn't want to know what she's doing with the teddy bear. She takes it to the office and her boss almost catches her.

I think about how I want to end the story, so every word I write is taking me somewhere I know I want to go. I rarely write without knowing my ending.

Once I've got these things more or less figured out, I start to write.

 

[TheRedChamber]

I think this thread is rapidly going to head towards the true but fairly useless revelation that you need to find a method that works for you. Planning doesn't work for the writers above me in the thread, it works for me. (Simon's just gazumped me and is also a planner)

At a very simple level, the way I plot is I take daily walks of about an hour every day and I use it to think about the story. The most important question for me is "And then?" - once I can get all the way through the story without getting stumped by this question, I start to write. Once I do start to write, additional details and derailments always happen but as long as I have a rough map of the journey, I'm generally okay.

Typically an idea will be a particular scene I have in my mind - usually the erotic one. So the questions becomes how did these characters get here and what obstacles stood in their way? And what happens afterwards? I try and work out a complete series of events first, but then try to pick out a finite number of scenes that are the most important in order to tell the story (e.g .do we need to see the characters meeting - often yes, but not always)?

Once that's done I try to work how each scene works. What needs to happen to drive the plot forward? Where's the entry and ending points for the scene? If it takes place in the same place as the previous scene is it going to get boring etc. Only once I've got good answers to these questions do I start writing.

I'm constantly asking myself, from my list of about 10 stories I'm thinking about, 'can I write this yet?'

Earlier this week, I was lying in bed and had an idea and the whole process took about half-an-hour (for a one scene story that is probably 3000-6000 words)
More commonly it might take me a week or so for the inspiration to work all the way through.
There's one story that is torturing me because I feel like I've been close to finishing the plot structure for well over a month and a half, but I just can't the events lined up in the right order - it was going to be my Summer competition story, but it's clearly not happening this year.

 

[Otto26]

1. -Write down the idea. "Pirate romance."
2. -Write down what you want from it. "Captive sex, power play, clothed males and nude female, adventure at sea, romance."
3. -Write down the ending. "Pirate and spy end up together with the prospect of new, sexy adventures before them."
4. -Write down the beginning. "Pirate ship captures royal courier vessel carrying the spy."
5. -Figure out how to get from the beginning to the end and fit everything you want into the story.
6. -Write and re-write and re-write until you get it right.

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

Add me onto the list of planners. Even if I'm doing historical or fantasy, the universe (or that corner of it which contains the plot) has to be rational and logical.

 

[Voboy]

Write something, just let it flow. See what happens.

All of my stories start from something simple, a scene, an image; and the plot arrives along with the characters. It's rare for me to have a plot in mind ahead of the first sentence.

Others here will weigh in with stuff about story notes, outlines, character sheets, and so on. I'd die a natural death before I used any of those things, they just don't work for me.

You stole my advice...

I'll add that many ideas never do make it into the plot stage. I jot them down before I forget them, then think about them as I glance at them and decide they probably won't work. Don't be afraid to abandon them if needed. There are always more ideas.

I'm also a bit of a hybrid. I start writing with only a vague idea of where I'm going, but I do make a note of who the characters will be (I've got loads of those by now) and, by the time I'm about halfway through with the piece, I do often set down a bullet list of "what's coming next."

Depends on the story.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I am an inbetweener. I have started writing as many stories from the ending as from the beginning. I like to describe my method as determining a starting point and a destination, and then I take the journey between them. Sometimes I know a few stops I'll be making on the way, other times, I just set out.

 

[Bubo_bubo]

It rather depends on what the idea is, of course. Is it a scene, a situation, a setting, a person?

But I tend to care a little less about plot. What I care about are characters, and once you have characters, you can think about their motivations, and those will set the plot in motion.

So my advice would be: try to tease out the characters in your idea. And then think about them, how did they get where they are, where do they come from, where do they wanna go?

 

[TarnishedPenny]

I generally start with an idea, one from a photo, a discussion here somewhere or even out of the thin air.

I roll it around, try to see if it’s possible to make work, then try to define major characters. For the latter, I find a photo helps me focus. I generally have beginning and an end-state, but no stated plot. I write by scenes and the story sorts of granulates in.

 

[Carnevil9]

I'm definitely in the Planning Camp along with Simon, TheRedChamber, and others.

1. It always starts with a nugget of an idea: "What if a Barbie doll came to life and gave sex advice?" Decide if there is story potential there. Is it hot? Is it interesting? Is it fresh?
2. Then figure out: what is the conflict? There needs to be conflict to provide drama. Good ideas get boring in a hurry without it. "Aha! The Barbie doll and the main character's boyfriend disagree on the proper approach to sex!"
3. Then comes the plot - I like to think in terms of three acts, but it isn't a hard and fast rule. As long as there is a beginning, a middle, and an end. And someone or something has to change by the end of the arc.
4. Then comes the writing - putting meat on the skeleton.

 

[GrushaVashnadze]

My modest tips, for what they're worth, are:
1. Let the characters lead the plot.
2. Sometimes the best-laid plot plans disintegrate under the onslaught of where the characters have got to. Let that happen, if it needs to.
3. If I'm having trouble getting a plot point to work, but am determined to do so, it may be because I have misinterpreted the character. I may need to go back and rewrite the character a bit, to make the plot go where I want it to go.
4. I try not to think in advance about what type of sex, or how much sex, I want. The sex is the style, the setting, the language - not the subject matter. Let the characters lead the plot, let the plot lead the sex.
5. Don't worry too much about what others think.

 

[MillieDynamite]

There are plotters and pantsters; I'm a hybrid. I can write from a plot. I can write by the seat of my pants. In my ghostwriting, I have plots furnished to me with detailed outlines. In the request work I've done, the requester sends me what he wants in the story, and some send me complex plots. I get an idea for my short stories and write until the tale finds its own ending.

 

[KeithD]

I'm a plot guy. I write mysteries in the mainstream. Most of my ideas arise as plot hooks in the first place.

 

[Voboy]

1. Let the characters lead the plot.

Yuuuuup.

At a certain point, well-written characters aren't made-up anymore. They become people, with agency. At which point, the writer's role is to write what those characters would do, not what the writer THINKS they would do.

 

[KeithD]

Oh, no, I don't let the characters lead the plot. The plot usually is the main element in my stories. That doesn't mean the plot is cast in stone from beginning to write (any more than the characters are). There isn't ONE WAY to do anything in writing fiction.

 

[Bubo_bubo]

Oh, no, I don't let the characters lead the plot. The plot usually is the main element in my stories. That doesn't mean the plot is cast in stone from beginning to write (any more than the characters are). There isn't ONE WAY to do anything in writing fiction.

It might also depend on what you write. I can imagine that if you write mysteries (as you said you do) a plot-driven narrative makes more sense than a character-driven narrative.

 

[MillieDynamite]

It might also depend on what you write. I can imagine that if you write mysteries (as you said you do) a plot-driven narrative makes more sense than a character-driven narrative.

When I write mysteries, the ending is set in stone before the first word is typed. I have outlines for what happens, what the false clues are, what the real clues are, and any major event in the story is planned out in advance. Other writing, not so much.

 

[KeithD]

When I write mysteries, the ending is set in stone before the first word is typed. I have outlines for what happens, what the false clues are, what the real clues are, and any major event in the story is planned out in advance. Other writing, not so much.

I don't set anything, including the ending, in stone when I write. And I may write down some key points so I don't forget them, but no, no, elaborate outlines. I've been doing this in the mainstream for nearly three decades and nearly 200 works, and treating writing as an adventure rather than filling in the blanks on an established outline has kept the journey an exciting one for me.

More often than not, what I end up with is different--and more satisfying--than what I originally thought would be the ending. It's good to have an ending in mind when you start, though--with any story. It helps you to actually finish the story. And I do, in fact, finish nearly everything I start.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I don't set anything, including the ending, in stone when I write. And I may write down some key points so I don't forget them, but no, no, elaborate outlines. I've been doing this in the mainstream for nearly three decades and nearly 200 works, and treating writing as an adventure rather than filling in the blanks on an established outline has kept the journey an exciting one for me.

More often than not, what I end up with is different--and more satisfying--than what I originally thought would be the ending. It's good to have an ending in mind when you start, though--with any story. It helps you to actually finish the story. And I do, in fact, finish nearly everything I start.

As you said before, there is no one way to do fiction.

 

[KeithD]

I can't fathom why, if some folks here find writing stories the convoluted chore they indicate it is--just to lead them to fixate on the strokes readers give them, or not--they don't take up some other activity instead. It's not like we don't have enough writers.

 

[MillieDynamite]

For me, my writing here and on other free sites is a pleasure. I write for myself as a kind of therapy. If the reader likes it, that's great. However, if they attack me as a person, I take it personally. Other than that, I don't care much about derogatory comments about the stories. I read the comments, but never take them to heart one way or the other. I used to, but not anymore. I've always had a thick skin, so let the haters hate.

 

[SamScribble]

Some years ago, I was invited to give a talk at a Readers’ & Writers’ Festival on the subject of Creating 3-D Characters.

The speaker before me was a very well-known, very successful short story writer who spoke on ‘Getting Started’. At the end of his chat the moderator asked the audience if there were any questions. A woman in the audience asked pretty much the question of this thread: How do you get from idea to plot?

The writer thought for a moment or two and then said: ‘I don’t know. It just happens.’ And then he added: ‘Although sometimes it doesn’t.’

‘But you must think about it,’ the woman said.

‘No.’

‘You must plan.’

‘No.’

‘But you must.’

‘No.’

‘You can’t just leave it to chance, surely.’

‘That’s exactly what I do,’ the writer said.

‘Did that help?’ the moderator asked.

‘Not one little bit,’ the now-grumpy woman said.

 

[KeithD]

I write erotica to turn myself on and to enjoy myself. I don't write to have some sort of therapy session. *shrug*

Guess I'm depriving myself of personal angst I need to inflict on others thereby.