Writing a Novel-What a Plot Is and Why You Need One

You’ve got a character or two, you might have an idea for your setting, or a really great event to start your story with. Next, you need a plot.

Plot is the series of events in your novel that lead to the ending.

My favorite definition for plot is that it is “what happens to people”. A story about a person sitting alone, doing nothing, thinking nothing isn’t much of a story. Something needs to happen to that person, either physically, mentally, or emotionally. There has to be a change of some kind, otherwise your story is static.

In general, you can consider plot to be the series of events that happen throughout your book that your character either causes or must respond to. The events can be mental or cerebral like many literary books. Or they can be world-ending disasters and violent upheavals like in a thriller, scifi or fantasy novel. They can be emotional as two people work toward a lasting relationship, as in a romance novel. Or they can be a mixture of all of these.

The common thread is that things are happening and changing.

So, for your story, you need events. There are two schools of thought about plotting in the writing community – the plotters vs. the pantsers.

The first group, the plotters, believe in planning out the story events before writing the first draft. The second group, the pantsers, believe in just setting down and writing whatever comes to mind.

There are pros and cons to each method and neither one of them is the definitive correct method you should use. You should use the one that works for you. The only real difference between them is whether the plotting is done before you start writing or if you do it while you are writing.

For some guidelines on trying each method, check out Plotters vs. Pantsers – Which is Better?

You’ve got some characters and now you need some events. My next post will give you some different plotting resources that you can use to come up with those events.

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