Hi there, Adrienne here, and today, we’re talking about plot.
I’m not going to lie to you, I bloody well suck at plot. In fact, I suck so badly at it, that I almost never can plot out my story until I’m at least halfway through writing it.
Plot is my primary writing weakness. Knowing the kinds of words I’m using is my second weakness (such as adverb, preposition etc. I can not remember what each word is classified as. Gods, someone get me a new and proper oxford dictionary). Fortunately, they are only mildly interconnected.
I have books on plot, my editing and writing buddy (whose computer I have posted from at least once) has books on plot. Both of us are actually kind of bad at it. We both admit to this.
Plot has a few main steps that everyone agrees on. Firstly, a Beginning, a Middle and an End. These are also referred to as the Beginning, the Climax/Conflict, and the Resolution. There are other steps, but I’m going to cover those in another post, as plot is one of the most complex writing subjects.
A quick way to remember this is with this:
BEGINNING:
Cinderella loses her father.
Cinderella is treated like a servant once he is gone.
MIDDLE/CLIMAX/CONFLICT:
The Ball.
Cinderella loses her shoe.
RESOLUTION/END:
The Prince tries the shoe on every female in the kingdom.
The shoe fits Cinderella.
They live happily ever after.
**NOTE: I’m using the Disney Cinderella.
Now, do you see how the things flow together? I know for a fact that I have left out quite a few major plot points to the movie. I did that simply to show what a simple plot it. the Plot: Level Two post will get more into detail.