This article is going to explain a lot of things, very quickly. Read it as often as you need it. If you understand this already, you can nod and go your merry way – but I think one reason I haven’t touched on that people fail NaNoWriMo is because they simply haven’t learned what the tools of the craft are, and how to use them.
Plot
Plot boils down to this – somebody wants something. Someone else wants it too, or wants to deny the protagonist that something.
Every novel you’ve read, every movie you’ve seen, boils down to that.
“I have a great character…”
Excellent! What do they want? What is it that is so important that not getting it means death or symbolic death?
“I don’t know…”
You don’t have a novel yet. They must WANT something. They must have to do something, or they will die. I really strongly urge you to write it so that death for them means real death, as in bleeding, gasping, agony, tears, and finally expiring. The heart stops. Your fascinating character has ceased to be, and gone on to reward or punishment.
“Pining for the fjords.”
Symbolic death, like bed wetting or a pimple, is often too weak for readers. Write the novels so that the stakes are so high the cost is death. Do at least three novels that way before you try dealing with the bed wetting novel, or the “They don’t get married” novel, or etc. LEARN to raise the stakes that high. State it early in the novel, and keep raising the stakes.
You have to drive from Florida to Maine in five days, or you’ll die. No problem. Doable.
The car breaks down. Okay, get another one. Someone steals your wallet and the car.
Stranded. And now you’re hijacked by a gang of Hell’s Angels, and headed to Sturgis instead of Maine. The police start chasing. The thing you have to get to in Maine just got stolen.
See?
Impossible
The reader has to become convinced that the protagonist is going to die, and tings keep getting worse. You have to find a way to get them to the object, but the McGuffin is locked away in an armored car. You can’t reach it!
When do you have the armored car crash? Two minutes before the deadline. And the protagonist is crawling towards it. The antagonist tries dragging them backwards. You kick at the antagonist, helplessly. You’re seconds away from it! And after a minute of struggle, the antagonist reaches for their knife. You kick them. They stagger back –
-an 18 wheeler hits them-
-you lunge forward, clicking the card into the McGuffin –
- the light turns green, the explosive collar falls off your neck. You grab it, throw it, and BOOM!
You look back and the timer on the McGuffin reads “2 seconds.”
That’s a plot.
Go and do.
