While obsessing over my lack of plot beyond the first part to my novel, I have stumbled across an extraordinary discovery in plotting. Granted, it’s probably been invented by some other writer years before me. But here is my personal choice at beating the novel plot blues.
#1: Start seriously thinking of the solid points in your novel. Let us then call them ‘landmarks‘. Plot landmarks are basically the things you are sure have to happen in your story. Things that if removed from the plot would cause it to crumble to dust at your feet. You can have dozens of these landmarks, or just a small hand full.
Take these landmarks once you have decided what they are, and write them down chronologically in the center of an ordinary piece of paper. Arrange them like a column with one on top of the other like show below.
#2: Once you have your column of landmarks finished as far as you would like, then it is time to start dividing the landmarks into separate parts of your novel. This is not a necessary step to take, but I find it to be extremely helpful when writing a more solid plot line.
You can divide your landmarks by individual chapter or by parts of your story. For my own plot, I have divided by separate parts. This is largely because I am not sure how my chapters will end yet, and I want that process to come more organically. You can see my example below.
#3: The next step is to start working on another column to the right of your landmarks. This is where the thinking really comes in. You see I was having trouble with my own plot in this area. I had several landmarks, as you can see above, but I had no idea how my characters moved from one to the next.
And so that is what the right hand column will be about. This is where you will fill in what happens in between your major events. Look below for an example.
To pick a more specific example, note the third landmark down the column which says “Conflict BTW Ben + Jocasta and family over Ben’s birthrights”. The next landmark is Ben leaving Ibas, but why is he going from a conflict with his family to leaving them behind?
In the right column I add that the conflict is resolved by Ben being banished from Ibas and unrecognized as Jocasta’s son. That way he doesn’t interfere with the female bloodline. And so he has to leave Ibas and find his way elsewhere.
#4: Now onto the far left column. Once you exert your brain to fill in the blanks between your landmarks, and then take a well deserved break for doing so, there are a few other things that need to be tucked away. Observe for one final time the photo below.
In this step I have set aside the left column for things that don’t exactly play into the regular plot line, but are still pretty important to the story in the end. For instance, the first note I make next to my second landmark.
This marks the conflict between my characters Ben and Jocasta, as Ben finds out after meeting her for the first time that she is his birth mother. It is an important conflict that fuels a big part of the story.
Though covered in my right column, there is still one minor note I want to add that will help me as I write a more solid plot. I want to keep this conflict unresolved until a later point in the novel. Obviously this doesn’t fit in the plotline itself, so I place it in the left column.
In the end you will only translate the center and right columns into your final plot, but the left hand column serves as a reminder of things you should be keeping in mind as you’re writing.
That is all it takes, at least by my methodic madness. Let me know if this works, or if you have any questions. I look forward to your feedback guys!
When Heroes Fall 