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Developing Your Plot
Some novels are character-driven: the author develops a protagonist and other secondary and tertiary characters, and allows them to guide the storyline. These authors never know in advance how their novel will end, which can be rather … exciting, to say the least.
What’s in a plot?
Other novels are plot-driven, and while there are obviously variations on a theme, there are certain elements that enable a plot to move forward. Here’s one possible progression through a plot-driven novel:
- state an obvious problem
- discover a hidden need for the protagonist
- create an inciting situation
- introduce complications
- cause characters to lose hope
- enable the protagonist to reach a decision
- bring a situation to a resolution.
That’s all very stark, of course, and writing is not usually that tidy. But essentially your protagonist needs to want something (solving a problem is another way of saying that) and the reader needs to have a sense of why the character wants it. In my novel Asylum, Martine (my protagonist) needs to solve a problem: women have been murdered. Obviously the “why” is so that the killer might be caught and stop killing. A secondary, more profound “why” develops as she learns…
