How to go from Story to Plot

So you have a story idea. Awesome! But how do you take that story idea and make it a story?

Today, I’m going to outline the steps I take to create a plot of my story from my first idea.

Gertie and Bridget go to graduation

This is a story I’ve already written, but I remember my process because it took a while. I had this idea roaming in my mind while I was writing Volume Two, but as it was the “volume finale,” I had some time to work on it.

The first thing I do when going from idea to plot is figure out the big chunks of the plot, the ones I already kind of know from brainstorming.

1. Charlie is mad at his father for skipping out on his brother Peter’s graduation, so he decides to cause chaos at graduation to force his father to show up.

2. Peter and Faye ask Gertie and Bridget to help.

3. Gertie and Bridget help find and stop Charlie.

That was literally all I started with. I didn’t have an idea for what Charlie would do to “cause chaos,” know why Peter and Faye would ask Gertie and Bridget for help, or list any other characters (by the published version, Vivien and a ghost librarian would play major roles in the story.) I didn’t even know how Gertie and Bridget managed to stop Charlie.

From here I started to make decisions. I asked myself about the above questions:

1. What does Charlie do to get his dad’s attention?

2. Why do Peter and Faye ask Gertie and Bridget for help?

3. How do Gertie and Bridget stop Charlie?

The first and third questions were harder to answer, but the second one wasn’t. Charlie locked his room using magic that Peter and Faye couldn’t get into, and they knew the Mallon sisters could pick locks, even magical locks, which had been established in an earlier story. Plus, in a previous story they had saved Gertie and Bridget’s lives, so they felt they were owed a favor. They didn’t just ask Gertie and Bridget for help for plot reasons; it was character motivated. Their concern for their brother outweighed their desire for privacy. And then Gertie and Bridget’s assistance is warranted, because Charlie and his siblings had helped them before.

Making sure plot elements are character motivated is extremely important. One of the biggest problems I have with movies or books is when a character does something seemingly only because the script demands it, not because it makes logical sense – or at least, the logic is not explained to the audience.

Next, I had to figure out what big thing Charlie was going to do to cause chaos. In a magical world, this could be almost anything, so naturally I became stuck. One strategy when this happens is to write down a list of ten things that could happen next.

Charlie could…

Flood the school (too damaging, Charlie doesn’t want to cause permanent damage, just get attention)
Summon zombies (again, too big scale)
Release wild animals (animals aren’t really his style, and Faye or Ernest would be more likely to do this, plus it wasn’t big enough)
Bring a statue to life

I could keep going, but I eventually chose the statue idea. It fit Charlie’s modus operandi (transformation magics) and would be small-scale enough that he would be confident in his control of the matter so no one would get hurt. Again, knowing his motivation (feeling spurned by his father again, but not upset with anyone else) helped direct the plot of the story.

Once I had that idea, I needed to come up with the magic that would allow this to take place. I’ll probably do a blog post about world building for plot reasons at a later date, so I’ll move past this for now.

Now comes the big section of the book. I have the beginning set up, and even the start of the middle. But what happens in between when Gertie and Bridget start looking for Charlie and when they stop him? How do they stop him?

Those are big questions, so it helps if we narrow them down.

We usually need to see the hero(s) fail at least once before they succeed, so I decided Gertie and Bridget would fail in their first confrontation with Charlie. Then they’d succeed in their final confrontation and manage to stop the chaos.

I’m getting into spoilery territory here, so let’s just say that I had an idea of what Charlie’s ultimate fate would be. I started from there, and worked backwards to figure out what the plot elements leading to that moment would be.

Let’s pretend that the ending is Charlie gets frozen in ice. How would that happen? Well, magic is in this universe, so maybe a character has ice queen powers and uses those to freeze Charlie when it’s clear he can’t be talked down.

Okay, but where did those powers come from? Clearly, if this is the ending I want, I have to make sure whatever skills are used in the climax are well-planted. Maybe during the first confrontation with Charlie, the ice powers can be used in a failed attempt to stop him?

If you need a really good example of planting a skill that will come in handy during the climax, look no further than Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Will and Jack Sparrow (Captain Jack Sparrow) duel very early in the film. In order to stop Jack from running away, Will throws his sword and sticks it through the door, making it impossible to open so Jack can’t leave through that exit. And then at the end of the movie (after Will and Jack are friends), Jack is set to be hanged, but right before he falls, Will throws his sword in the exact same manner and it lands just under Jack’s hanging feet so he has something to perch on. This skill wasn’t used the entire rest of the movie, but because we’d seen it once, we (the audience) knew Will was capable and it didn’t feel like it came out of nowhere.

By the end of my process, here’s what I had in terms of an outline or plot:

Charlie is mad at his father for skipping out on his brother Peter’s graduation, so he decides to bring a statue to life and do a bit of damage around campus to get his father’s attention.
Peter and Faye know he’s up to something, but Charlie’s magically locked the door to his and Peter’s bedroom. Without any other option, they ask Gertie and Bridget to help with their experience in lockpicks.
Gertie and Bridget break into the Nessing brothers’ room, and Peter finds Charlie’s notebook detailing a plan.
Faye uses the magical tracker app to find where Charlie is.
The group goes to where Charlie is (the library?) and chase/confront him. He refuses to stop and sets [redacted] on them.
1. Plant the use of [redacted] here.
The Mallons, the other Nessings, and Vivien escape (ghost librarian?) and find Charlie as he sets the statue he brought to life on the graduation ceremony.
[redacted].
Everyone happily watches the replacement graduation ceremony.

Some important details were still missing, but I had the bare bones of what I needed to write the story. Given how short my stories are, this might have been enough for me, or I could have decided on the things that still have question marks next to them before I began writing. If I was writing a full book, the outline would be much much longer and I’d expand it by marking down character growth moments, when sections revealed themes, or even make sure I knew what Charlie was doing while narrating our POV characters’ scenes. More and more can always be added to an outline, and the more your have, the easier writing is going to be.

Just to reiterate the most important points from this post, the two critical things when plotting are to make sure any decision your characters make is well-motivated (and that motivation is clear to the audience), and to make sure that any skill, fact, or magical artifact that will be used during a time of crisis is established well before it’s necessary.
That’s all I have for now. If you’d like to see how Gertie and Bridget go to graduation turns out, you can read the story on my website here.