To begin to develop your plot, think about some simple points.

1. What is the main problem in my story? The Story Goal
2. What happens if the main character fails to achieve the goal? The Consequence
3. To achieve the goal, what needs to happen before?
4. What could go wrong and suggest the goal will not be achieved?
5. Costs – what cost does the main character have to pay for success in the goal? What sacrifice does he or she have to make?
6. What will happen if he/she achieves the goal?

This sounds very simplistic, but try this on any novel or film you have read or seen. You can break down the plot into these simple points. It is extremely rare that the main character does not have to sacrifice something or face some difficulty during their story.

Think even of comedies, there is always some loss or difficulty in any story.  

As we start to develop this plot, we can start to use this information to develop our synopsis.

When working on your synopsis also consider –

• What concrete events are going to happen in your story?
• What about the stakes in the story? Do they evolve? If you think of the story we just suggested, they are going to be on a race to get to the Amazon, find the rare plants, then get home to make the cure, ….and then get that cure out to the world. You can imagine the tension they would feel under as the time runs out and the stakes increase.
• Is there a subplot? Do you need one? If there is, is it a strong subplot or may it be overwhelmed by the main story?  In the story above, a subplot could be that the woman he loves is a teacher. The government is trying to save all the children in an isolated quarantined laboratory. She has to get the children in her school across country to this lab. It’s a small school. There are only three teachers and fifty children. They have buses, then a bus breaks down, the children are scared. People are panicking and hysterical. There is crime and looting and so on.  This could be the subplot. But would this be overwhelmed by the main plot. Would this story improve the overall story?
• What about settings?
• Have I got the right setting? The most effective setting? In our story, we suggest they need to get to the Amazon to get the plant. Is that a good thing to do? What about going to America to work with other scientists to find the cure? Or the plant could be in an isolated part of Tasmania. Why the Amazon? Think about whether this is the best place for the story.  
• What about time? This story may be set in the modern world, but is that the best time, should it be in the future or the 1950s? What suits the story?
• How many characters do I need? Who are the main characters? Who are the others? You have probably read books where you get to the point that you don’t know who a character is, there are so many.  Having too many characters can mean that they are easily forgettable and not well described. So plan carefully who your main characters are and who are the essential subcharacters.
  
  

Novels

The structure of a novel is like the beams and bulkheads and plumbing and cabling that hold all the pieces of a building together and make it usable. Without these pieces, a building is just a pile of bricks or wood. Similarly, without a structure, a novel is just a pile of loosely-related and rambling words.

Narrative or Story Structure

This is the kind of structure that underpins the actual workings of the story. Most novels are built around one of the following:

•     Narrative arc
•     Five act structure
•     Three act structure

Word length in a novel depends on the genre. In children’s novels for readers aged 7 – 12, novels can be as short as 10,000 words or as long as 30,000. In science fiction and fantasy works, they sometimes go as high as 45,000 words.

Young adult novels, or novels for readers 13 and up, are around 45,000 words for the low end of the age range, and 60-65,000 words for the higher end of the age range. In the case of science fiction and fantasy novels, that 65,000 can get as high as 80,000 words, and in extreme cases, even up to 100,000 words.

Novels for adults are usually around 80,000 words, though again, some categories go higher. Romance, historical fiction, science fiction, and fantasy novels can run as high as 100,000 to 120,000 words each. Some fantasy trilogies – three books in the same series – can total close to 500,000 words.

If that sounds daunting, don’t panic. It’s better to have a shorter draft you can add to than a longer one you have to keep cutting down.

Some people call novellas short novels. These are usually books for adults of anywhere from 18,000 to 35,000 words. Many of what we refer to as novels today are actually novellas. American author John Steinbeck’s book, Of Mice and Men, clocks in just under 30,000 words. Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea is around 27,000 words, while Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis is only about 20,000 words.

If you really want to write a book; whether a novel or non fiction, it is critical that you take a logical path to achieving your goal.

Be patient -Learn first, then plan, then write.

If you need help, talk to our professional writers at ACS Distance Education and maybe start with one of our courses or books.