Plotting your ideas

Detail from the cover of '(un)arranged marriage' by Bali Rai

After my recent blog about using the world you know to inform your stories, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about plotting your ideas. As with characters and settings, many of you have asked me how I plan my novels and whether there are any tips to help make the task easier.  It's a difficult question. Talk to ten different authors and you might get ten different views on the topic. When I teach creative writing, I talk only about what works for me, and that is what I'm going to do here.

The thing you have to remember about my writing process is that it is self-taught. I've never sat a creative writing class in my life. No one has ever talked me through how to plot a story. Everything I know, I taught myself by reading books and looking at what successful authors did. From Sue Townsend to Stephen King, as a youngster, I read and re-read novels until my eyes grew sore. I picked them apart and looked at the way different genres were plotted along similar lines. Crime novels tended to follow a pattern, for example, as did horror. For human dramas, the characters became all important. In a thriller, it was the action and excitement that made the books great. So what I'm about to explain is how I actually do things rather than some textbook guide.

The first thing is understanding that all stories have a beginning, middle and end. I know that this is taught at primary school but that's beside the point. Knowing why it's essential is far more useful than simply accepting that it is required. Many of the Key Stage 3 pupils I teach in schools can recite the basic outline of a story but very few can tell me what goes into each stage, or why. Stories need a structure in the same way a house needs foundations. Yes, you can mess about with a story so that the end becomes the beginning etc… but you must understand the structure before you can alter it. If I want to knock down a wall and rebuild it elsewhere, I can only do so successfully if I understand how a wall is built in the first place.

Next you need to know what goes into each section and why. I realised early on that the beginning is an introduction. It is where you introduce the main character/s, the setting and the story. It is also essential that you get your beginning right. Most readers I know want to be engaged within three chapters of any book (some even less than that) so you have to hook your reader quickly. You also have to understand your genre and the people who love to read it. A quick look at five crime novels should show you that a murder or crime in the opening pages is important. Horror novels need horror from the opening pages. A good love story introduces you to one of the main characters immediately. A great thriller needs to include action from the first sentence. Understand this and it will help you to plan your own story better. When I was learning this I watched many films, alongside the countless books, to help me to understand how to engage an audience. I may not always get it right but it really does work.

The next step is to understand the middle section. Often this part is called the dilemma or the turning point. If stories are sandwiches, this bit is the filling. Without it, you don't actually have a story. Also, some stories may have only one major turning point whereas others may have lots of them. Crime novels tend to have one overarching mystery to solve and plenty of little ones too. Most thrillers are the same - a series of smaller incidents for the main characters to deal with, plus one huge problem. Human dramas tend to have one major turning point, to which everything else is tied. In my first novel, (un)arranged marriage, the main dilemma for Manny is the forced marriage he wants to escape from. Everything else stems from his decision to go against his family and their wishes. In Killing Honour, the major turning point for Sat comes when his life is threatened for asking after his missing sister - at that moment he realises that something is horribly wrong. In one of my favourite reads in recent years, Malorie Blackman's Boys Don't Cry, the major dilemma happens early on, when Dante is left with his baby daughter. The rest is directly related to this occurrence.

The last bit, if you get the first two parts right and have built your characters properly (so that you understand them and their motives) should be pretty easy. This is the resolution - the part where you solve the problem or deal with the dilemma. Your characters faced an obstacle to get past, and you show us how they did that and what happened when they did. Again it is vital to know your genre here. In a horror story, humans and monsters meet and the monsters want to kill the humans. At least one of your humans has to get away (someone to tell the story). How did they get away and what happened to the monsters? In a crime novel - who committed the crime and did they get caught? In a romance - did they fall in love and live happily ever after or not? You simply decide which path your story is going to take, and tell it. I know I'm making this sound simple, but with the right amount of thought and practice, it does become easier. And the more you understand your genre, the better your writing will be.

I hope that helps rather than confuses things for you. As I mentioned, the above is self-taught. It is also a simplification but I think there's enough there to make a good starting point. Try it for yourselves by taking ten popular novels from whichever genre you want and reading them carefully. Study the similarities in the structure, look at what the authors place where, and think about why they do that. With enough practice, you'll soon find that it begins to make sense. Just remember me when the royalty cheques come flooding in!