7.1: What is a Story?
How do you take your ideas, characters, creatures, magic and setting and turn them into a great story?
Firstly, by knowing what a story is. Even if you have thought up the most imaginative characters and setting, without anything happening, there is no story. It's the events and problems that your characters face that make the story. It's following their plight through thick and thin, watching them deal with conflict, feeling their tension, seeing them come out the other side, maybe. To keep your reader's attention you need to provide enough challenges and struggles to keep them on the edge of their seat and keep turning over those pages.
7.2: Conflict, Tension, Plot
Conflict
Conflict is basically what happens when two people disagree about something, or are after the same thing. Imagine a young man in love with his brother's fiancée, an ambitious queen who wants to conquer other lands or a mysterious new creature that some people think should be eradicated and others want to save. There needs to be a point for telling the story and your conflict is it. There may be one major conflict which is the main point of the story, and lots of minor ones along the way, keeping the reader's interest up. Conflict can also be internal; a character might be torn between doing what is expected of him by his parents, or disobeying them and following his heart. Life is a series of constant conflicts, big and small, internal and external, so use conflict in your story to make it interesting and real.
Tension
Tension is what your characters feel when they are faced with conflict. It's having a deep and resolute desire for something that may be difficult or painful to achieve. It is also what the readers feel when there is an unsolved mystery, an impending danger, or there is doubt as to whether the character will achieve their goals. Tension drives your story forward and gives a purpose for your readers to carry on reading.
Plot
Finally, the plot holds together the conflict and tension and leads them together in a logical way, from revealing the major conflict at the start of the novel, to reaching some kind of outcome at the end. The plot also gives information about how your characters are handling the tension and what decisions they make along the way. The plot is the heart of the action of your story.
7.3: To Plan or not to Plan?
It sounds simple; just make lots of exciting stuff happen, right? Well the truth is that most authors rarely just 'wing it' and start writing without any kind of plan. Most build a detailed and structured outline which they use as their constant guide when writing their book. Choosing not to plan and just seeing where your novel takes you is a more intuitive fluid way of writing, but it probably won't have much structure, and you will probably take longer editing it, changing things round, and deleting parts afterwards.A story needs to have some kind of structure for the reader to find it satisfying. There needs to be a beginning, a middle and an end. If you present conflict and tension, these need to then be resolved or at least have some kind of outcome, whether good or bad. If your story floats along with all sorts of things happening and loose ends everywhere, the reader will be unsatisfied at the end and wil ask questions like, 'But what about...?'.
However, writing without a plan can be a good way to start if you're not sure what's going to happen and you want to let your characters tell the story. You have planned all the other elements of your story so you put your characters in your chosen or invented setting and see what they get up to. If you're struggling to come up with a plot this can be a great way to just start writing and see what happens. Again, this kind of writing will usually need extensive editing and changing things around afterwards.Having an outline helps you to understand what your major conflicts are going to be, how the characters are going to be affected by them, and how and when you are going to resolve the conflicts. Writing a novel is an artistic process but it can also be quite logical when it comes to planning.
If a conflict rears its head in chapter one disguised as a two-headed monster who likes to eat humans, maybe in chapter three you will resolve the issue by having him restrained in some way. Then later he could escape from the cage he has been locked in, and then finally your hero manages to destroy him in the last chapter. Meanwhile there are lots of other smaller conflicts and tensions going on between the big two-headed monster conflict.
7.4: Building a Coherent Outline
How detailed you make your outline is really up to you.
Some authors go so far as to write in what is going to happen in each paragraph or sentence, but something far briefer is fine too. Your outline should contain, at the very least, your characters, your main source of conflict, and the overall storyline which ties the two together. You can add your character profiles and details about your setting to of the main plot. Then concentrate on subplots and small conflicts, how they connect to the main plot and how and when they get resolved.
Try using diagrams and brainstorms to create your outline. It can be useful to see how things link up and you can use colours to make different themes or characters stand out. It's also useful to write a chronological list of events to refer to as when you're writing you may choose to reveal things in a different order so it's useful to have a clear outline of what happened when. Make notes about which characters appear in which parts of the plot and when they meet each other or when different subplots collide, so you don't neglect them later on in your story.
7.5: The Beginning, the Middle, the End
We've already discussed the important of a good first line and first page, but this really extends to the first few chapters. You are generating interest and dangling a carrot for the reader so that they want to read the rest of your fantasy novel. A good way to do this is cut straight to the action. No explanations, no backstory, just exciting stuff.As you get to the larger middle section of your book you want to continue to reel the reader in. You can now start to develop the characters and reveal more information about the setting. However you also want to keep the tension on the up, develop the conflict further, and introduce more action. You can use plot twists and turns to keep the reader guessing and get your main characters into trouble to keep the suspense going.
Finally you reach the grand climax, the end of your story. This is where the major conflict you introduced gets resolved and in the fantasy world, it is usually where good conquers evil. Also make sure you tie up any loose ends and maybe give your characters a bit of time to rejoice, or commiserate, depending on how things went for them.
FACT
The average length of a fantasy novel is 100,000 words
Source: http://theswivet.blogspot.co.uk - 2010
7.6: Originality
Another thing to focus on when planning your plot is whether the material is original or not. Examine your plot outline and consider whether you have read anything similar or if it feels too predictable. You could be retelling an old story which is fine, as long as you bring your own personality and originality to it. Take a careful look at your characters and what happens to them and think if you could somehow make it more unique. Try and stay away from the stereotypes and clichés that readers are used to when reading fantasy books.
It's fine to write about a beautiful maiden, a knight in shining armour and a magnificent castle. But somehow you have to make it different from every other novel with the same elements. Think up a unique situation for the characters to get themselves into. Give them strange and limiting powers which affect their everyday lives. Give them an unusual backstory and plenty of faults and weaknesses.
7.7: Pitfalls to Avoid
In your effort to make your novel as exciting as possible, you could actually be turning the reader off. If your plot contains too many complex subplots, or too many weird and wonderful characters, beasts, etc. your readers may find the story confusing and hard to follow. It can also come across as too exhausting to read if there are constant action scenes and battles. Give your readers, as well as your characters, a chance to breathe and have some down time in between scenes of combat or high drama.
It's also important not to make your novel boring! If you fall into the trap of thinking that you have to explain every backstory from birth for every character, as well as the history of your new world since time began, your readers are quickly going to lose interest. Plus they don't need to know everything about everything; just give them what they need in order to follow, understand and enjoy the story. Try and get a good balance between the parts where readers are learning about stuff, and the parts where exciting action stuff is happening. These will of course overlap as well. Not making your story boring or predictable comes back to originality as well, so remember to change things up and avoid falling into those fantasy stereotypes that we may know and love, but have read a thousand times.
Another potential pitfall is to make the sequence of events illogical.You are completely au fait with your plot and characters and events and settings but remember that your readers are not. It can add interest to mix things up and report events in a different order than how they happened but it needs to remain clear to your readers. When looking through your plot outline think carefully if anything seems out of place or needs to happen sooner or later than where you have placed it. It can help to write all your significant events on flashcards and give them a shuffle. Lay them out on a table and change them around until you think you have found the perfect order for everything to happen.
Module Summary
Lessons Learned
There is a lot to think about when coming up with a perfect plot for your fantasy novel and most writers agree that the best way to handle this is to write a coherent outline detailing characters, setting, creatures and magic as well as what will happen at the beginning middle and end of your book. Keep your plot as original as possible and avoid certain pitfalls like including too much background information, using an illogical sequence of events or including endless action scenes.
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