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In previous posts in this series, you’ve developed a sense of who your protagonist(s) are and what they want (character), as well as why it matters (stakes). In this installment of the series of how to prepare for NaNoWriMo (or how to draft any story) we’ll look at the third essential tentpole of story: the plot.

Whether you’re a plotter or a pantser, starting to write your draft without at least some sense of the road your characters will take in pursuit of their goal is a near guarantee of failing to reach that destination, especially when writing in a time crunch.

But you don’t have to know every single step on that path ahead of time as long as you have at least some idea of what the key mile markers on the journey are.

The Key Elements of Story Structure

One of the best trips I ever took was a road trip to New England with a friend. We had no reservations and no firm plan, just a map (yes, a map—this was a while ago) we’d consult to figure out what sounded interesting each day.

But we did know the main sights we wanted to see and things we wanted to do. If we hadn’t, the trip might have wound up aimless or disappointing or dull.

Similarly, if you define the essential structural elements of your story before you begin drafting, they can serve as key guideposts for the journey, keeping you on track regardless of how much or how little you want to plan the rest out ahead:

• Setup: Your protag’s “point A”: Who are they and what’s their situation when we meet them?
• Inciting event: What specific change in their status quo happens to push them onto a new road?
• Major setbacks: What main failures/lows push them farther away from their goal?
• Major triumphs: What main victories/highs propel them closer to their goal?
• Key turning points: What happens that shifts the character’s trajectory from an upward swing toward the next main triumph to a downward swing toward the next main setback, and vice versa?
• Climax: What is the greatest challenge yet that your character faces in pursuit of their goal, and how do they overcome it?
• Resolution/denouement: Your protag’s “point B”: How are they and their life changed afterward, as a direct result of the journey they’ve taken?

What Does Your Character Do to Attain Her Goal?

The plot of your story isn’t just a series of interesting situations you put your character into, but the specific events—actions and reactions—that result from your character relentlessly pursuing that thing she desperately wants (or wants to avoid) that we established in part two of this series.

The plot of your story isn’t just a series of interesting situations you put your character into, but the specific events—actions and reactions—that result from your character relentlessly pursuing that thing she desperately wants.

Once readers “meet” your character(s) and know enough about them and their situation and goal to invest in it (setup, covered in parts one, two, and three of the series), we need to see why she is pushed to embark on this journey she may been hesitating before (inciting event). What happens in her life that is different from her status quo, where she has been stuck (contentedly or not) that makes her have to move out of that stasis?

Then what is the first necessary step that will move her closer to that goal—a smaller immediate goal that is in service to the larger one? Does she succeed or fail at that first step? In either case, how does that affect the next step she must take in order to move closer to it? And the next? And the next?

What are the one or two moments of greatest success in that journey—the places where your protag seems to be making meaningful progress, getting really close to the goal (major triumphs)? What are the one or two worst failures, where it seems she’s in danger of failing to achieve it (major setbacks)?

What happens after either a major high or low that turns the tide the other direction (turning points)? What action does your protagonist take as a result?

For each step, your character should have an immediate need or desire that is in service to her ultimate need or desire (the main goal, or what she thinks it is at this point; goals can shift over the course of the story).

She takes action (or fails to take action) toward that immediate need, and her success or failure results in some realignment to move toward the next step: the want, the action, and the shift…over and over…scene by scene, moving the story forward, always toward the next major triumph or major setback. This serves as the engine of not only of the story but also your drafting of it.

As you write, if you keep the story always on an upward or downward trajectory, you create momentum and levels, pushing the character along their journey and always moving the story forward (the holy grail of story!) till she faces her ultimate challenge and either succeeds or fails (climax), but is changed as a result either way as a direct result of the journey she has taken in the course of the story (resolution/denouement).

Knowing these main milestones on the journey keeps you from getting waylaid by detours, dead ends, or running out of gas as you’re writing. If you’re a heavy-duty plotter you can sketch out every step, as in a story X-ray; pantsers can simply set the key guideposts and find their way to each one as they go, as my friend and I did on our New England trip.

You can even create a rough structure map of it, literally plotting out the main points–the highs and lows and the main stops in between en route to each, the turns in the road that send the character onto a new trajectory toward the next major milestone–visually in a drawing, like this:

Now that you have the tools to prepare for telling the story you want to tell, next week we’ll look at how to prepare yourself to tell it to help keep you on track all month long.

Over to you, authors. How are you doing with your preparation for NaNo—or your next manuscript? How much preplanning do you like to do? What helps keep your story on track in your writing–and what has derailed you in the past?

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