Do You Have Any Tips On How To Come Up With Plot? I Get General Ideas For Stories But Nothing More Than

Do you have any tips on how to come up with plot? I get general ideas for stories but nothing more than a line

It's going to depend on what your goal is when you're writing as well as what your writing style is.

If you sit down to write with the goal of a 100K longfic, then you're going to need multiple plots. A main plotline (that first sentence you come up with) and at least one sideplot, if not more. The main plot generally follows the main characters and the sideplot tends to fall to secondary or tertiary characters.

Then it's kind of a matter of going through your question words:

What's your one sentence idea? What's happening at the same time as that? Who else is involved? Where do they need to go? Why do they need to do this thing? Why in that place? What stops them from doing it? How do they get past that issue?

When I start writing a fic, I have a one-sentence plot that cracks me up and I write the first chapter setting up that situation. Then I post it. Then I think about what logically needs to happen next, what could happen next, what would be funny if it happened next, etc.

I try to have some end goal in mind. For example, the ship gets together or the trip they're on ends or they capture the bad guy etc. Keeping that end goal in mind allows me to write my way to it chapter by chapter as ideas occur to me, and before you know it I've got 12 chapters and the fic is done.

Either that or I think "what would an argument about pickles look like between these characters?" or "what would this bad guy's planner have in its schedule?" and I just write a oneshot.

What about the rest of you? How do you go about taking a small idea and turning it into a story?

This question is also available on Dreamwidth

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