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Have trouble constructing your plot? Well, it’s time you take it to your foundry, start forging your plot and give it a new shape. I could give some helping hand here, mainly because the only area which I do with utmost perfection is the plotting part.

Try reading another article I’ve written with some basics you need to know about plotting: How to Plot a Novel- The Basics

Forging the Best Plot- Construct the unsurpassed plot from a base.

To start out with developing your plot, you need to take care about 9 interesting tools.

1. Create what you need
2. Act natural!
3. Cause-Effect
4. A Drama!
5. Goal-Obstacle
6. A Change!
7. Question-Answer-Lead
8. A Twist!
9. A suprise!

1. Create what you need

To some extent your plot is driven by the characters harbored by the plot. While creating characters, bear in mind the various events you might have to encounter and decide the special features your character process by careful cross referring to the theme of your novel.

2. Act natural!

Natural! That’s what your plot has to be. Make your characters to act naturally according to their normal behavior and stay out of erratic modifications to your plot that makes your character act like what appears to be abnormal. Don’t make your character fit to your plot like trying to fit a circle into a triangular slot.

3. Cause-Effect

There should be a Cause-Effect loop in your plot. Every event should have a cause and it should bring about some effects. Only events with a cause and an effect would be worth reading by the reader. Just as everything in reality has a cause and an effect, so should be a plot.

4. A Drama!

There’s nothing more interesting than adding some drama to your events. Plan your plot in such a way that there is a scope of adding a lot of drama to your scene. For example, active involvement of the character would create more drama than a passive involvement. For example while your main character stalks someone secretly, let his/her cover be blown so that there is some drama involved if s/he still wants to stalk the other person. Drama involvement creates mind gripping plots- and one would need that extensively while writing thrillers.

5. Goal-Obstacle

Now there’s some activity in your plot, let there be some Goal for various characters to accomplish. But don’t forget to place obstacles on the way- never give the character what s/he wants in the first shot. Let them try and endure for getting what tey want. Even in real life, successful people who never endured anything never made great impressions on anyone’s mind. Always follow the Goal Obstacle loop.

6. A Change!

A goal and an obstacle brings your character to a new level. It is an experience. And in real life people learn from experiences. There is no difference in novels too. There should be changes in the character every time there is an experience. Changes could be internal or external. Combine both in a definite ratio so as to bring out the originality in your novel.

7. Question-Answer-Lead

Yet another loop! The question-answer-lead loop is an essential loop to bring about interaction of the reader with the plot you are planning. Don’t give facts directly. Just make your plot and presentation in such a way that it makes the reader to raise Questions, find Answers for it and make their mind to give Leads or Trails. Let them figure out and guess things- which maybe right or wrong; that’s for you and your plot to decide. Question-Answer-Lead form’s an important part of Mystery novels.

8. A Twist!

Twist is nothing but a tactical manoeuvre in which there s an unexpected turn of events. Bring in twists to bring about some surprises. Who doesn’t like surprises? There is no reason that your plot will turn out to be more successful if there are some surprises in it. Moreover bringing the Twist in the right time would only amplify the effect!

How to know whether it’s the right time?

Simply follow the Question-Answer-Lead yourself and find the point in the plot where you really made some assumption and find the point in which the assumption could be broken into a twist without damaging your reading mood. (Sometimes, Twists can surprise the readers too much that it spoils their mood too. Be careful with that.)

9. A surprise!

A Twist always brings along new surprises- that is- new explanations, new theories and new ways of thinking; maybe even a new character getting into the main plot. Surprises are mostly good- until you make sure you don’t step out of the limits.

What to Avoid?

There are three important things you need to chuck out from your plot to make it look better. I’ve described it here: Three Terrible Things to avoid in your Plot

I hope this article helps you to create a better plot. Share your opinions on ‘Forging the Best Plot- Construct the unsurpassed plot from a base.‘

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