Plot: What happens

Arc of the Covenant, Part 2 of 4

Introduction

After boring (or terrifying) you with last week’s discussion of outlining your story, what exactly do you outline?

I promise (or threaten) we’ll get back there. The topics we cover for the next three weeks provide the elements for what you may want to include in your outline:

• Plot

• Story structure

• Narrative arc

Up first, plot.

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

This will be a fairly cursory look at what might be the most important single element of a story. But we’ll build on this each week thereafter.

Plot: What happens

Plot answers the question “what happens.”

Plot is the series of events that make up the story about a character who desperately wants something that isn’t easy to achieve.

These events relate to each other in a pattern or sequence through a cause-and-effect relationship, and end in a satisfactory conclusion in which the character either achieves the goal or fails to achieve the goal, but ends up changed (for better or worse).

The plot of Cinderella is pretty straightforward:

1. Little girl’s mother has died, father has remarried to a wicked stepmother with two mean-girl daughters.

2. The king and queen are holding a ball to find a wife for the prince.

3. Cinderella has to stay home while the stepmother and stepsisters attend.

4. A fairy godmother shows up and gets Cinderella dressed and ready for the ball, including a unique pair of glass slippers, and magically provides transportation. The only stipulation is that Cinderella must leave by midnight when the spell ends.

5. Cinderella is the belle of the ball and dances with the prince, who falls in love with her.

6. When the clock begins striking midnight, she flees the castle before the spell ends. She throws a shoe as she runs away.

7. She returns home to her dysfunctional family where she continues to be bullied.

8. The prince, having found the glass slipper, sets out across the countryside in search of the woman he fell in love with, a woman whose dainty foot will fit in the glass slipper.

9. The prince eventually arrives at Cinderella’s home, the shoe fits, they fall deeply in love and get married, making Cinderella the princess.

That is a brief plot outline of Cinderella. It does not include every scene, and the events it does include are not in any level of detail. But it provides a general outline to the plot and tells “what happens.”

Of course, that’s a children’s story and it’s pretty simple and straightforward.

But that’s a great way to start your outline. Outline your plot. Stick to the major events, the turning points that describe the “what happens.”

Think if you had sixty seconds to tell someone the answer to that dreaded question, “What’s your story about?”

Plot can get much more complex than Cinderella. There are, of course, options to consider. There are always options.