A. The Four Stages of Plot Development
As soon as you’ve drawn all that creativity and originality inside of you that you think you may burst with it, you should move on to thinking up your plot idea. There are four main steps that go into your plot:
1. The proceedings leading up to the main event, where you settle your readers in, give them the appropriate background information and the means to understand the real storyline when it kicks in.
2. The set of events that begins the main conflict/plot (foreshadowing could be included here).
3. The climax of the book where the characters are in the midst of the plot and where the turning point occurs in which the characters work to solve the hurdle presented to them.
4. Finally, the set of events that brings the plot to an end and the story to a close.
However, it is sometimes good if you don’t think up the whole plot – like every single detail – before you’ve even started writing as that will constrict your writing in terms of creativity. As long as you know roughly in which direction your plot is going in, you don’t need to have every little thing worked out, as writing will become monotonous if you already know what you’re doing. It’s like being told what direction your life is going to go in, suddenly your life will seem very boring and predictable as you know what’s going to happen and you’ll be determined for things to happen differently. You just need to make sure that as you develop your plot you work through and include those four stages in your writing.
Let’s take Harry Potter {the first book} as an example of the four stages:
1. You learn about Harry Potter’s miserable life with his Aunt and Uncle and how he ended up there.
2. He goes to the zoo and talks to a snake. He then receives a series of letters which his Aunt and Uncle stop him from reading. He finally reads a letter to find out that he’s a wizard. He goes to Hogwarts, meets his friends and then they all become drawn into the thought that Professor Snape is evil, tried to kill Harry and wants the Philosopher’s Stone.
3. Harry, Ron and Hermione go to find the Philosopher’s Stone, go through all the traps, and then Harry ends up facing Voldemort and finds out that Professor Quirrel was the one after the Stone after all. Harry ends up with the stone, kills Quirrel with his hands and ends up unconscious.
4. Harry ends up in the Hospital Wing and then goes back to normal school life. Ends up winning the House Cup at the end of the year and then goes back home to his Aunt and Uncle. THE END.
Now that’s a very watered down version of the first Harry Potter book, but you should all now get what I mean? You do? Well, that’s great because now it’s your turn!
Discussion: What is the hardest of those four stages for you to write as a writer? And what are the easiest?
Assignment 1: Pick any book of your choice and show how the plot goes through the four steps shown above. You don’t need to go into real depth, just write something like my example and show that you can see how the four stages work in terms of developing a plot.
Assignment 2: Pick one of your current writing projects and show how the plot works through those four steps. Don’t worry if you haven’t thought up the whole plot; just write out the stages for as far as you’ve worked it out.
ALL COMMENTS ON THIS THREAD ARE ONLY FOR DISCUSSION 1. POST ALL YOUR ASSIGNMENTS IN THE HOMEWORK THREAD AND MARK IT 'PLOT DEVELOPMENT: ASSIGNMENT 1/2'. THANK YOU.
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