Ask any writer this question: What is plot? You're answers will be varied but most will agree that plot is essentially what propels your story forward. It's what drives the major events of your stories through what the characters do, think, feel and so on. It's more than just a conglomeration of actions or scenes that lead to nowhere. Perhaps the easiest way to understand exactly what plot is is to always remember this: PLOT IS A VERB! ('Plot,' Ansen Dibell). Every writer has heard these famous words: "Show, don't tell," and when attempting to test your idea to see if there's a plot looming in there somewhere, there are some basic questions you need to ask yourself. I'll start with this particular one because it's one I've had personal experience with in my own writing.
1. Is it too personal for readers to become involved with?
"Some experience is too close to us. We feel deep emotion about it but haven't digested it yet and aren't able to put it into perspective for somebody else to view....You have to be able to distance it...You have to be, in some meaningful sense, free of it before you're ready to write about it. You have to be willing to look at it through a stranger's eyes." ('Plot,' Ansen Dibell, Chapter 1)
I've experienced being too close to something to be able to put it into words. It took time for me to deal with my emotions to be able to have my characters feel them. But I truly feel that in order to make such emotions believable in my characters, I had to feel them first. I had to know the joy, the pain, the sorrow, the loss, or the unconditional love if I expected a reader to feel any of those things as my characters experienced them. I had to be able to step back and put it all into some kind of perspective before I could write about it. Perhaps that's why it took me so long to complete the first draft of my manuscript. I kept starting over. It just didn't fit or feel right. Until one day, it did....the words flowed...the chapters unfolded before me...and my idea went in a completely different direction than what I'd first imagined it would go.
As I'm working on the second draft, editing as I go, I'm finding it much easier to expand on scenes where needed and cut back on those that are not but I still find that something has to hit me a certain way to get those feelings going again, forcing their way out onto the screen in front of me. I'm not very good at just sitting down and grinding out a certain number of words each day but when my muse stops by for a visit, it takes over my thoughts until I finally get the words out. My story is fictional but the feelings I've put into it are not in many ways...they're personal...almost sacred...and I write to do them justice by bringing them to life in the world of my characters.
If you're finding an experience too personal, give yourself a break. Step back from it. Put it away for a while and then go back to it when you think the time is right. Putting such experiences into the plot of your story should be what keeps it moving forward...what gives the reader something, or someone, to care about so they'll want to stick around to see what happens next. Think your idea fits the bill? Then go for it! Give it a try! Remember nothing's set in stone!
Suggested Reading: 'Elements of Fiction Writing; Plot,' Ansen Dibell.
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