First, here's a basic story line. This is about as basic as it gets:
Character Wants Something
Character Gets What She Wants
The End
Okay, that was boring. We can't let the character just have whatever she wants! We need some obstacles.
Character Wants Something BUT there is an OBSTACLE
Character Makes a Plan
Character Overcomes Obstacle
And Gets What She Wants
Still too easy. But we've got options. Maybe when our character tries to overcome the obstacle, she makes things worse! Now her goal is even farther away. Or perhaps while she's making her plan, other obstacles show up that she has to tackle first. Overcoming each obstacle now becomes its own short-term objective.
Are you starting to see the possibilities?
Now let's look at what can happen as our character meets each obstacle.
She can either overcome the obstacle, fail to overcome the obstacle, or even make things worse! Overcoming one obstacle can cause other obstacles to come up.
Through the story, as she meets each obstacle, your character will have some triumphs and some setbacks, but at some point she will come to a major crisis point. Here's the biggest obstacle of them all, and if she can get past it, her heart's desire will at last be in reach.
Now you have to decide if you want your character to succeed and get everything she wanted, to fail and lose it all, or some interesting combination of the two. She might only get some of what she wants. She might get everything she wanted and realize she didn't really want it. She might totally fail but realize she actually wanted something else instead. What are some other possibilities? Think about it. That's where the creative plotting comes in.
To create even more possibilities for your plot, give your character more than one objective, and have the various obstacles work together in interesting ways. Include other characters and their objectives, and interweave them all. Have the characters help each other, or get in each others' way, or have to fight each other to get what they want, or even choose to sacrifice what they want so someone else can reach their goal. Your character can even change objectives throughout the story. It works best if the goals start small, then get bigger as the story progresses.
The combinations are endless!
As a writing exercise, we created potential story line charts. Here's how. Take a sheet of paper and write the following things in a column down the middle of the page, leaving plenty of space between each:
Your character's name and what the character wants
How the character gets what the character wants
Final Outcome
Now, start drawing branches. Under what the character wants, you can list several possible obstacles. Choose a few, and note what your character will do to overcome them. For each obstacle, make more branches. A success, a fail, and one or two alternatives, perhaps even a change in objective.
After your character finds a way past all those obstacles, there comes the final obstacle. What happens now? Make some branches and explore the possibilities. Do the same with your final outcome. Is your character happy now? Or sad? Or has nothing really changed?
Once you have several possibilities mapped out, go back and pick the best ones. The key to being creative is to spend some time thinking about what you're doing. Don't go with the first idea that pops into your head, but work with it a while. Ask yourself what might happen if things went a little differently. Give yourself options to choose from.
In conclusion, whether you use the most basic plot on the planet, or you come up with some fantastically clever and convoluted story line, it won't matter a bit if your reader doesn't care about your characters. If the reader cares, you can walk your characters through the most straightforward plot and get away with it. But if you can make your plot interesting, creative, and challenging, all the better!
Keep writing!
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