by Kay Parsons

Created on: May 21, 2008   Last Updated: November 22, 2009

I suppose that the truth of it is that not all good stories need a strong plot, but a great story does. Plot is the center of your story and ,without a good one, everything else will crumble away and your story will fall apart. Even if you have the greatest characters, a plot hole can be as bad as a black hole.

What exactly is a strong plot, though, and how do you create one? This is one of the hardest parts of fiction writing. There's not really a formula for great plots, and if there were, could you really call your writing creative?

A strong plot is one that grabs you by the throat and won't let go. You never see it coming. The best of plots are unpredictable and different from everything else. There really aren't other criteria to it, though you definitely need more than that.

One story that has a very strong plot is Holes, by Louis Sachar. Holes is humorous and has a very unusual plot, about a boy who gets in trouble for stealing a pair of shoes, of all things, and has the choice to either go to jail or Camp Greenlake, where he'd have to spend his days digging holes. As goofy as this plot may seem, Louis Sachar pulls it off very well. You never know what is going to happen at the next bend and there are two other stories being told at the same time as the main story. Though at first they all seem somewhat disconnected, they are tied together so perfectly that by the time you finish the story, you are amazed at how well everything fits together in this book. It's like a jigsaw puzzle, and Louis Sachar is a master at putting those puzzle pieces together correctly.

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, is another story with a strong plot. It is about the fight against prejudice through the eyes of a little girl. Perhaps this doesn't sound very unique or original, but the characters are so vivid and real that it almost seems as if there is no plot, that Harper Lee is merely following the lives of a very extraordinary family. To Kill a Mockingbird is a very character-oriented plot; the characters don't rotate around the plot, the plot rotates around the characters. Because of this, you never know what will happen next. People are unpredictable, so the story is unpredictable and the situation the characters are in is strong enough to draw you into the story and keep you there, all the way to the end.

So how do you create a strong plot then? In my humble opinion, you can't create a great plot with a formula, but there are definitely elements to plots that can be followed.

In one way, most plots seem to follow the same structure. They have a beginning, a middle, and an end; a situation, rising action, a climax, falling action, and a resolution. You can even graph this into a nice, tidy little triangle. Plot hardly ever seems to be tidy, though. There are stories with more than one climax and action rarely rises steadily; it more often drops every so often before rising again. Same with falling action: it often rises a little before dropping.

These elements are merely the necessities of a plot and not the recipe for a great plot. It is difficult to describe how to create a strong plot because there are no set rules as to what is needed to make a plot great. Some plots are complex and others are very simple. Some are highly character driven and others are more idea driven.

At the same time, a plot is only as good as the elements that surround it. A good plot has a strong idea to back it up, interesting characters to help drive it forward, and a vivid setting to sharpen it.

The plot is the soul of a story, but a soul is useless without a strong body.

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