Is coming up with a plot harder than you expected? Answering the questions below should help you nail some of your plot’s basics, along with a few twists and turns.

• Write down your idea(s). It should involve somebody doing something or experiencing something that is out of the ordinary and a story that starts at Point A and winds up at Point B (i.e. something changes).
• Where does the story take place?
• What’s the inciting action or triggering event? Why does this start?
• What is your main character’s ultimate goal? What does he/she want to accomplish?
• Why does your main character want to accomplish this goal? What’s the motivation?
• What’s the price or fallout if the goal is not reached? What’s at stake?
• What is it going to take for the main character to reach this goal?
• How will the main character have to pay emotionally or physically to reach this goal?
• What obstacles does the main character confront along the way?
• What kinds of decisions need to be made?
• What are the consequences of those decisions?
• What conflicts (either internal or external) or confrontations does the main character confront along the way?
• What events spark those conflicts?
• How does the conflict—and the potential price your main character could have to pay—escalate?
• What kinds of rewards does your main character experience along the way?
• How this experience change your main character? What’s your character arc (your character starts at Point A, moves through Point B and ends up at Point C?
• How does the main character’s goal impact other characters?
• Who are those other characters and what is their relationship to the main character?
• Write down any events that have happened to you, to people you know or that you’re read about that you want to include in your plot.
• How does your plot end? In success (and is that necessary good)? In failure (and is that necessarily bad or sad)? Or somewhere in between?
• What’s the action (the climax) that leads to the resolution, be it happy, sad or both?