To plot or not to plot

June 2, 2013 at 22:40 (Ideas, Plot, Writing)

Writing in English can be a treacherous thing to do. It most definitely has its pros and cons. I keep stumbling the cons every-so-often, and I recently did so again. I went to a forum to ask for help on a story, and posted it, obviously at the time, in the plot section.

It didn’t belong there.

Why? Because the plot wasn’t what I was having trouble with. Plot meant something different than I thought it did. Apparently the Norwegian equivalent of the word plot means something a little different. Wouldn’t have hurt to have known that a little earlier…

The plot is what drives the characters towards, or away, from the goal; their motivation. I already know what drives the character in this particular story forward, what his motivation is. But the clues that leads to his goal, is what I was having trouble with. He’s got the motivation to reach the goal, he just doesn’t know how to get to the goal. I have to drop a trail of breadcrumbs for him to follow, each time a little closer(or further away, I might be an ass and drop some moldy crumbs!) to his objective.

So now I feel a bit dumb to be honest! But now another question arises; just what AM I in the need of help with? What do you call the breadcrumbs as I have just named it?

I normally ask a friend for a lot of help and brainstorm with her, but she is so busy with work that it feels like my head is going to explode with ideas I cannot air out to see what she thinks(Yes, her opinion is important to me). So in the end I ended up bugging my penpal on Skype for over an hour with my problem. He actually had a few good ideas I could spin of on, but unfortunately nothing that could turn into a breadcrumb. But maybe it will be easier to put them out as I have more of the storyline? I’m writing down the rough outline as a result of our chat, so maybe that will help.

Gonna go sleep on it!