Plots come in these types.

1.        Overcoming the monster.

2.        Rages to riches.

3.        The quest

4.        Voyage and Return

5.        Comedy

6.        Tragedy

7.        Rebirth

My book Deep South Gold has an overcoming the monster plot. The monsters and the antagonists are Huerta, Marie Laveau, and voodoo. Jane is the protagonist and main character. Deep South Gold is a sprawling story that takes Jane from a naïve teenager to being a strong, sexy adult woman willing to do anything to protect her child. Through the erotic historical account, we bear witness to her child’s conception, birth, childhood, and finally, adulthood all the while, chasing Confederate gold. Deep South Gold is full of greed, insanity, love, sex, voodoo, and history. Deep South Gold is full of monsters.

At this time, the second book, also a historical fiction, in that series Deep South Jazz is a voyage and return plot. Jane and Shug go to New Orleans during the Roaring Twenties to get away from the Klansmen and return after the threat is gone.

Voyage and return is the type of plot for my book Queen of the World Walkers. In this science fiction, a woman receives an ancestry DNA test for Mother’s Day, has a car accident, and then travels through time to all the places and historical events from her DNA report, all the time trying to make it back in time for her daughter’s wedding. She leaves Memphis on a voyage and returns to Memphis in time for her daughter’s wedding.

All plots or stories need structure. With your plot you set expectations for the reader and progress toward those expectations.

                  Start with this list.

1.        Main character – What does your main character want?

2.        Status Quo – What is happening when the story starts?

3.        Motivation – What the character wants. What motivates the character?

4.        Conflict – What disturbs the status quo?

5.        Developments – What happens next?

6.        Crisis – What is the crisis?

7.        Resolution – How is the crisis resolved?

Plots can be a linear or nonlinear structure. If you want either is fine, but you need some structure. It must have a beginning, middle, and end. The beginning contains what the character wants and the status quo. The middle includes the character’s motivation, the conflicts, and the developments. The end includes the crisis and the resolution. With your plot, you set up expectations for the reader and progress toward those expectations. You should somehow foreshadow these expectations getting solved. You can have several plots that intertwine. They must be dependent upon each other.

                  You need a plot outline because your main character must want or need something and be prevented from getting it. Once your character figures out how to get what they want, you have a plot.

Fleshing out your plot with colorful characters and a vivid setting enhances your story and grabs your readers’ attention. Although stories change, stick to your plot. Characters need to change and grow.

                  You need a road map, story structure, or an outline of what happens. Everything that happens must be significant to the character’s outline and growth.

The story structure can have three acts.

1.        Start with an identifying central conflict or challenge for your character. This is your beginning.

2.        Outline key elements, including the inciting incident. This is the middle.

3.         Add the inciting incidents.

4.         Add rising action.

5.         Add the climax. This is the beginning of the end.

6.         Add the falling action.

7.        Add the resolution.

 Everything in your story must go toward this resolution, so if you have loose ends, resolve them at a natural stopping place and do it as quickly as possible after the climax.

Conflicts need to be resolved by a character. Don’t depend on a natural disaster or an unknown heroic character. Your characters need to solve their own problems and resolve them. Once you have a solid plot, your characters can and should be able to solve their own problems.

Your plot should be framed with structure. Structure set around the plot helps to develop and write your story. It supports or holds the story up like framing of a house. Different stories lend themselves to different structures. They can be linear or nonlinear, coming in and out of time and setting, and having one or different points of view.

If your story needs clarity, use linear structure or chronological structure. If you want drama and complexity, use nonlinear structure.  With nonlinear structure, you can tell multiple story lines from different points of view.

Another structure is Point of View such as single POV or multiple POV. Multiple POV can give the protagonist and the antagonist’s viewpoints. To support the structure you select, you can use flashbacks or flash-forwards, bookends, and categories. Using these supports or enhancements tighten your plot and make your theme clearer.

Bookends use the same motif at the beginning and the end of the story. Bookends may be a reference to the same thing at the beginning and at the end of the story. Bookends help ground the theme.

Categories can be places, events, people, experiences, or anything that enhances the theme. There is no one best category, so experiment with them all to enhance your theme. Then select the one that you like best and that fits your voice.

Flashbacks and flash-forwards help you the author control the flow of information with backstory by showing events in different time frames. They support your plot. Be careful with flashbacks so that they don’t feel like information dumps. Flash-forwards can increase suspense by increasing the feeling of upcoming doom. Flash-forwards break the narrative flow and shouldn’t be used often. Flash-forwards are structures that can support the plot. You ahould flashbacks and flash-forward carefully and not very often because the use and intention may backfire.

Although your plot needs structure to hold it up, select it carefully from linear or nonlinear. Then select structures to support your plot from various points of view. To further support your plot, use other supports such as flashbacks, flash-forwards, categories, bookends.  Select all these according to your preference, the themes in your story, and key elements and situations.