There are more, of course. But since I’m tired and a little muzzy (last night broke a long stretch of no sleep) and five is a good round number. Talismanic, even.

Plotting is both art and science. If you’re lucky the characters will create it and pull you along, and all you’ll need are little cosmetic fixes to make it work. If you’re not lucky and it’s not working, maybe these will help.

1. The Story Belongs To S/He Who Changes Most Sometimes the problem is that we don’t know whose story it is. Quite simply, the story belongs to the character who changes most–which may or may not be the main character. If it isn’t, you need to make sure the reader is satisfied with what’s happened to the character that changes most. Otherwise, they’ll be left with that unsatisfied feeling. And nobody wants that.

Also, if the main character isn’t the one who changes the most, why? You need to take a hard look at the story and see if that needs fixing. It sometimes happens that you write half a novel about the wrong character, and need to go back and start again once a particularly uppity secondary character takes over.

2. Conflict, Conflict, Conflict If it’s not moving the story along–and if you don’t have a really compelling reason to slow the story and make it take a breath–kill it. Conflict is what keeps a story going through its arc from a disturbed equilibrium to a new equilibrium.

Plenty of new writers think that if it’s beautiful writing, it deserves to be in the story. Beautiful writing needs to also move the story along. It can’t just sit there and look pretty. A dead spot in the story will allow your readers to set the book down and go do something else–like fix dinner, or go to work, or something. Who wants that? If they have to set the story down, you want them panting to come back to it and cursing the other stuff they have to do–not the other way around.

3. Know Your Fairytales Fairytales and myths have rules of narrative you need to know and absorb. Like it or not, these are the structural building blocks of the stories we tell. You may choose to subvert them, but you must absolutely know the rules before you break them. Plus, they are a rich mine of characters, situations, and ideas you can shamelessly steal.

These stories survive because they fill a deep human need. You could do worse than take a few pointers from them.**

4. That Man With The Gun If it’s worth a story, it’s a situation where someone gets hurt. Don’t kid-glove your characters. Look at the classics–there’s all sorts of hurt and pain going on in there. Look at the biographies of great people we read and reread. The attraction isn’t just greatness–it’s hubris, pain, tragedy, betrayal, infidelity, heartache, last stands, and all sorts of suffering.

Don’t let your characters turn into Mary Sues or Gary Stus. Get them hurt. Make them cry. Give them scars and unlikable traits. Every human being has a flaw. Make sure your characters are human. With all the messiness that implies.

5. Let Go Of Being Loved Psst, I’ll tell you a secret. It isn’t important whether or not someone loves or hates your book. What’s important is that they have some type of strong emotional reaction to/involvement with it. The point of these stories isn’t a lovefest. The point is to communicate, entertain, and make that connection so that someone feels something while reading it.

Too many writers are afraid. They want people to love their characters, and are afraid to dirty them up, roll them in the brambles, and get to the real meat and potatoes of a story. A plot is only as good as the emotional reaction you get out of it. That emotional reaction–whether love or hate–is going to get your book talked about and sold, either because people hear how great it is or they want to find out if it’s really that bad.

Above all, never doubt that you do have a story to tell. The problem generally comes in when a writer says, “I can’t write about THAT! That’s taboo! Nobody will like me if I write that! I’ll get in trouble!”

Learn to shoot that little naysaying horrified voice in the head and bury it. Your plot should make even you a little uncomfortable. Cherish that discomfort, because it means you’re digging in the witch’s garden. It means you’re about to get your pot of gold or handful of rampion, and something wonderful and terrible may result because of it. No good plot is completely comfortable, or even tame. They are nasty beasts, always with a glint in their little yellow eyes and a hunger for red meat.

But don’t worry. The gods gave us whips, chairs, and grammar to tame them. *wink* Not to mention laptops with spellcheck.

*Or, as Barbossa says, “they’re more like…guidelines.” We grammar pirates should follow the code, but leave a little doggie-door open for flexibility’s sake. Just in case.

**Another great example? Looney Tunes. The cartoons have rules writers would do well to absorb too, as masterpieces of comic timing. They are a big hit with kids even today, because they pull no punches and get nasty, and yet they follow rules of narrative so well they are largely satisfactory. There are no loose plot ends in Looney Tunes, they don’t have time for them.