My stories have no plot!

I enjoy writing comedies. They often have concepts that I have never heard before (such as a comedy about wizard hunters, or a novel about starting a religion for money), but that's often just what they are, concepts. All I could ever get down is a few minor gags and character introductions. There is never any plot or driving force for the characters that I can come up with. How do I change that?

edited 11th Feb '12 6:51:12 AM by Gringoamericano

Well, the basic thing to do is: create a character, create a goal, and create conflict.

Let's use both of your premises as examples.

A. Wizard Hunters

• Character: H Wizard hunters, duh
• Goal: Hunt wizards, obviously. But why? Are wizards evil? Is there a Big Bad? To save the world? It's just a job?
• Conflict: Lots, but the simplest would be, obviously, make the wizards hard to kill.

B. Religion for Money

• Character: <whoever>
• Goal: Make money! It helps to know why a character wants money — does he simply want to be rich, is there something he wants to buy, does he want the power and prestige that comes with it, is it for charity...
• Conflict: Actually getting people to believe in his "faith", for instance.

As long as you create the proper gradient your story will flow.

Why change anything? You might be writing the next Seinfeld.

May I introduce you to Tristram Shandy? No discernible plot whatsoever, one of the earliest novels in existence... and very funny for its day. Still rather funny now.

Plot is not everything when it comes to humour.

edited 12th Feb '12 8:02:27 AM by Euodiachloris

Just give the story a really basic cliched plot. If you're more of a comedy writer then the comedy will carry the story and you don't have to worry as much about complicated plots.

...This is a good practice why?

What I've seen with comedies is that they all tend to fall under the umbrella of Slice of Life. Yes, that includes works as seemingly dissimilar as Seinfeld and Lucky Star. You could make a collection of small plots that revolve around little things, but infuse them with humor.

Most of the time if we're talking comedy, the amount of plot can scale from nothing to everything. The less plot, the more character-based humour you'll have to build.

So is it that you want to build plot filled comedies? In that case, take a few established types of stories and then modify their features from there to meet the requirements. Like say you start it off as a sort of "find an artifact" story. Then you modify it here and there, perhaps they need to meet an obstacle of comedic enemies or something.

I'm with fillerdude on this one — though I'd recommend putting even further emphasis on conflict. If there's a problem that needs to be resolved, it could help you form a stronger plot.

Think about it this way: who or what are your characters (for lack of a better phrase) going up against? It could be an opportunity to put in some more funny characters to bounce jokes off one another; maybe some sort of rival, or a Sitcom Arch-Nemesis. Or if it's a struggle against something less tangible, you could play around with a Race Against Time. So for example: Oh no! We have to stop those wizards! But before we can do that, we have to X, then Y, and run away from Z before Q gets us!

Hope that helps you out.

Plot comes from conflict, and conflict comes from obstacles. But obstacles can be external as well as internal, and it would usually be best to have some of both. For example, with the wizard hunters, your wizard hunter could be trying to kill a very powerful dark wizard. This would be your external conflict. But suppose your wizard hunter also falls in love with the dark wizard's daughter, who also happens to be a wizard, although not a bad one. Now the wizard hunter must wrestle with his own feelings towards wizards as he tries to figure out if it's okay to be in love with a wizard, while simultaneously trying to take down the dark wizard, but trying to find a way to do it without disappointing the dark wizard's daughter.

Run it by someone critical that you trust without a plot and see how they react to the work. Then decide whether you need one in the first place.