Single Character Seeks Good Plot

(Well, maybe not single character.)

Hey guys, I have a little problem. For about a decade now, I've had the seeds of a story in my mind. Not to go into too much detail, but it's basically The X-Files as an absurdist comedy in the style of something like Regular Show. Funny people living through a series of outrageous episodes based around the Conspiracy Kitchen Sink. There's more to it than that, but you get the idea. I dream up and discard new stories about as frequently as most people change their underwear, but this one has always felt special, and it's the one I keep coming back to.

The problem is that I have a setting, some pretty good characters, and a handful of scattered ideas that I think would make good "episodes," but in all this time, I haven't been able to think of a good plot that ties it all together in a satisfying way. I've tried to approach this thing from a million different angles, but none of them feel right. Some "takes" feel too small, others too bloated, none of them excite me as much on the page as they do in my imagination, and all of them fall apart on me before I hit chapter three.

What do you guys think I should do to solve this problem? What I need is a nice, A-to-B, "This happens, then this happens, then this happens" template into which to plug all my ideas (ideas I've been working on for years and really believe in), but I don't know how or where to get one. I think my biggest stumbling block is that I keep assuming a conspiracy story has to be a mystery, but that's not really how I see this, or what I want to make. I keep trying to contort the story into a shape that's hostile to my intentions. I want a fun, character-driven story about a group of funny friends who put their pants on one leg at a time, and only happen to be paranormal investigators in a world of cryptids, crop circles, haunted NES cartridges, and cigarette-smoking men of all genders and vices.

Can I balance the wacky genre shit and the Slice of Life shit? Is there a plot somewhere out there that does them both justice? Can the former be thrilling but not overly cerebral? Can the latter be relatable, but not boring? These are the questions I ask myself, and now, I ask you. Your advice is appreciated.

I think the question here is why do you feel there needs to be a "main plot" in the way you're implying? I might be misunderstanding your question, but you seem to be after some sort of Myth Arc but plenty of episodic shows have proven that isn't necessary to have something good.

Cowboy Bebop for example is largely episodic. There is a bit of a progression in that the show starts off with two main characters, and they get 3 more as time goes on, but most of the episodes are self-contained and not super tightly-bound together. The way the show creates tension and drama for a compelling finale is just forcing the main character to confront his past, which had been mostly established beforehand.

So basically there's nothing really wrong with "episodes". If you just want to do a mostly episode Slice of Life absurdist show with occasional heavier or more emotional moments that should be perfectly fine.

Granted, I'm thinking almost entirely in terms of tv shows or graphic novels here. If you were writing prose, I'm not sure how that would work out but I'm certain other books have done it before.

It is prose.To put it less dramatically, my problem is that I have a setting, some characters, and a handful of ideas but no plot for them all to go into. This would hypothetically be a largely episodic series of novels (think, say, Thursday Next) but I've never been able to think of a specific plot for any of them. And when I do think of something, I invariably start putting in "whodunit" elements I don't really want because I don't know what a Conspiracy Kitchen Sink story can be, if not a mystery.

You have a story that is a very comedic, perhaps even parodic. Stories like that are very very fine with being just a collection of stories and they don't really have a need for any overarching plot.

As such, I think it would do you well to choose to "just write", and if you ever get to the point where you want your new episodes to be not stand-alone but rather a part of the web then you can fairly easily make it so; since it's supposed to be funny and absurd you don't need anything to actually be connected for as long as you throw the idea that it could be for this-or-that bizarre reason out to the readers and then have the characters confirm it.

Any it often enough happens that you get the details into your mind when you write the thing, so if not having the details is the problem it's still worth trying.

edited 3rd Feb '17 7:59:33 AM by Kazeto

Do you know any creative exercises I can try for coming up with a good plot? Because I still don't have a plot and that is the thing I need.

EDIT: For the record, this isn't a stealth "Pitch a plot to me" thread. I'm kind of at the end of my rope because, like I said, I've been sitting on this damn thing for ten years and I still can't think of an actual, A-to-B story that feels right for my characters and setting.

Like, imagine if I had created three young wizards and a magical school for them to go to, but could not, for the life of me, think of something interesting for them to do there.

edited 3rd Feb '17 3:32:00 PM by ThriceCharming

Don't worry, we know not to take your question as a "write it for me" one. That said, it's actually a fairly good question, all things considered (the one you asked, not the one you seemed to be afraid it might be taken as), .

I'll start by saying that generally the kind of problem that you can have two variants: either you don't have any ideas, you do not consider the ideas that you have to be good enough, or you do not like any of the ideas you have. How exactly you try to get through it depends on which one it is. And yes, there is a difference between the second one and the third one; the second one basically amounts to stage fright ("oh, it's so bad, I can't show this to people") whereas the third one means that you personally don't like what you got.

Now, the second one is the simplest to deal with, though not necessarily the easiest. You just write stuff, anything, and have people see it. What helps with this is places on forums where people place writing prompts that you can pick up and work on, and as weird as it may sound I will admit that Reddit's r/Writing Prompts is at the very least decent in that regard.

The third one is a bit more complicated, and I would guess how you approach it depends on you as an author, but personally when I get into a situation in which the only ideas I have are ones I don't like I just write them anyway and try to pinpoint what is it that I didn't like about them afterwards and why that is so. Admittedly it can take quite some time and it's undoubtedly a lot more usable for singular scenes than it is for the entire story, but it's never failed me as of yet.

And then the first one ... well, I do not want to presume but if it's really about you genuinely not being able to get any ideas for moving the plot where you want it to then either you aren't a very creative person (sorry if you felt it insulting) or you are unsure about your writing just that much. Honestly, rather than creative exercises you might want to get through a guide on writing; I don't have time now to look through the bajilion and four bookmarks I have to find the ones I'd read, but I am assuming it's possible for you to find a good one before I get back from work. Obviously, though, writing stuff of any kind is most likely still a good idea as more experience generally means being more sure about what you can do.

It's not that I have no ideas, it's that none of them "feel right." None of the stories I've thought up feel like the appropriate way to introduce my characters and their world. And like I said, I always end up putting up mystery genre elements because I feel like I have no choice, even though I don't think they're a good fit for the kinds of stories I want to tell. I feel like if the setting / general idea is Conspiracy Kitchen Sink, the genre has to be mystery, and that's messing me up.

From what you've said thus far, it sounds like you're trying to find a perfect mold that lets each of your characters fit a niche. If that's so, my advice to you is this: don't. It's good for your plot to squeeze your characters sometimes, and if you have a good set of dynamic ones, they'll find their way in an organic manner even if it is uncomfortable for them at first. That's not to say that you should be satisfied with an awkward character-plot relationship, rather, doing some contortion helps flesh out characters.

My second half of advice is the more painful part: once you write it with the plot you aren't happy with, go back and rewrite based on what you learned your first time through. It's really easy to get stuck in the planning phase trying to map out a perfect story. Sometimes it can be easier to feel your way along until you find that perfection you crave — someone actually gave me the advice once that writing can be a bit more quantitative than qualitative. The more we write, the more likely we are to generate content that satisfies us.

Do you think I should give in to my impulse to turn it into a mystery story, then?

I think it's much more important for you to finish a story than it is for it to be great. You learn many things during the process of writing, regardless of whether you finish it or not, but there is one thing you can only learn by finishing something: you learn that you can do it. It's such a simple thing, you could say, and yet often enough it makes things so very different.

That said, going back to the matter of the ideas themselves, I have to say that your case is, based on the wording you used, the second one. Thus, writing stuff from start to finish, be that stuff this story or something else entirely, and then preferably letting someone see it, is the most likely method to work for you.

Getting back to the problem itself, I will second Bored4Eternity and say (well, write) that you don't need to introduce characters in oh-so-great ways. I've had characters just put in the story and introduced in an off-handed manner two chapters later and it worked; I've had characters who were not supposed to be comic reliefs introduced by doing something very stupid and possibly amusing for the readers and that too worked. What matters is that the recurring characters are in some way distinct enough so that with one line you can make the readers know who that is. The introduction, though? Nah, the only "introduction" that has to be appropriate is the introduction to the story, a.k.a. the prologue, and even then one can really stretch the meaning of "acceptable".

Oh, and the genre doesn't really matter. If you "put the genre" then either that's just a stupid formality with no real effect or it is something that is done via there actually being mystery elements in the story. Presuming it is the latter, then just write whatever happens to feel more comfortable for you and the results be damned. Whether or not to put mystery in your stories is something you can think about once you get a story done, for now just choose whichever option feels comfortable and write.

First of all, thanks to everyone that's replied so far.

My problem isn't so much that I want every character to make a grand entrance, it's that I want a story that accurately reflects who they are and what they're all about (and not just the characters, but the setting and the general worldview), and I keep coming up short. I don't want to put myself in an Aqua Teen Hunger Force kind of situation where I sell the idea that these characters are detectives, functionally if not literally, even though they really aren't and their adventures don't reflect that.

But again, it's not for nothing that the protagonist of a Paranormal Investigation story is called an Occult Detective, right?

Write whatever you have in mind. Not just ideas, not just concepts, make some concrete drafts and storyboards. And if you don't like what you have: revise, revise, revise.