Don’t Say “What If!”

The modern offspring of that infamous plotting tool
are two little questions that will up your conflict,
raise the stakes, and give you a solid story structure
that’ll have you itching to get it down on paper,
into pixels and out in print.

I teach popular fiction at college, and have had a lot of experience bailing out writer friends who get stuck with their stories and characters. I’ve lost count of the number of beginning writers who have that small germ of an idea that sadly goes nowhere — but they still insist on trying to build a whole book around it.

Usually, when you get an “idea” for a story, it’s really not a story at all. It’s a fragment of a story that beckons, with some emotional excitement. Something makes you want to write the story. Whatever that germ of an idea is, you need to work with it because on its own, it’s not a story. It doesn’t have characters, or conflict. It doesn’t have a plot.

Now, most story ideas (or sparks, or whatever it is that’s making your writer’s muscle twitch) are usually one of two types: 1) a fragment of a character or 2) a situation/scenario/scene. You can test this for yourself, if you’ve been keeping a notebook of story ideas or a writer’s journal. Analyze each story germ you have, and put it into column a) “character” or column b) “situation”. It’s possible your germ of an idea has elements of both, but you won’t need a third column.

Pick the idea that tugs the most. Settle down with pen and paper, or open a new file — whatever method works best for you when you need to get in some serious, hard thinking. Yes, this is a simple method for get a story plot rolling, but to get the most out of it, you need to apply sweat and stick-to-it grit.

If the story germ you have is a character, asked yourself: “What’s the worst thing that could happen to this type of character?” Start writing down the ideas that come to you. This is how you build conflict: by dragging your character through mud, blood and a bucket of tears.

This is where the sweat comes in: It’s very important that you don’t settle for your first answer! It’s very easy to think up a couple of quick answers, get a brief flare of excitement over them, and dash off to your keyboard. Easy, but death to your story — at least in the editors’ eyes. Your first answers will be clichéd, obvious and done-to-death by a dozen different authors who got the idea into print before you (or got it onto celluloid).

Keep writing possible answers down. Keep raising the stakes. Once you have a couple of handfuls of answers, some of them will stand out as real possibilities because they’re unique, interesting and push your buttons. These answers may even group themselves into families; those inter-related events are your plot starting to unfold. Yes, you can use one or more of your answers in the same story — just don’t use the weak ones. And don’t forget to arrange your answers in an escalating order of dire-ness, so that the stakes keep rising as the reader turns the pages.

Then you have to tack on the baby sister question that also takes some really hard thought: Why? Why is this the worst thing that could happen?

Answering this question starts to build your character’s main trait and motivation for that trait. Again, don’t settle for the first answer. It’s critical that you keep digging for deeper, more personal, more critical reasons why this is a bad thing to happen. You’ll be automatically raising the stakes, with each better answer you give.

Now, to return to the other type of story germ: The scene/situation/scenario. The dam-busting question to apply to this type of story idea is, “Who would suffer most in this situation?” Again, start writing down answers, and don’t settle for the easy pass, because what you’re building here is your lead character — one who steps into your scene with conflict built in and already revved up.

Don’t forget to finish off the process with the all-important why? Again, this will build your character’s main trait and motive.

Then you’ll need to switch over to developing the character or the plot, depending on which type of idea you started with. By the way, it’s never quite this clean cut — you’ll shuttle between the two. Whatever decisions you make should be made with the aim of increasing the conflict and tension. And keep the two critical questions in mind as you make decisions: What’s the worst thing that could happen to this character now? Who would suffer most in this situation? Don’t forget to follow up with Why?

Once you’ve got some answers to both of these two questions, the plot and your characters will have begun to build and your enthusiasm for the story right along with it — because these questions lay down strong conflict and emotional intensity.

Small bonus: This method gives you the means to develop the perfect 30 second pitch, the perfect back cover blurb, the perfect descriptive paragraph for your query letters: Just lay out your answers to the two questions: “This is the situation, and here’s why it’s the worst thing that could happen to this character.”

Editors will love you for it.

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