Building Up Your Repository of Awesome

In the process of coming up with a good plot, you may have encountered some difficulty. Maybe you're hypercritical of every idea you get. Maybe you designed a plot only to realize that it's not particularly interesting. Maybe you always get halfway and then peter out. Allow me to introduce you to a system that you hopefully already utilize.

I call it the Repository of Awesome. It's essentially a document you keep (on MSWord, GoogleDocs, &c.) where you dump all the cool ideas you get. For me personally, I have a section for concepts (philosophical points), lines to use, settings, characters, points of action/conflict, and a miscellaneous category. I have a general document that can be harvested from for all my books, and I have book-specific documents. For example, in the repository for The Oneironauts, I have a list of forms for the Consortium Oneirautis. That was important for that specific book, but not really useful in my other works.

Show Me How It's Done
Where do you look for sources for this Repository of Awesome? Basically everywhere. Movies, books, sites you visit, people you interact with. You liked the idea of a clandestine magical institution from Harry Potter? Great, write it down. You liked the excavation labor camp from Holes? Write it down. Thought the idea of humans interacting with a pantheon of gods from Percy Jackson was cool? Put it on the list. How about the sudden death survival tournament from Hunger Games? Note it.

Source: Dead Darlings

Now this is where the magic happens. Combine your ideas. Let's see... A young man is enslaved at a labor camp in some remote mountains. There are dueling tournaments once a month. They select several random inmates and have them fight to the death. The last ones standing get spirited away. Protagonist is selected for the tournament and wins. Turns out they get taken to a secretive monastery/school where they are taught magic directly from the gods. They then get placed in society where they serve as vassals for the gods. A group of former graduates has rebelled and is planning a coup against the gods. Our protagonist has to decide whether he wants to join the resistance or the establishment.

See? I literally churned out those two paragraphs of ideas and then plot in less than 8 minutes. I'm not saying it's the best plot ever invented, but it's entirely different from the four sources I drew upon and slightly catchy. I promise that you can create amazing plots by amassing all your awesome ideas and combining them. Remember that good conflict is going to be the most crucial part of your plot. I would give you some examples from my own writing, but it's not published yet, so I'll wait.

I would also like to point out that if you have an okay plot already but you don't think it's up to snuff, treat it as an extended idea. Then take other ideas from your Repository and layer them together.

Your ideas are mostly just seeds and will flourish as you actually write the book. I had the original idea of "shared dreaming school" and it evolved immensely over the time that I wrote The Oneironauts. Another thought that I had was "what if one of the characters was in a coma?" Obviously that specifically applies to the dreaming books and isn't so much a general idea, but it ended up becoming an entire subplot in my book. I hope you can do the same.

The Everbranching Tree of Plots

Ten years ago, an idea was introduced to the world called the Seven Basic Plots. It came in the form of a book written by journalist Christopher Booker. He posited that there were only—as the precocious reader will have already observed—seven basic plots. Every other story is based off this brotherhood. He tells us that they are

1. Overcoming the Monster (Lord of the Rings, Star Wars)
2. Rags to Riches (Cinderella, Aladdin)
3. The Quest (Lord of the Rings)
4. Voyage and Return (Odyssey, Alice in Wonderland)
5. Comedy (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Mr. Bean)
6. Tragedy (Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet)
7. Rebirth (A Christmas Carol, Despicable Me)

*As a side note, I think that if you wanted to you could lump most of them into Overcoming the Monster.

Well I'm going to present my new thesis: there's only one plot, i.e., Something Happens. It holds true in every book I've read or movie I've seen. This superplot can be subdivided though. In many stories not only does something happen, but more specifically, the protagonist progresses. The other two options are remaining stagnant or retrogressing. All of the above seven plots are composed of the three I just mentioned. That means there are at most three basic plots.

But "he progresses" doesn't exactly make for the most exciting plot. It needs an arc. The bones of a plot might follow something like this: he progresses, stalls, progresses, stalls, retrogresses, progresses, retrogresses, progresses. Maybe you could even assign values so you know how much the protagonist is stepping forward or backward. Let's analyze the Bible story Jonah this way. He's preaching as a prophet of Jehovah (+10). Gets a vision to go to Nineveh (+5). Decides to run and hide from God instead (-15). Get swallowed by a great fish (±0). Repents and preaches in Nineveh (+15). Stubbornly waits for the city's destruction after they repent (-15).

Beyond the Basics

But who wants a basic plot? Like a drug, we need more and better stuff to stay satisfied. Most plots that I've read in the past ten years go above and beyond basic. They've also been combinations of the above seven. They've been intricate weavings of human emotion and action. 

Source: Tim Green

This post may not have the best flow to it, but I hope it gets my point across. If you believe there are only seven basic plots, your writing will show it. Don't buy into it. Look everywhere for inspiration for books. Write down small ideas you have. Combine those ideas to make more elaborate tales. Don't let your plot look too much like another, but allow it some similarity. The tree of plots is an everbranching organism with unlimited possibilities.