How to Plan a Good Plot for Creative Writing

Before you begin writing anything, planning is a must. Planning ensures the coherent flow of your story and allows you to think through how your story will unfold as you begin to write. However, it’s no secret that the act of planning is very hard. Here at Writers Studio, we’ve devised an excellent set of tips for you to write a good plot for your creative writing, catered to all ages and will help you secure your future careers wherever possible.

Step 1: Brainstorm

List a few ways you want your story to begin and the gist of each story down on a piece of paper in bullet point form. You can try to generate 5 things you want to focus on for each story idea that you’ve written. Then, you can either consult a friend, family member or even yourself to think of some kinks that may appear as you write this story and be sure to iron them out. This way, you can easily pick on an idea that you’re comfortable with writing. You can also try to draw some of these story ideas from real life, either from yourself, people you know or famous people in the world.

Step 2: Create your Characters

What do they look like? How tall are they? Are they male or female? What things do they enjoy doing or avoid doing? Write out brief descriptions of your characters. This will help you flesh them out and give yourself a better understanding of the characters before you begin writing. You can also include some information about their backstories too to make them appear more human.

Step 3: Creating a plausible problem

A good story always involves an internal conflict between characters. Be it a minor argument, incident or major mess up, you must introduce a problem to create tension in the story. To gain inspiration for tension-creating characters or problems, you can seek real examples from around the world to create a compelling plot relatable to all readers.

Step 4: Fleshing out your story

With your conflict fully planned out now, you can shape the rest of your story leading up to that point in time and the resolution that takes place afterwards. Be sure to include events that help to make your story flow more smoothly. You can use this as a character-building exercise to allow for character development inside of your plot. You can also use these in-between scenes to establish relationships between characters in your story, friends, enemies or frenemies.

If you want to get better at creating a good plot, you might want to consider joining a creative writing course at our centre, Writers Studio School of English. At Writers Studio, we understand the importance of cultivating an interest in writing among our students. Along with Teacher Ms Goh, our tutors strive to make our lessons as engaging as possible so that our students can learn the joy of creative writing and are encouraged to develop a consistent writing habit. We also provide students with worksheets focused around improving their vocabulary, grammar and writing capabilities, tailored to fit all students that attend our classes. If you are interested in enrolling your child in our programmes, do not hesitate to contact us today to find out more!

This set of tips is written by Aloysius Chng, one of the top graduates from Writers Studio School of English. Aloysius has developed a strong passion for writing during his studies here at Writers Studio. He is now paving the way for young writers to follow the trail that he has blazed.