I have an idea for the beginning of a story. I have the setting, the protagonist, and the events that set the story in motion, including the inciting incident and the first plot point. I have, in short, what might become act one.
But I don't know how to go on from there. I know how to plot (when I have a storyline), but I don't know how to come up with a storyline when I have its beginning.
I have tried:
- to "discovery-write", and see where the beginning leads me: the outcome was a tale that meandered randomly and, as the story wasn't about anything, lacking a satisfying resolution at the end
- the Snowflake Method: this does not work if you don't know the one-sentence-summary of your story
- writing another story in the meantime
Consider the Hunger Games as an illustrative example: I have the world Panem, the protagonists Katniss and Peeta, and the story up until the two are chosen as tributes and board the train to the Capitol. If that was all the idea I had for a story, how would I go about finding the rest of it? How do Rue, the berries, and President Snow follow from that beginning?
(I understand that the author, Suzanne Collins, very likely did not create the plot of her trilogy from its beginning. I would just like to use an example where we know the whole story as it has been published and successful and consider how the main storyline might be derived from its beginning.)
Answer
You have an inciting incident and a protagonist.
I think something is off about one of them. Your protagonist is under-developed, or your inciting incident is under-developed.
In a typical story, this inciting incident forces upon the protagonist their central dilemma / opportunity, and addressing this dilemma / opportunity is what the story is about. The two of those together should explode, and apparently for you they fizzled.
Here is a straightforward example: If my character's single-engine plane crashes at sea, and she is the sole survivor and swims to a deserted island, she has a dilemma if she wishes to return to society. She has an opportunity if she does not. I don't know what the story is about if she doesn't care either way. For me as a writer I cannot write a story about a protagonist that truly doesn't care what happens to them; I am not that skilled!
Now that is pretty straightforward as an inciting incident. If she wants to be rescued like nearly everybody would, it is Castaway or Robinson Crusoe.
To write a story where this wreck is an opportunity, I need to make it plausible. First, she needs a damn good driving reason and a certain kind of personality to consider living alone on an island indefinitely a viable proposition, and then a plausible reason to do it. I need to make sure those traits and that situation is clear in Act I.
Either way, the inciting incident creates a story based on the personality and situation of the protagonist, and by the end of Act I the inciting incident is a done deal and she is faced with a decision of what to do next.
In The Hunger Games, the inciting incident (a lethal threat to somebody our hero loves) is immediately dealt with, but still plausibly throws our hero into her own particularly lethal and morally fraught fight for survival.
On to your story: A less straightforward inciting incident may feel to the writer momentous and exciting, but if their protagonist, her emotions and her situation are under-developed, then she (the protagonist) has no clear reaction to the incident, or just typical reactions everybody else has. She doesn't stand out, the incident creates for her only the typical dilemma (or opportunity) it presents everybody else, she is not unique in her response and she is interchangeable with other characters. We call that 'cardboard'. The reader needs a reason to understand her as a unique person, and you need to give her traits or a past so she plausibly has a strong desire spring forth from the inciting incident.
In stories where the strong desire is typical --- protect a loved one, return to normality, take vengeance on the guilty --- I would have to give the character some unusual character elements, mental or personality or ability, or isolate them (as in Castaway) so the audience has no choice but to follow them. In many stories the hero is unusually skilled, astute, perceptive or gifted in some way.
My first thought is that, if your discovery writing experiment meanders, then your protagonist is not motivated by the inciting incident to accomplish anything. That is an underdevelopment in Act I of your protagonist, the inciting incident should incite them.
Of course your protagonist might be somebody you like, and you don't want to change them: But then you must change your inciting incident to incite that personality to do something. Either hurt the crap out of the protagonist, or make them choose to risk their life out of love, or give them an opportunity that makes them abandon everything to pursue.
Then your missing story comes to light so you can plot it, because I see roughly three core plots: Your protagonists succeeds, fails, or learns and changes her mind about what constitutes success and failure.
Once she wants something (or someone) so much she devotes her immediate future to nothing but that, you can plot a story. If you can't figure out the story, you need to change something so the inciting incident incites your protagonist and creates a terrible dilemma (or fantastic opportunity).
ADDED: If this still doesn't answer your question, I would look at your inciting incident and consider the ramifications of it, both for some individuals and the world of your protagonist. What is the worst thing this incident does to people? Or to people that continue to live; e.g. if the worst thing is killing them, then consider the emotions of the living that cared about the killed, or survivors with lives ruined or facing hardship or a bleak future. The consequences of your inciting incident must be awful or great for somebody, and you need your protagonist to be one of them.
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