IF Seal: I have trouble coming up with plots!
Hi Seal ! This is maybe too much of a general writing question but I have trouble coming up with plots. I have always loved creating characters and settings but when time comes to put them in situations, I kind of blank out and struggle to find the main, uh, long term point of interest to build a story? Would you have any tips for me?
Dear Plot-Seeking Friend,
Funnily enough, this is a similar question to this one, even though it came in more than a year afterwards.
It is certainly a perennial issue!
I would recommend revisiting this answer, but here I am going to go into a little more detail about PCs and character actions.
I wonder, when you talk about loving creating characters and settings, how much do you think of the PC as being part of those elements? What role does your PC have in this setting, what is their everyday life, and what events are happening that changes that ordinary routine?
I do not mean that a game must be action-packed by any means, and nor does the start of a game need to be such, but do you have something in your mind that kicks off the story - the part that piques your interest and makes you want to write more?
Once you have that, and you have a sense of what the PC is doing in the game - horseriding across the tundra? competing in a duelling contest? sailing the high seas? solving murders in a castle? creating paintings for an otherworldly entity? - you can think about what the PC wants and what's getting in their way. (Some of those obstacles might be other characters; some characters might be helpful. Tying characters to the PC's goals and demonstrating setting elements through those characters is excellent!)
Thinking about how the PC will interact with all of this and what their goals are will bring things to life so that they can engage with the world around them rather than their surroundings feeling like a lovely postcard. In creating characters and settings that you feel excited about, you've gone part of the way. Please allow me to wish you the very best of luck with your writing!