100 Things You Should Know About Writing (Part 2)

43) Plot, Story, and How It All Fits Together

I've been getting a few questions lately that made me realize people don't necessarily understand the difference between Plot and Story. Most people seem to use them interchangeably, which is possibly why people struggle to write plot summaries. 

Yes, I know there are a lot of people that say, "If you can't summarize your story, you don't know it well enough." 

This is nonsense for two reasons. First, when you're writing a summary for use in a query or at the back of a book, you're not summarizing your story. You're summarizing your plot. 

Second, people who have finished their stories get told this. And really, if you don't know your own story by the time you've written it in its entirety, I think there might be something wrong with you.

Let me get back to my whole point about plot vs story. Story is the whole of what you've written from the first word to the last. This includes everything. Like sub-plots. Like red herrings (if you're writing mysteries). Like... character voice. And backstory, and character development. 

So if your book was a human, story would be the entire body. 

Plot would be the backbone. 

This backbone consists of various smaller bones. If you've been with me from Part 1, you'll know them: 

Introduction

Inciting Incident

Goal

Conflict

Stakes

Choice

This is why, every time you ask me to help with your summaries, my questions always revolve around those points. Who is the character when the story starts? What changes things for the character? What goals does the character set as a result of this change? What obstacles are in the way of this goal? What's the cost of failure? Does the character make a choice? (And what are the options?)

There's one more aspect to plot that I haven't truly touched on yet. And I'm keeping it separate for the same reasons. 

When I first wrote about the above aspects, it was from the point of view of creating tension. (Which, if you think about it, comes down to strengthening the backbone of your story.) Secondly, when it comes to summaries (unless it's a synopsis asked for by an agent or publisher), the end never makes it in. Wouldn't want to spoil things for our future readers. 

So when we summarize, we're giving them almost all of our story's backbone, but not the end, and very little of the story as a whole. (If your story is the entirety of your plot, you might have a serious problem.) 

When it comes to writing stories, though, the backbone can be put together in various ways. This is the Plot Structure. So when we're writing, it all goes together something like this (although people almost never do this consciously, and therefore almost never in the same order.): 

1) We pick the shape we want the story to take. 

2) We decide what each part of the plot's backbone will be. (Intro, inciting incident, goal, conflict, stakes, choice, end.)

3) We add the rest of the story. 

4) We make sure that everything from the backbone to the rest of the story fits what we want the overall structure to look like. (This is what editing is for. And, yes, sometimes as we write, we change our mind about step one and pick another shape. This is perfectly fine as long as you edit to make sure your story doesn't look like a badly spliced hybrid in the end.)