Warriors Fanfics: Specialized Writing Guide

BASE | Plot & Plot Scope

July 5, 2019

This section goes over the plot and its scope, and the technical aspects of formulating one. It does not go over ideas. Here, I assume you are writing an outline of sorts before you ever start a draft or publish a prologue. As a Base section, it has little to no examples drawn from canon Warriors.

If you need help with the plot, you are not alone. You have seen bad movies or tedious books. Where the director added way too many elements in a 90-minute block, or when a writer just never stops writing books for a series. These are problems with the plot and its scope. These problems cross mediums and skill levels; there are some poorly written best sellers out there. That being said, there are plenty of good stories to drown out the bad ones. But this guide makes sure your fanfiction does not fall in with those, and this section is specifically to help you with the plot.

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PLOT AND PLOT SCOPE

The plot is the sequence of events in a story where each event affects the next via cause and effect. Whether your plot is about adopting a stray cat or a multi-book battle between StarClan and the Dark Forest, the previous event must affect the current one and the current one must affect the next event. That is what makes the conflict a story rather than a sequence of unrelated events. For example, what you probably did on a day off was a sequence of unrelated events. That is not a story. It becomes one when a prior event affects the next one. If you are sitting at home and a friend calls you to go to the river with them, then it is a plot point in the story of your day. You left your house because your friend called you. It is a core element in writing and I am sure you get the idea.

Plot scope is the range and amount of events covered within a single story. The range of events refers to the amount of time passed. The amount refers to the number of events covered. While a basic idea in of itself, scope tends to get overlooked in the Warriors fandom. And it is easy to tell why; the canon novels tend to go pretty far off the initial parameters set in The Prophecies Begin arc. Warriors is not the best example when referencing scope. We go from 'fire alone can save our clan' to 'the ancestors of cat heaven manifest in the living world to fight the ancestors of cat purgatory'. Regardless of how far it goes, it would be difficult for us to scale a single fanfic that far out of its initial scope. Remember, the Erins are several writers with paychecks and deadlines. You are solo and without a deadline. Expanding the plot's scope should have a reason and be the result of narrative events prior.

Deciding on a consistent plotline is harder than most think. How many fanfics have you read where new characters are constantly added, or events become more and more ridiculous? The plot is the foundation of the story. The last thing you want is an ever-expanding mess of occurrences.

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FORMATTING YOUR PLOT

In the section "What to Write About," I went over ideation of stories and how you could organize your thoughts into a cohesive work. I briefly glossed over the plot, stating what you wanted to write about was just as important as the characters you chose to play it out. I will focus on the plot specifically now.

There are many ways to organize a story, many looping back to theatre. While plots have no technically correct way to structure them, it is a good idea to start with one of the structures that have been laid out by history (Western history, in our case). I could go over what led to these methods of storytelling, but it mostly boils down to who said what first back before printing presses were a thing and the masses were dumb. Instead, I will go over things taken from these historically sound plot structures that no author should be without.