PLOTTING! Ideas: how to get ‘em, and what to do with them. Finish this course with dozens of saleable story ideas, plus methods and tips for producing a thousand more. You will never need to worry about what to write for the rest of your writing career. Course Outline Why plot at all? "Discovering" the plot through writing Ideas! Ideas are not plots Idea sources Collecting ideas Notebooks Hanging files Electronic versions Cards Cataloguing and indexing The advantages of organisation Accessing ideas Recognising a good idea Resonance Marketability When the ideas come while writing something else. Turning an idea into a plot What makes a good plot? Deconstructing existing plots -- "Plotting research" Story structure Non-fiction structure Fiction structure How it relates to plot Recognising structure Recognising "bad" plots Plot clichés Personal clichés "Hack" writing vs. writing to formula Plotting to market demands Science fiction Romance Detective/whodunit Screenplays Other categories Market research Plot and character Avoiding clichés Ideas for Characters Collecting characters Plot out of character Character out of plot Settings Ideas for settings Collecting settings Selecting the best idea Subplots Elements of a good subplot Weaving it into the main plot When to stop plotting and start writing Outlining, Treatments Synopsis Writing Plagiarism, Copyright and other nasties Commercial "Plotting" programs, devices Ebooks & Romance Novels * Sherlock Holmes Pastiches * Creative Writing Instruction * Home