Before I answer today’s GTW Mailbag question, I just have to thank those of you who supported my Kickstarter. It is over this Friday, but it is not only already fully funded, we made the stretch goals to record ALL THREE AUDIO BOOKS! ♥ ♥ ♥

I am so excited, I can hardly stand it! Thanks to Kickstarter’s fancy logistics, I see where each and every one of my backers came from, which meanst I know that several came from this blog. So THANK YOU for supporting my audio book project. And I didn’t even realize it until Keturah pointed it out, but both my narrators (Will Cloud and Gillian Bronte Adams) are former Go Teen Writers participants, which I think is really fun!

If you’re still interested in pre-ordering the audio trilogy for a deal or grabbing a set of my limited anniversary edition hard covers, you have until Friday night to lock in your orders. Click here to learn more.

And now, on with our regularly scheduled programming.

Today’s mailbag question comes to us from P. Barny J.

“I’ve noticed that some books clearly have the three-act plot, and they’re always very engaging. But others books—Little Women, One for the Murphy’s, Love Comes Softly—don’t use that plot. And yet they still keep the readers engaged. How do I write a book using something different than a three-act plot, without losing any conflict? What other kinds of plots are there?”

The answer to this post comes from an archived post from 2016. I’ve updated it below and added new links when applicable.

Plot is the series of events that take your character from the beginning of the story to the end as he chases after his story goal. There are many different types of plot structures. Even books that seemingly have no structure at all still often have a method to their madness.

Conflict is the hero’s struggle against some sort of opposition that is usually standing in the way of him achieving his story goal. In order to have meaningful conflict, you character needs a goal that is defined early on so that readers know what to root for. Then the conflict that comes can get in the way of that goal.

The most popular plot structure is the one that comes in three acts. Let’s look at it first.

1. The Three-Act Structure: This divides a story into three parts: setup, confrontation, and resolution. This is by far the most popular plot structure and perhaps the oldest too. Greek philosopher Aristotle gets credit for the idea since he said in his Poetics, “A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.” Hollywood has perfected this structure, as have novelists. This thing really works. Readers like it. Viewers like it. If you want to learn more about the three-act structure, read this post: Understanding the Three-Act Structure. And if you want to plot out a more in-depth three-act structure outline before you start writing or rewriting, you might want to download some Story Brainstorming Sheets.

2. Blake Snyder’s 10 Story Models: In Blake Snyder’s book Save the Cat, he explains how he came to realize that there were really only ten basic movie types out there. Whether or not you agree with him, the concept is intriguing. In his book he suggests that if you can figure out which type of story you have, you’ll be well on your way to figuring out what the plot structure might look like. Then you can study those movie types for their plot structures and plan yours accordingly. Read 10 Story Models That Will Change the Way You Brainstorm to learn more.

3. Georges Polti’s Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations: The book, Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations by Georges Polti, gives thirty-six basic plots for all stories. According to Wikipedia, “The original French-language book was written in the 19th century. An English translation was published in 1916 and continues to be reprinted to this day.” If you’ve got an idea for a story but are stuck on how to include a strong plot, perhaps reading these 36 Plot Ideas for Your Novel will inspire you.

4. Alternative Plot Structures: Dr. Charles Ramírez Berg has written numerous articles on film and is currently a professor of film history, screenwriting, and criticism. He created a list of alternative plot types for filmmakers, but I think that novelists can learn much from his analysis. I’ve described several of his alternative plot structures including the Puzzle Plot, the Ensemble Plot, the Chainlink Plot, and the Repeat Plot in this post called Is There More Than One Plot Type?

5. The Hero’s Journey: The Hero’s Journey is a plot structure discovered by Joseph Campbell. It describes a typical adventure of the The Hero as the main character in a story who goes out and achieves great deeds on behalf of the people he represents. Stephanie broke down The Hero’s Journey in this post. And if you’re interested, here is her part two of that post. And here is a site that lists an explanation of each step in the Hero’s Journey.

6. Follow the Map: This is a common plot method for a story. The hero starts at one place on the map and must travel across it to achieve something or find something or someone. It is often a quest plot. The Hobbit is the perfect example of a Follow the Map story. For fun, I once wrote a blog post called Plotting the Quest Novel, Dora the Explorer Style, since Dora so loves her maps. (Have you seen the movie trailer for the new Dora Explorer movie? I have to confess, I’m intrigued.) And while in my blog post, I loosely plotted Dora’s map plot around the three-act structure, you don’t have to. The whole point of the Follow the Map plot is that the map leads the Hero from one point to the next as he gets closer to his goal. And the conflict happens along the way.

7. “Yes, but” or “No, and”—Also called Try-Fail Cycles: This is a simple plotting method of writing a scene, then asking a question at the end that determines what the hero will do next. Did the hero succeed in his goal for the scene? The answer can be:

Yes, but then this happened, or . . .
No, and he went on to do this next.

It’s that simple. To read more about this, check out Shannon Dittemore’s post called Try/Fail Cycles and my post called the “Yes, but” or “No, and” Method to Creating a Plot.

8. List Weaving: This is where you create a list of important scenes you want to have happen in your story and organize them by topic. For example, in my Kinsman Chronicles booksy, I created lists of situations/scenes/clues/etc. that I wanted to have happen for each of my point of view characters, for each major story line (a murder, prophecies, setting up the magic, natural disasters), and for each subplot. Then I combined one-to-four items from each list into scenes to make my way through the story. List Weaving works well for complex, epic plots with multiple points of view. Plus it’s always good to have more than one thing happening in a scene.

9. Retellings: This is when you take the plot structure from a well-known story and use that to tell another story about the same characters. Or you tell your own version of the same story. Fairytales are the biggest examples of this type of storytelling. Readers love them because they’re familiar and bring about nostalgia. An author can only use another story for the basis of his own if the original story is in the public domain. Besides fairytales by Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grim, and the retellings of mythologies, some other authors that have had their stories retold over and over are Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and William Shakespeare. Click here to read my post on Retellings: Why Do It and How? And if you’re not sure which stories you can legally work with, read this post called Books in the Public Domain to learn more.

I hope this list gives you lots of inspiration to work with.

How about the rest of you? Which are your favorite structures to work with? Can you think of any plot structures I forgot? Share in the comments.

Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms, and the author of several young adult fantasy novels including the Blood of Kings trilogy. She loves teaching about writing. She blogs at goteenwriters.com and also posts writing videos on her YouTube channel and on Instagram. Jill is a Whovian, a Photoshop addict, and a recovering fashion design assistant. She grew up in Alaska without running water or electricity and now lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two kids. Find Jill online at jillwilliamson.com or on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.