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Category: Plotting

What I Know About Plotting

This piece is written by Book Shed writer Nick Poole. The opening chapters of his work 'A Monster in the Mirror' were judged a Best Seller by users of the English Arts Council YouWriteOn website in November 2007.

What do I know about plotting? Not much is the answer. So let's try to find out how little that is.

Okay. What do I mean by plot? And what is the difference between plot and story? Is there a difference?

Well a plot (as defined by Chambers) is “the story or scheme of connected events running through a play, novel etc.” When you plot a course, you are planning a route for a journey. I would say (just a thought) that the plot is the route, and the story is the journey itself. You can take a lot of different routes to make the same journey and, similarly, you can tell the same story in many different ways.