Write to Right: How to Micro Plot

Forget everything, and go on random journeys, but ideally revolve everything around the villains.

I think this is the best way to win over the micro-game of any story.

You’ve done the world-building, and you know the characters. So after all that, maybe you have some plans that it should be A or B all the way to Z, but then you don’t understand how to get there.

Make it easy and don’t force the A to Z route, because now you have a fundamental story and world at the back of your mind which you can always enforce whenever necessary, it’s best to just randomly write or play a story that doesn’t need to have consequences.

The reason I say focus on the villain is that it always gives your story direction and stakes.

It’s how Joker propels Batman because Batman doesn’t really prevent crime, he solves it when it happens usually. So if you have a villain who has the same ideology as the hero then they both push the story further, one proactive and the other reactive.

I don’t think stories have to be such that the protagonist always need to create the story, the problem is never that the stories happen to the protagonist, it’s just that they aren’t presented in a well enough manner.

This is how writer falls short on the architect-gardener spectrum, there is either a weak plot or character, but as long as you understand your characters and express personality then even a slow or reactive story has meaning, and if you have even the slightest ending planned, you can walk towards that telling new stories as detours or development.

I think we get consumed by our ideas, and they become so big that we don’t understand how to follow through as we don’t want to ruin what’s in our head, and I believe if we sideline all that pressure and begin once again with the added benefit that you know the distant answers, we can start world-building on a micro-scale.

An alternative is to use the “Yes, but…” or “No, and” rule to enforce consequences or stakes, so if you solve an issue something else happens, and if you don’t solve an issue, there are dire stakes or subtle solutions which you can follow towards.

Let there be more randomness, allow yourself to be surprised.