Progressive complications: The simple plot tool that turns stories into page-turners
How to escalate conflict, raise stakes and drive plot in both literary fiction and commercial fiction
Plot advice can be maddeningly unhelpful. You’ve probably heard it all: ‘Add conflict.’ ‘Make things happen.’ ‘Raise the stakes.’ Which is fine… but how, exactly? What are you meant to do on a Tuesday afternoon when your protagonist is wandering around thinking, making tea and generally refusing to cause trouble?
Here’s the craft device I come back to again and again: progressive complications.
Shawn Coyne, a former editor at major US publishing houses, writes in The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know:
‘After more than ten thousand hours of publishing books, reading submissions and being pitched both fiction and nonfiction, here is one of the criteria I use to separate the wheat from the chaff. I simply track the story’s progressive complications… the escalating degrees of conflict that face the protagonist.’
And as Coyne goes on to say, ‘Progressive complications move stories forward, never backward. They do so by making life more and more difficult (in positive as well as negative ways) for your lead character.’
This is a practical guide you can use whether you’re writing a literary novel where the biggest drama is emotional, or a thriller where someone could literally be in the boot of a car, to create a plot that keeps readers turning the pages. I’ll give you a step-by-step guide on:
What progressive complications are in more detail
What they’re not
The two main kinds of progressive complications
How you can use progressive complications in thrillers
How they can help you if you’re writing literary fiction
What can go wrong
A mini writing exercise
And an invitation to join me in my 3-part masterclass on How to Plot. I break plot into:
How knowing your genre can help you plot; How to plot, Act II - or how to deal with a saggy middle, a bonus class on Suspense techniques and bonus articles on How plot and character work together to drive your story, Why you need to plot and how to do it, and Why you need an outline for your story and how to write one.
Find out more here:
