Why You Need To Plot And How To Do It

The Process #3 ...before you begin to write your story

Philippe de Champaigne, Vanitas ou Allegory of human life, 1646

Hi there!

I’m very excited to tell you that the short story I’ve been writing for Comma Press —and using to deconstruct my writing process for you — is being considered by film companies for optioning!

This is super exciting because optioning is where a company pays a writer for rights to their story for a certain length of time in order to sell the idea for a film or TV series to a broadcaster, like the BBC or Netflix. Usually film companies pay more for optioning a work for 2 years than the publisher does for the whole book. Yup, you read that right. The whole book.

Of course, wonderful as that is, there is no guarantee that even if a book is optioned, it will make it to the big screen. So I’m not popping any champagne just yet! Oh well, maybe, because it’ll be Friday soon.

This is the blurb that Comma Press used to pitch Meat to film companies:

Set in present-day Bristol, ‘Meat' concerns an artist, Lily, who is staging her first solo exhibition consisting of memento mori ("remember you must die") paintings. Things take a sinister turn, however, when Lily's scientist husband, Lars, encourages her to incorporate his latest project into the exhibition - pieces of lab-grown cultivated meat. As art collides with science - with horrifying consequences - Lily is forced to confront some dark, uncomfortable truths about her marriage.       

 As a film adaptation, 'Meat' would make for a fantastic crepuscular horror. As a horror/sci-fi story, it works so well because the science aspect is so plausible. Most compelling of all, though, is the complex relationship study at the heart of the story: Lily, the artistic idealist, and her partner Lars, the ambitious, laser-focussed entrepreneur.   

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Thank you, David Sue, who wrote this blurb!

In the third part in this mini series of How to Tell a Story, (any story, but I’m focusing primarily on crime fiction, psychological thrillers and horror short stories) I’m going to show you how and why I created a plot for Meat before I started writing.

I’m going to detail the key elements of story structure everyone needs for their story.

I’ll describe the essential elements needed to write in this genre (thriller/horror).

I’ll show you how I created a plot for my story.

You can read the previous two steps - coming up with an idea and creating an outline if you missed them:

A Simple Way To Come Up With Compelling Ideas

Why you need an outline for your story

Okay, let’s get started - but to be clear, I don’t think plot is better than character or vice versa: we need both!