Coming up with a good plot is sometimes the hardest part of writing a novel. And yes, even if you have the characters, theme, and setting all set up and ready to go. But worry not, you can get out of your writing rut with these 13 clever ways to come up with a plot.
1. Use Creative Writing Prompts
Writing prompts can be a simple line, a situation, a question, or, in some cases, just a word. Some people think this technique is cheating, but it actually gives you that little nudge to explore new angles and patterns you wouldn’t reach if you stared at a blank page.
Not convinced? Here are more benefits of using writing prompts:
- Helps you overcome writer’s block by giving you something to react to.
- Encourages fresh ideas and unexpected directions for your plot.
- Invites you to practice various scenes, characters, or concepts in a laid-back way.
- Empower your creative thinking over time.
And, here are some creative writing prompts for plot ideas:
- A character discovers an old letter that changes their life.
- Your protagonist wakes up in a world where time moves backward.
- An unexpected visitor arrives with a shady secret.
- A tiny festival turns deadly when an ancient curse awakens.
- A scientist invents a tool that changes memories.
- A city bans all forms of art, and one rebel won’t comply.
- A character finds a mysterious key that opens only one door.
- The people of a small town begin losing their voices overnight.
- A ship appears at the harbor with no crew aboard.
- A character must solve a crime using only forgotten memories.
Need more? Copy and paste this prompt in ChatGPT or Gemini:
You are a random creative writing prompt generator.
Your task is to provide me with 30 creative writing prompts based on the following information:
Genre: [insert preferred genre]
Plot type: [insert preferred plot]
Setting: [insert info]
Situation: [insert info] Tip: If you want the prompts to be really random, skip the genre, plot type, setting, and situation.
2. Go Back to the 7 Basic Plots
Classic plot structures aren’t outdated or lazy; they’re proven story engines that still work because people can relate to how they present conflict, change, and growth. So, if you’re stuck, these seven core plots can give your story a clear direction without killing your creativity.
I have the following story premise:
[Insert premise here]
Evaluate how well this premise fits the following major plot archetypes:
Overcoming the Monster
The Quest
Voyage and Return
Rags to Riches
Tragedy
Comedy
Rebirth
For each archetype:
- Rate the natural fit (High / Medium / Low).
- Explain why it fits or does not fit structurally.
- Identify what thematic strengths it would highlight.
- Identify what would feel forced, weakened, or artificial.
Constraints: Avoid expanding into full story drafts.Overcoming the Monster
The overcoming-the-monster plot centers on a character who must face a force that endangers them, their community, or their way of life. This “monster” can be a literal creature, a powerful villain, a corrupt system, or even an internal personal force.
One perfect example of this plot type is Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. The oppressive power of the Capitol and President Snow over the districts turns the protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, from a simple girl just trying to survive into the face of the rebellion and eventually into the one who defeats the monster.
More examples:
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
- Dune by Frank Herbert
Tips to subvert tropes or make it less predictable:
- Reframe the “monster” as a system, belief, or internal conflict rather than a physical adversary, so the threat feels more psychologically complex.
- Give the antagonist a believable motive that makes readers empathize with them, creating moral ambiguity.
- Let the protagonist grow in unexpected ways; maybe they don’t defeat the danger with strength but with insight, compromise, or creativity.
Voyage and Return
In this plot, the main character leaves their familiar world, enters a strange one, undergoes a transformation as a result of the experience, and then returns home changed.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit fits the voyage-and-return structure.
The Shire is a cozy, secure home for Bilbo. During his journey, he faced danger, moral complexity, and responsibility far greater than he experienced before. So when he returned to the Shire, he no longer fully belonged to the narrow, protected world he once fit into.
More examples:
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
It’s fairly easy to fall into tired voyage-and-return tropes. So, here are some tips and tricks:
- Make the return uncomfortable: Don’t let home feel safe anymore. Let the protagonist feel disconnected, misunderstood, or emotionally displaced.
- Reverse the transformation: Instead of gaining confidence or wisdom, the character may lose innocence, trust, or certainty.
- Blur the boundary between worlds: Let the strange world follow them home psychologically, socially, or symbolically.
- Change what “home” means: The return doesn’t have to be physical. Home can become a person, a belief system, or a chosen identity.
Rags to Riches
This plot follows a character who starts with too little (money, status, skills, or confidence) and rises to success, wealth, or importance through effort, change, or fate.
Examples:
- Cinderella
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- Aladdin (from One Thousand and One Nights)
Let’s talk Great Expectations for a second. Pip literally starts with nothing and is then thrust into wealth thanks to an unknown benefactor. But that change doesn’t solve all his problems instantly. It becomes a path to explore identity, pride, and what real “riches” really mean, not just money.
Some tips & tricks to subvert the trope:
- Question the payoff: Don’t make wealth the end goal, make it a means to an emotional truth instead (like self‑acceptance or forgiveness).
- Complicate the rise: Throw curveballs at your character once they’ve gained success so the audience can see the cost of “making it.”
- Flip expectations: Maybe the character loses their riches and learns something deeper in the process.
The Quest
In this plot, the main character, often accompanied by their crew, sets out on a grand adventure to find a significant item or reach a pivotal point in the story.
Stories with the quest plot structure often combine emotional development with physical adventure to build character development.
For example, in The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo begins as a simple hobbit in the Shire, living an ordinary life. But when the One Ring reaches his hands, he is given a mission that has the potential to alter the course of history.
Accompanied by a varied group of friends, Frodo traverses perilous regions while contending with adversaries, temptations, and his personal troubles. His emotional development is mirrored in his physical journey, which demonstrates how his experiences and friends have shaped who he is.
Other examples:
- The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
- Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
Tips & tricks to subvert quest tropes
- Flip the map: Instead of going forward, make the goal something familiar you return to with new insight, surprising readers with emotional reward rather than physical triumph.
- Reframe the goal: Let the “treasure” turn out to be something unexpected (like wisdom, forgiveness, or a new sense of self) rather than an actual prize.
- Complicate companions: Give your character a team with clashing motivations or hidden agendas; that tension can add depth and unpredictability to every step of the journey.
Comedy
Having a comedy plot structure doesn’t mean you should have jokes left and right. It’s about confusion, tangled circumstances, and a satisfying, positive resolution.
In this type of structure, characters begin in a world of misunderstandings or conflict, and gradually work through it until everything is clear and relationships are restored.
In Pride and Prejudice, for example, the story begins with flawed first impressions, class tension, and emotional misunderstanding between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy.
Both misjudged each other, allowing pride, prejudice, and social assumptions to shape their actions. But over time, the truth, growth, and understanding replace all that. The story ends not just with romance, but with emotional clarity and restored social harmony.
Other examples:
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
- The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
Tips & tricks to subvert comedy tropes
- Complicate the resolution: Characters must earn their happy ending with a surprising personal growth.
- Twist expectations around misunderstandings: Instead of simple miscommunication, make the confusion meaningful.
- Blend tones smartly: You can mix light humor with serious themes, as long as the narrative still moves toward reconciliation or amplification of insight by the end.
Tragedy
The tragedy plot follows your character’s downfall rather than their rise. The story moves toward loss, failure, or destruction, often caused by a fatal flaw, poor choices, or forces the character can’t escape. And, unlike comedy, tragedy doesn’t restore harmony; it reveals the cost of human weakness, obsession, or pride.
In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby builds his entire life around an idealized version of love and success, chasing an outdated past. This obsession becomes his identity, choices, and morality. So rather than achieving fulfillment, his pursuit leads him to isolation, betrayal, and, sadly, death.
Other examples:
- Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Tips & tricks to subvert tragedy tropes
- Make the flaw subtle: Let the downfall come from small, believable choices, not obvious villainy.
- Blur blame: Mix personal fault with external pressure so the ending feels tragic.
- Redefine loss: The tragedy doesn’t always have to be death.
Rebirth
A rebirth structure centers on transformation. The story follows a character who starts flawed, lost, or morally broken, then experiences a powerful event that forces them to change.
Something to keep in mind: this isn’t just growth; it’s an identity-level transformation, where the character becomes fundamentally different by the end of the story.
Let’s look at Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece. Although the series is primarily a quest narrative, it constantly uses rebirth arcs for its characters.
Figures like Nico Robin, Trafalgar Law, and others experience moments where their worldview collapses and is rebuilt. These changes aren’t quick or out of nowhere, but as a result of trauma, loyalty, and identity conflict. And though their rebirth doesn’t alter the story’s structure, it deepens the emotional core.
More examples:
- Avatar: The Last Airbender
- A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Tips & tricks to subvert rebirth tropes
- Avoid instant redemption: Remember, real change takes time, setbacks, and even resistance.
- Make the trigger meaningful: The transformation should come from deep emotional impact.
- Let growth cost something: A true rebirth always involves loss, sacrifice, or identity rupture.
3. Check the News
What’s one of the easiest ways to get inspiration for your story? Reading the news. You’ll find conflict, power struggles, scandals, breakthroughs, and disasters, already structured with stakes, tension, and consequences.
Make sure to strip away the specifics, borrow the structure, and rebuild it into fiction.
Tip: When you read the news, don’t look for plot ideas directly. Look for patterns: who has power, who loses it, what changes, and who pays the price.
4. Modify a Story That Already Exists
You can use an existing story as a springboard for your own ideas. This isn’t stealing per se, you’re isolating what inspired you and then reshaping it into something new. To do it, you can look at popular plots, character arcs, or settings that grabbed your attention, and then ask yourself how you can flip them. You could:
- Change the perspective
- Twist the conflict, or
- Place it in a different world or genre.
5. Follow Tried-and-True Plot Structures
What if you already have the characters and the theme, but don’t know how to actually tell the story from beginning to end? That’s where storytelling structures come in. They give you a framework to shape your story’s elements into a cohesive, concrete narrative. Here are some frameworks you could use to shape the plot:
- Hero’s Journey
- Freytag’s Pyramid
- Story Spine / Pixar Formula
- Three-Act Structure
- Save the Cat Beat
- Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle
- Fichtean Curve
- Seven-Point Story Structure
6. Start With the Plot Twist
If you’re writing fiction, you don’t always have to build toward the plot twist. You can build your story’s plot from it. Start with the moment that changes everything, then shape the plot around that reveal. This approach, albeit unconventional, gives your story direction, tension, and structure from page one.
For inspiration, check out these 13 plot twists that add shock to your story.
7. Pick Apart the Different Elements of Fiction
Break your story into its core elements (characters, motivation, conflict, theme, and structure), change one piece at a time, and you can have different plot ideas almost immediately.
Start by writing these headings:
- Main character – who leads the story
- Status quo – where life starts
- Motivation – what they want
- Initiating incident – what affects normal life
- Developments – what happens next
- Crisis – where it peaks
- Resolution – how it ends
Fill each one in with 1–2 short sentences. Not too much detail, just the general part.
Here’s an example of what it would look like:
- Main character: A shy high school student who avoids attention
- Status quo: Lives quietly, stays invisible
- Motivation: Wants to feel important
- Initiating incident: Gets popular for the wrong reason
- Developments: Gains attention, loses privacy, becomes addicted to validation
- Crisis: A lie opens to the public eye
- Resolution: Chooses identity over approval
Then, change one or more elements. Let’s say the main character is now an arrogant, rich high school student, and the inciting incident is when his good deeds are accidentally exposed. These two changes will drastically affect the development, crisis, and motivation, leading to a new plot idea.
8. Brainstorm with AI
AIs are great as a thinking partner. Use this prompt to unlock new plot directions:
You are my creative brainstorming partner for developing plot idea. Your task is to help me unlock new plot directions for my story idea.
My story premise is: [insert details]
Generate 5-7 distinct plot direction. For each direction, you should provide me with the following:
1. A short summary (2-3 sentences).
2. Identify the possible goal of the protagonist and the story's central conflict
3. Highligh the stakes and consequences if they fail
4. Suggest a unique hook, twist, or angle that makes my story stand out.
Make sure to explore different archetypes, tonalities, or thematic approaches. Focus on depth, variety, and inspiration rather than surface-level ideas.
Constraints: Avoid choosing a "best" path. Tip: To get your creativity flowing, make sure to also read our brainstorming techniques.
9. Establish the Conflict
Conflict forces your character to do something out of their comfort zone. So, once you define what your protagonist is fighting against, your plot stops drifting and starts moving with purpose. Here are different ways you can establish conflict:
I have the following story premise:
[Insert premise here]
Evaluate how well this premise fits the following major story conflicts
Person vs self
Person vs person
Person vs nature
Person vs supernatural
Person vs fate
Person vs society
For each conflict:
- Rate the natural fit (High / Medium / Low).
- Explain why it fits or does not fit structurally.
- Identify what thematic strengths it would highlight.
- Identify what would feel forced, weakened, or artificial.
Constraints
- Avoid expanding into full story drafts.Person vs Self
This conflict is where your character fights with their own fear, guilt, desire, belief system, trauma, or identity. And yes, external events can push the story forward, but internal conflict is always at the center.
Person vs Person
This is a direct opposition between characters, often with competing goals or opposing views. This can be physical, emotional, political, or psychological.
Person vs Nature
Nature is the protagonist’s enemy in this type of conflict. It could be a natural disaster (typhoon, tsunami, severe drought, earthquake, hurricane, or volcanic eruption), dwindling natural resources, extreme weather changes, or a face-to-face battle with a wild animal. Whatever it is, the goal here is to bring out the characters’ instinct and resilience and explore human limits.
Person vs Society
In this conflict type, your main character is in battle not just with one individual but with the entire system of the story (e.g., an oppressive government). The stakes are high (often life-or-death) because external forces are set to complicate the protagonist’s every move.
Person vs Fate
With this conflict, the protagonist is not against nature, an individual, or society; They are in battle with the universe itself! The main character
struggles with the idea of fulfilling a predetermined destiny or prophecy. As the story progresses, they either fight against it or reluctantly accept it.
Person vs Supernatural
This kind of conflict comes from supernatural forces such as ghosts, gods, monsters, magic, or anything that can’t be explained by logic or science. The imbalance of power immediately raises the danger and tension for your character.
Person vs Technology
Here, your character is in a war with tech. But this isn’t just about gadgets going wild; it’s about power, displacement, dependency, and total loss of control. And it works better when technology threatens identity, purpose, or human value and life.
10. Explore Myths, Legends, or Folklore
Another great place to find plot ideas is in myths, legends, and folklore. They’re already full of conflict, symbolism, and emotional stakes, and all you have to do next is remix them or flip the perspective.
11. Use a Quote
Instead of starting with a backstory, you can build an entire plot from a single quote.
For example: “I wasn’t supposed to survive that night.”
Now you’ve got questions, like who’s speaking, what happened, and why it matters. That one sentence can turn into a full plot about survival, guilt, revenge, or transformation.
12. Write What You Know
Another way to build an amazing plot is to try worlds or themes you already know. It could be your everyday struggles, an experience that completely changed you forever, or something that you are well-versed in (a hobby, a skill, or a topic).
13. Figure Out the Aftermath
You don’t always have to start from the beginning. You can have the aftermath first, and then build the story toward it. And the best part? You can make every scene purposeful, avoiding dead ends and ensuring your plot is tight and meaningful.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, there are different ways you can come up with a plot. And, hopefully, one of the techniques we shared will help you find the right one.