I choose....

One of the things I like to do in my Plot 101 workshops is play a lot of different games, in order to develop stories.

A writer may have come in with just the start of something, a premise - as in, what if an orphan boy discovered he was really a wizard? – but that’s as far as they’ve got. Or they may have run out of steam 20,000 words in, and keep rewriting the same tired scene over and over, in the hope that if they make the sentences better, it will somehow force the character to do something.

(Line-editing is a holy thing, and I would highly recommend the book, How to Write a Sentence by Joe Moran, but it won’t help you with Story.)

Have a go with this game, instead. It’s called Reducing Choices.

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Reducing Choices

1) Start with whatever problem or opportunity your character is currently facing. Something that’s happened to them and requires a reaction, i.e. they’re in the middle of robbing a bank and someone gets shot accidentally, or there's a woman they like and she’s just walked into the coffee place where they work.

2) List 8 actions your character could take in light of this situation. Try to be open and write down anything, as mad as it may seem, that pops into your head. For example: the bank robber panics and shoots another person, the barista gets up on a table and sings a song. It’s important to make these actions, not emotions. They feel sad does not count as an action. However, choosing to do nothing is an action, which will have its own consequences. You just can’t make it a frequent choice, for obvious reasons.

3) Now choose ONE of the 8 actions you’ve created. Write it out in a fresh sentence: He panics and shoots the man next to the woman he’s just shot accidentally. She climbs up on a table and sings ‘You’re Beautiful’.

4) Below this sentence, describe the consequence of the action: a bank teller steps in front of the gun in an attempt to prevent any more killing, the woman leaves the cafe, mortified by the singing.

5) Now your character is facing a new problem, or opportunity. Write out 6 possible actions he might take rising from this new situation. Again, it’s a brainstorm. Accept anything your imagination throws at you, big and small.

6) Choose ONE of these 6 actions. Write it out in a sentence.

7) Describe the consequence. (Make sure the consequence is an action, not an emotion as in, ‘the people in the bank are scared.’)

8) List 4 possible actions your character might take now.

9) Choose ONE of the 4. Write it out in a sentence.

10) Describe the consequence.

11) List 2 possible actions your character might take now.

12) Choose ONE of the two.

In a well-crafted story, we inevitably see the choices available to the protagonist become fewer and fewer, until as the climax approaches there is nowhere else left to go, no other options possible. This is because each choice made along the way, and its consequences, has shut down the other directions the story might have gone in. You can use this exercise to brainstorm the events of a single scene. Or you can use it in a zoomed-out way, looking at the larger choices and the complete arc of your story.