Plots

Plots are fun.  You have a white hat hero and a maiden in distress that's been captured by the black hated villain.  So the basic idea of a plot goes.  Will the hero be strong enough?  Will the maiden be freed?  Will the villain be captured?  And where to put the monologue of the villain?  Perhaps when the hero is trapped and needs time to get out.  Yes a good spot for a soliloquy.  Charming, isn't it?

Plots and subplots fill the books of today.  And why a subplot?  Well of course is so the reader doesn't get too bored with the main plot.  Flower it up a little.  Have a fling, a romance, a fight, or a spite.  Comedy is useful.  Little jokes and such.  Stargate SG-1 and Castle were good with comedy.  Main characters playing with each other and such.

I learned a lot from Stargate SG-1 about story telling.  It was quite different than any series of Star Trek.  They had a multitude of plots.  And a seed from past episodes could flourish into a main plot a couple of episodes ahead.

But plots answer the question where are you taking me?  And I find that a well defined plot comes about with some back story telling.  Stuff that will not make it in a book but serves to give credibility to the plot.  Sometimes I have to do multiple back stories so I can understand where and how the characters and players are coming from and coming into.

For example I have this character I had to come up with, he's not a main character but just a henchman.  Yet I had to define his character.  I used a hot dog in the story to define him.  How he uses the hot dog is how he is.  There was another character by the name of Flass in Batman Begins.  He was defined by his scene with a falafel kiosk.

Lots of plots keep brains from flops. :-)