Who are your main characters?
What do they want more than anything else in the world?
Why do they want this?
How are they going to go about getting it?
Who or what is going to try to stop them?
What will happen if they don't get it?
If you can answer these six questions, you'll have a skeleton outline for your story. Everything else will branch out of your responses to these key questions. Once the character's desire and their motivations are nailed down, the "how" and "who is going to stop them?" will generate the plot.
As a storyteller, it's your job to increase the conflict and raise the stakes until the climax is reached (after which you will provide us with a nice resolution), but each new scene will (or should) point back to the desire and make perfect sense based on the character's motivation.
So . . . once the desire and motivation are in play, all you have to do is figure out who or what will work against your character and brainstorm all the various problems they can cause. Once a character is on their "quest," the first part of the story largely consists of them going about getting it in all the wrong ways. As they begin to figure it out (whatever "it" is), the opposition's effort will increase, naturally raising the stakes.
What are these "wrong ways" and what does the opposition look like?
Now your skeleton outline is starting fill out. . . .
Be Brilliant!
~Katie~
