And all this happens when we haven’t figured everything out first.

Your plot is foundation of your story. It’s skeleton, which will hold your story together. Your plot is there to work everything out first – to see if it can be worked out, and then flesh out that skeleton with other elements that make a story.

Plotting is difference between writing a story for yourself and writing one for an audience. Writing for ourselves doesn’t require too much strain because we only have ourselves to please. It’s when we have to please our readers that hard work begins.

If you are aiming to sell your stories, plotting is a must.

Have you plotted your story before writing it?

And it’s that conflict and struggle characters has to undergo that keeps us readers interested and in suspense. Will character succeed or won’t he? And when is this all going to happen? And how is it all going to happen?

3)Resolution

Something that starts has to finish, one way or another.

Once you have created great characters, which reader will come to care about, and you have placed them in conflict, that conflict at end of your story has to be resolved. The characters will achieve their goals or they won’t.

That doesn’t matter.

You can end your story as you please and as it suits your story – but you have to end it. Ending story means resolving conflict.

Does your theme contain character, conflict, resolution?