Improv Plotting

This technique is one of the first rules of improvisational theatre. It’s a simple way to always keep a story going, to always move the plot forward. You can use it when creating an outline (beforehand), or to invent interesting events on the spot.

Here’s how it works.

You have a situation in your story. (Perhaps the very first event that kicks off the story.)
Phrase the situation as a closed question. Usually “does the hero succeed or not?” or “does the hero resolve the conflict in the scene or not?”
If you answer yes, turn it into yes, and
If you answer no, turn it into no, but

By adding that extra bit to your answer, you ensure the story keeps its momentum. If you simply said “no, the hero fails” and stopped there, you’ve completely stopped all plot development. If you change it to “no, the hero fails, BUT they realize a different approach that might work”, now you have progress and forward momentum.

Example

The hero fights a monster. Do they win? Yes, and defeating the monster grants them a new magical ability.

Example

The hero asks his love interest on a date. Does she say yes? No, but she explains she is not allowed to date by her parents. Even though the hero “failed”, there is still something to latch onto and to move the plot forward.

Example

The hero breaks into prison to rescue their family. Do they succeed? No, but they do manage to deliver a message and weapons to their family.

The hero is now confident his family can break themselves out. He waits for them, at night, at the location stated in the message. Do they arrive? Yes, and they managed to steal something from the guard’s room, which turns out to be valuable secret information.

That’s the whole technique. It automatically provides payoff for the current scene and a cliffhanger or hook leading into the next one.

This is a trick I noticed when I consumed a lot of spy stories (or action stories in general). The good ones usually did the following:

The original plan was very simple. (Easy to grasp for the audience, almost no explanation needed.)
But as they execute it, things randomly go wrong.
This cycle repeats: next step of the plan, something goes wrong, they must adapt
Until they finally succeed or fail, it doesn’t matter. The “entertainment” comes from seeing the plan in action and how they must constantly think on their feet to overcome random issues.

Example

The fourth Mission Impossible movie (Ghost Protocol) does this well. Every mission they do, the writers find something to go wrong, then something else goes wrong, then another machine randomly breaks, then his gadget stops working, then their client arrived too early at the meeting, etcetera.

This turns a movie with pretty simplistic missions into something with fun and engaging action.

You might wonder: isn’t this cheating? Random things going wrong?

Let me provide a quote about this that has been very helpful to me.

Use (bad) luck to get characters into trouble, but never out of it.

Many great stories use a random event or just the bad luck of the hero to kickstart the story. To efficiently create conflict and turn it up to a hundred.

Once the random event took place, however, the characters should deal with it without any more random (good) luck. They should rely on their physical and mental skills, their friendships with the other cast of characters, and logical decisions and actions.

This trick also works great because it gradually increases complexity. If the plan was more complicated, it would need to be explained beforehand in a probably very overwhelming explanation scene. If the plan was just simple, it would be boring and predictable. Combine the two—a simple plan with things going wrong over time—and you get the best of both worlds. Almost no setup needed, yet the plan eventually devolves into narrative chaos.