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Yet Invisible
    A plot functions like a skeleton: it is both structural and supportive. Further, it isn't entirely linear. A plot has many moving parts (sub-plots and pivot points) that act as limbs and joints. The best plots are plots we don't see, or rather, that the audience never has to think about. As soon as we think about it, it's like a needle manifests out of thin air and pops the balloon or lances that blister. Remember, we don't walk around with our skeletons on the outside of our body, which is good because,
ew
. What are we, ants? So don't show off your plot. Let the plot remain hidden, invisible.
     
4. Shit's Gotta Make Sense, Son
    The biggest plot crime of them all is a plot that doesn't make a lick of goddamn sense. That's a one way ticket to plot jail. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200 dollars. Do not drop the soap. The elegance of a great plot is that, when the events are all strung together, there exists a natural order as if this was the
only way
they could fit together. It's like dominoes tumbling. Your plot is not a chimera: random parts mashed together because you didn't think it through. Test the plot. Show people. Pull the pieces apart and ask, "Is there a better way?" Nonsense plots betray the potency of story.
     
5. The Quintessential Plot
    The simplest motherfucker of a plot is this: things get worse until they get better. A straight-up escalation of conflict. It goes from "Uh-oh, that's bad," to, "Uh-oh, it's getting worse," to "Oh, holy shit, it can't
get
any worse," to, "I think I maybe fixed it, or at least stopped it from being so totally and completely fucked." When in doubt, just know that your next step as a storyteller is to bring the pain, amp the misery, and escalate the conflict. That's what they mean by the advice, "Have a man with a gun walk through the door." You can take that literally, sure, but what it means is: the bad news just got worse.
     
6. In Life We Avoid Conflict, In Fiction We Seek It
    Fiction is driven by characters in conflict, or, put differently, the flame of
fiction
grows brighter through
friction
. A match-tip lights only when struck; so too is the mechanism by which a gun fires a bullet. Impact. Tension. Fear. Danger. Need to know what impels your plot forward? Look to the theme of Man Versus [fill-in-the-blank]. Man versus his fellow man. Woman versus nature. Man versus himself. Woman versus an angry badger riding a unicorn. Find the essential conflict and look for events that are emblematic to that.
     
7. Want Versus Fear
    Of course, the essence of the essential conflict -- the one below all that Wo/Man versus stuff -- is a character's
wants
versus a character's
fears
. Plot grows from this fecund garden. The character wants life, revenge, children, a pony -- and that which he fears must stand in his way. John McClane must battle terrorists to return to his wife. Indiana Jones must put up with snakes and irritating sidekicks to uncover the artifact. I must put up with walking downstairs to make myself a gin-and-tonic. Everything that stands in a character's way -- the speedbumps, roadblocks, knife-wielding monkeys, ninja clones, tornadoes, and sentient Krispy Kreme donuts sent from the future to destroy man via morbid obesity -- are events in the greater narrative sequence: they are pieces of the plot.
     
8. Grow The Plot, Don't Build It
    A plot grows within the story you're telling. A story is all the important parts swirling together: world, character, theme, mood, and of course, plot. An artificial plot is something you have to wrestle into place, a structure you have to bend and mutilate and duct tape to get it to work -- it is a square peg headbutted into a circle hole, and you're the poor bastard doing all the headbutting.
     
9. The Tension And Recoil Of Choice And Consequence
    An organic plot grows like this: characters make decisions -- sometimes bad decisions, other times decisions whose risks outweigh the rewards, and other times still decisions