Ask Gotham: Issue Four

"What do you do when you’re not sure what happens next?"

May 01, 2026

Welcome to Ask Gotham, our monthly advice column. Writing-related question? Ask us here!

Dear Gotham,

Any advice for constructing plots? I used to write mostly literary journalism, where the plot was pre-existing. All I had to do was tell it in an interesting way! Now that I’m writing fiction, I find I struggle to think of ways to move my stories along, whether short-form or novel-length. Interiority is great and all, but things do need to happen in some capacity in order for a story to progress. And I’m struggling to come up with what those things are! What do you do when you’re not sure what happens next?

***

KC,

Ugh, plot. Even the word rankles me—it’s so humdrum and uninspiring. I love thinking about my characters: who they are, what makes them laugh, what they eat and listen to and think about, but I don’t dream about plot. However, you’re right that something does eventually have to happen, or it’s not a story.

Genre writers are especially good at the juicy, surprising plot twist so I asked Gotham teacher Susan Breen, author of the Maggie Dove mystery series, for her advice. Here’s what she said:

“With me, it all comes back to character. I try to get a good understanding of my protagonist and specifically, what will push her buttons. Then I proceed to push those buttons as hard as I can. With Maggie Dove, the amateur sleuth in my detective series, I knew she was a woman who mourned the loss of her daughter and craved safety. So, the prime suspect had to be her late daughter’s fiancé. From there I kept tossing things at her that would keep her off balance.”

Also useful are Stephen King’s thoughts on plot from his book On Writing: “Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice…I want to put a group of characters (perhaps a pair; perhaps even just one) in some sort of predicament and then watch them try to work themselves free. My job isn’t to help them work their way free, or manipulate them to safety—those are jobs which require the noisy jackhammer of plot—but to watch what happens and then write it down.”

Just this week, author Emma Copley Eisenberg shared a similar sentiment: “I never want to hear that something ‘doesn’t have a plot,’” she told Electric Lit, “Because I don’t think people really know what that means…If you care about the character or what’s going on than the incident becomes sort of extraneous.” It’s comforting that the key to writing good plot is to know your characters well. Perhaps that lovely, elegant interiority is useful, after all.

And since you asked me, I’ll share my trick, which is to occasionally veer right when I want to turn left. What I mean is that while writing, I periodically evaluate the choices my characters are making and then reverse at least one. In my current novel-in-progress, a character’s boyfriend disappears, and my instinct was to leave her at home, biting her fingernails and waiting for his return. Instead, I did the opposite and sent her after him (and am now having the time of my life on this fictional road trip!). I’m not saying we should always choose the most opposite reaction or beat for the sake of shock, but the fun of “plot”—of writing, really—is knowing our characters well enough to trust them to surprise us.

Most of all, I suspect your journalistic instincts will serve you well. The truth is, of course, stranger than fiction—maybe there’s even a way to marry one of those articles you worked on, a true story, with your current fictional project? You’d be in good company—some of my favorite novels (The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, The Girls by Emma Cline) do just this.

Happy writing, KC!

Stuart

Do you have any advice for KC?