What do you consider to be good plot development?

Question

When a story is unfolding, what kinds of things are you hoping to find? I apologize that this question is a bit vague, but I don't know how else to put it. People always reply with, "Good twists!" but I'd really like to narrow it down a bit more than that. Twists are events that reveal surpsing facts and radically change the direction of the story, but for the rest of the time, how do you want the story to advance? I'm assuming that you want the main character to face interesting problems so you can see how they get out of them, and you want your thirst for whatever emotion you're hoping to find (love, awe, joy/humour) to be sated through all the little incidents that occur. There also need to be answers to questions about things that have happened, as well as secrets and MORE questions raised that you to look forward to.

Is this everything that you need for plot development? Or is there anything else that I've missed out?

Stealthy Ninja · Accepted Answer

Good twists are nice to use because they often end up creating more questions. No one likes reading a book where you know everything in advance, so you got that part. :)

One thing that I think is essential to plot development is character flaws. We aren't perfect so neither should your characters because people want characters they can relate to. So the character should have a flaw, but s/he should also overcome that flaw in the end.

Here's a website on character flaws: http://www.betterstorytelling.net/advancedwriting/characterflaws.html

Also your character needs to go through a change during the story. If s/he doesn't, the character becomes a "static character" and these characters are horrible protagonists. They just stay the same throughout the whole story and are the most boring characters ever. 

So yeah. That's all I got. Hopefully I helped. :)

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What do you consider to be good plot development?

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