I confess that I often feel "plot challenged" as a writer. I love developing characters and worlds, love dialog and description, but cringe when I face working out an engaging, plausible plot for a new story. If I didn't discipline myself to attend to plot, I'd like end up having my characters just wandering through their world doing random things.

At the most basic level, plot is just setting up a conflict that the story's protagonist needs to work through. That sounds like a simple matter, but the devil is in the details. Is the conflict sufficiently engaging? What stops the protagonist from simply walking away from the conflict? Is there a sensible rationale for the conflict existing in the first place? As the plot unfolds, how do you make each new event seem like a natural consequence of what has gone before—without making it predictable and boring?

I've read books on plot, and sections on plot in general writing books. Recently, I've taken to a different style of research: watching movies.

In the hour or two it takes to watch a movie, I can pick up a nice handful of plot advice. Most popular movies are very tightly plotted. Novel readers may forgive a bit of rambling in an otherwise engaging book, but a movie that doesn't keep moving forward minute to minute is doomed.

Here are a couple examples I gleaned from rewatching Star Wars movies recently.

The original Star Wars (I guess I should call it Episode IV: A New Hope) follows the classic "hero's journey" story line. Luke Skywalker answers the call to adventure, leaves his boring farmboy world behind, grows in power under Obi-Wan's guidance, and defeats the archvillain Darth Vader. It's a pretty linear plot from the perspective of the main character.

Now here's the mistake novice writers will often make with this sort of subject (I know, because I'm a novice writer and have caught myself making precisely this mistake in the novel I'm working on): starting the story with the protagonist's mundane existence at home. It may seem like there's a need to "introduce" the main character and his life before the exciting stuff begins. The "conflict", if it's present at all in such an opening, is likely to be just some vague inner disatisfaction with life's banality.

In Star Wars, the opening scene is not Luke repairing farm equipment and dreaming of adventure. Instead, it is an exciting action scene: the Empire boarding the rebel ship to recapture the stolen Death Star plans, the droids escaping with the plans, Leia captured by the menacing Darth Vader. (Indeed, the famous opening text scroll-by primes us for this by mentioning Leia and the plans, but saying nothing about Luke.)

Opening this way not only gives us an exciting action scene, it also establishes the larger conflict, makes it clear what is at stake, and introduces the main villain. When we do meet Luke, it is because he has become caught up in the conflict we are already engaged in.

Not every story or novel needs an opening scene like that in Star Wars; this is only one example of how to avoid beginning a story with a slog through the protagonist's background. Fiction isn't biography. If it starts to look that way, it's worthwhile to think about beginning at a different point in the plot line, from a different character's point of view, or with some other angle that shows the reader what's at stake.

My other example comes from The Empire Strikes Back. Luke abandons his training with Yoda to go to the aid of his friends—who had been captured by Vader precisely to lure Luke into his trap. This particular plot point accomplishes several things at once. It shows Luke's impatience, and the consequences of his impatience on the progress of this training. It also propels Luke into a showdown with Vader, which is the movie's big moment. It does even a little more, raising philosophical questions about loyalty and friendship in conflict with other values.

The lesson I drew from this is that when you have multiple strands of plot, you should endeavor to tie them together at important junctures, rather than having each drift forward on its own. Luke might have given up on his training out of frustration, then only later decided to track down his friends, or simply go after Vader because he's the villain. But by making one event do double duty and tie the strands together, the whole movie becomes more cohesive and exciting.

When a single event is pivotal to more than one plot strand, and when it says something about more than one character, its impact is enhanced; it becomes more than the sum of its parts. It can sometimes be tricky to tie strands together this way without it seeming contrived, but it's worth some effort. In the story I just finished ("On Stymphalian Shores"), there are three different characters, each experiencing a very different struggle. All three strands are resolved in a single event that ends the story. I can't say I contrived that in advance; it happened more or less organically in the unfolding of the story, but when I saw it, I recognized that I had found a very satisfying plot element.

Watching movies won't answer all the questions and problems an aspiring writer encounters, of course. But in some particular areas (plot construction being one of them), it can be a valuable use of time. Oh, and fun too.