Plot Outlines and Templates: Why Your Novel Needs Them. There are three levels of plot: outline level, scenes and pacing.
The outline level is the most abstract level, or the skeleton level, where each section of a story is categorized in some general way. We do this by dividing stories into acts, for example. Some prefer 3 acts, some 4, doesn’t matter, as long as the division is helpful to the writer (as opposed to helpful to the critic). How Many Plots Are There - www.fiction-writers-mentor.com. At its simplest level there is only one plot: your protagonist wants something that s/he doesn’t have, and has to try to get it.
The wanting on the one hand, and the not having on the other creates the conflict which is so essential to every story. It also gives us the main dramatic question (also known as the story question). All plots follow essentially the same route: the protagonist is in his/her ordinary life when something happens to change that. Either there has been something lacking in his/her life, and the pain gets bad enough that he/she seeks to solve the problem, or the opportunity to solve the problem presents itself. I've heard there are only seven basic story plots. What are they? The Seven Main Plots in All of Literature = ???