Plot Design:  Four Twists to Chaos

Rubic’s cube is a clever puzzle.  It is a cube upon which each side has 9 square sections.  When new,  all nine panels per side are the same color.  The cube is engineered to allow the different panels to rotate quite independently of one another.  Thus with a few twists of the cube's sections the panels can go from being matching colors to being a clash of multiple colors.  In fact with only 4 twists (each compounding and obscuring the previous twist) the elegant simplicity of the cube can be rendered baffling to all but the most stalwart puzzle-solvers.

These “4 twists to chaos” are a perfect analogy for story plotting, especially any story with some degree of mystery.

Story plotting almost always works backward.  It begins with complete order, such as a pristine Rubic’s cube.  Before the story is written, the pieces are twisted.  Then they are twisted again and again.  Very soon the obvious order has been highly obscured and the simplicity of the unfolding events has been made mysterious.

It becomes the task of the characters to at once carry out the twists and the task of the protagonists to disentangle the twists.  In this manner, your protagonists can identify a solution that is entirely plausible, yet was not at all evident.  The protagonist can form the heroic insight that sets her or him apart from the rest.  Better yet,  your star can take action based upon the insight, without sharing the insight.  The action will seem absurd or suicidal.  When the dust settles and the crisis is resolved the protagonist can explain the insight or the protagonists friend, or better yet the villain can reveal the protagonists insight.  Anyway you shape it, the story can reach a dramatic and surprising conclusion.