Here's my plot for trunk novel of mine.
I divide a plot into four sections: setup, response, attack, and resolution.
It's three acts: setup, response + attack, and resolution
At the end of the setup I have 1 plot point.
At the end of the attack I have 1 plot point.
So, for the trunk novel, this is something I can end up with what's below. And I always start with a setup to show the character in his normal, mundane life before things go to hell. Here I strive to show how he works in normal circumstances, what makes him tick, and so on.
SETUP
Harry is a perfectly normal owner of a bookshop in London, doing perfectly normal things like waking up after a club night with a nasty hang-over and a strange woman next to him that he wish he hadn't brought home. After getting rid of her he hurries to work, only to be the victim of a strike in the underground, which strands him in an unknown part of town where a package literally falls out of the sky into his lap.
>>PP1:<< A package containing leaves of papers written in a strange language. Rather than throw the package away, he decides to bring it to his bookshop, where he discovers that the paper is written in what looks like Hebrew, and that it is probably VERY old. Old means valuable. He's rich!
There's the setup. Something has happened (PP1) that's turning Harry's life around. The promise of wealth, introduction of greed, and the ambition to capitalise on the fortuitious find.
You can't however, logically, have the character thow himself at the root cause at once. He needs time to digest, to think, to plan and plot - so I divide the second act into two halves that I call RESPONSE AND ACTION.
Here's also where you start to play with the characteristics exposed in the setup. Harry is greedy, and he's needy. So, you start to attack those. Is he greedy and needy enough to risk his life?
RESPONSE
He can't believe his good luck, but he needs to be careful, he tells himself. So he contacts experts, lets them have a peek, and the consensus is a great swath of interest. Lectors, doctors, professors and publicicsts swarm around him, and he learns what the text is.
It is a document, written in arameic, from around 20 BC. There's only one place in the world that arameic was spoken -- the roman colony of Palestine, and everyone knows who walked around those parts at that time.
But the previous owner would likely want it back. Badly. And they do, and they've set out to find it, by any means possible. And they are ever so thankful for the publicity that Harry is getting. It makes their job so much easier
That's the response. The MC is rushing off to get rich quick, and the antagonists respond to the character, which leads into the third part, and the second half of act 3. The MC is acting now, and this is the time for the antagonists to to not just size each other up, but to fight as well. The second half of act 2, and the characters are aligned at each other.
In the third part, you also have the second plot point at the end. That plot point will give the MC the solution to the problem posed by Plot Point 1, but it will also up the ante considerably!
ATTACK
Suddenly Harry gets shot at, his home gets broken into, he has to flee head over heels into the night. His car explodes. It becomes clear that someone is out to kill him. But who? The only thing new in his life is that manuscript. Someone wants it, but he won't let them have it. Finders keepers, and he's a damned happy finder.
Wherever he turns, there seem to be a shadow that wants to kill him. And how do they find him all the time? How can they have such detailed knowledge of him? But no matter, they can't have the manuscript, even if it means that he has to act preventively, and to find them before they find him.
>>PP2:<< The next time Harry keeps an eye out, and he hides near his car to observe who goes there. And he's in luck, not long after a man approaches his car and slips under it. He rushes forward, grabs the man, and when he searches for the weapon he finds a badge, from the London Metropolitan police.
Now, here's where this story fell apart because I could never understand how to connect the Metropolitan police to these kinds of guys, and swapping in MI5-people just didn't seem very plausible. So, here's where my notes end, and that's about where the 40k of words on this novel doomed it to the trunk.
But if this had been a real project, this would be where you got into the last section, and act 3. Supposedly there would be some revalation in PP2 that would allow the MC to solve the problem in PP1. PP2 exists to give the MC the tools, knowledge or ambition to handle the question posed by PP1.
In the
RESOLUTION the MC would have made the final stand against the antagonists, and then won or lost, and you'd have the dissolving of the story after that.
Now, I hear you ask - only 2 plotpoints? Isn't that kind of few for a whole novel? And my answer is, not really - because the 2 plot points handle what your novel is about. You can pepper the novel with what I call
plot twists. That's cool, but the main conflict is constructed with 2 plot points. The plot twists are character arcs, random evens, and such which feeds either PP1 or PP2.
Say you need something to happen in order for PP2 to happen. Let's say PP2 requires that Harry has a special key. Then you have a sub-plot culminating in the acquisition of the key. But that sub-plot feeds into Plot Point 2.
Is this formulaic? I don't think so because I don't detail every single turn and twist with this model. It allows me to know where I'm going, and what's going to happen, but I have lots of freedom in choosing scenes and adding in subplots.
Anyway, this is my model. I'm not sure it works for anyone else, but if it does, I'm happy.