There is the
Eight Sequences method. Start with it as a scaffold and build your story upon its bones.
There is the
Scene and Sequel method. Have characters enact a plan to get what they want, and then give them time to lick their wounds and come up with a new plan when the first one doesn't work. Repeat as necessary until they reach their goal.
There is the
MACE method. You assemble your story by identifying what type of individual story elements you have, and then nesting them one inside another in a well-formed way (very much like nesting tags in HTML coding).
There is the
Seven-Point Story Structure, built around "pinch points" that force your protagonist into action, either by making them choose to act rather than react, or to dig deeper and finally give their all to reach their goal.
Try out everything, and see what works for you. You're inevitably going to come up with a bastardized hybrid of everything that made sense to you, and the act of trying them all out will help your story-assembling skills grow, so it's not wasted time even when something doesn't work for you.
My own bastardized hybrid of a method is still evolving, but here are a few of the concepts that have helped me out:
- A "turning point" is a moment of irreversible change, something that happens that you can't go back from, like a revelation, a firm decision, or an irrevocable action. Turning points are what drive a story forward, because they are the events that won't allow the protagonist to go backward.
Every scene should be built around a turning point. Everything the characters are doing in that scene moves them toward that moment when everything changes permanently, and then the scene ends fairly soon after they get there, because now they have to adjust their goals and plans for the new reality.
- You can assemble a story out of try/fail iterations, i.e. the protagonist tries to enact a plan to reach their goal, but it fails in a way that causes the stakes to rise. Then they have to come up with a new plan, try it next, and again have it fail in such a way as to make the stakes rise. Repeat until the plan finally succeeds and they reach their goal.
That last iteration, however, necessitates them finding some final key to making the final plan work. That key might be a "plot coupon", or a secret discovered, or the protagonist making some inner change for the better that allows them to overcome what they have up-to-now failed to overcome.
- Stories are about change, on every level, from the wide-focus plot level to the narrow-focus scene level.
The story starts when the protagonist's world changes in some way that demands action. The story ends when the protagonist's world has reached a new steady-state where no more change is needed or likely.
Every scene is built around a moment of irrevocable change -- a turning point.
Furthermore, to reach their final goal, the protagonist must change somehow. This internal change is driven by what they experience externally as they struggle to reach their goal. In other words, the external changes provoke the internal change, and the internal change solves the problem that was initiated by the original external change.