You can read a dozen different textbooks or how-to manuals that will tell you the basic rules of what makes a story - a beginning, a middle, and an end.
For me to do a story, something has to happen to someone. It's a story in the way you learn what a story is in third grade, where there is a person, and things happen to them, and then something big happens, and they realize something new.
Even the most complicated stories start with a very simple premise.
Someone told me once - I mean I said, "Is it ok that I don't really know what the three-act structure is?" And he said, "It's basically: Act 1: a guy climbs up a tree; Act 2: people come and throw stuff at him; Act 3: he gets down."
When I teach sketch writing, there's still a beginning, middle and end.
First and foremost, it's got to be on the page. It starts with the writing.
Plot is just a fancy way of saying 'and then.
A plot is like the bones of a person, not interesting like expression, or signs of experience, but the support of the whole.
