“I have characters/a world, but no plot, what do I do?”
Here are some options!
☕️ Disrupt normalcy
What does a normal day look like in your world, or to your characters? What are ways that could be entirely thrown off track?
If your characters go to a magical university, maybe the magic becomes corrupt, or there’s a mysterious death. If your character is an assassin, maybe they recognize one of their targets, or they fail to eliminate a high-profile target, and now they need to decide if they admit their failure to their bosses. Think about how your characters would react to this, how the authorities in your world would respond, etc.
🍂 Wants/goals of your cast
Do your characters actually want anything? What are they working towards in their everyday life? What’s a dream goal they’d take if it was presented to them, but can’t get right now? Figure out what they want, and then figure out why they can’t have it. That is the core of conflict.
Does your magical university-goer want to graduate in their major, or are they doing it because their parents insist, maybe they want to study something else entirely, but there’s a lot of external pressure on them? Maybe your assassin wants to be the top of their organization, but to do so they need to kill someone dear to them? Maybe they fail to catch their high-profile target because the target they were trying to kill was their boss, in order to take their job, but they got found out?
🕰️ Systemic issues
Think about your world. Are there any issues you’ve established that you can explore in your conflict? Is the government over-controlling, is there prejudice against any members of society, are there forms of slavery, is there a large class distinction or a strict caste system? You could explore how your characters exist in a world that experiences these things, how your antagonists use them to their advantage, or how the protagonists try to fix these issues. Not every society is going to be perfect, so play with it!
To get into their university, does your magician need to pass an elitist certification exam? Are there laws about who can perform magic? What does your assassin think about other laws, not just the ones about murder? Is there a reason assassins as a business are being explored here, is there a lack of other ways to deal with inter-personal conflict supported by authorities?
☕️ Character flaws
Look at your characters, their pasts, their general personality. Why do they act the way they act, and what destructive behaviors do they have? Is there anything that could cause inter-personal conflict, or just regular conflict?
Does your magician cheat on tests to get better grades and impress their peers/parents/teachers? Does your assassin have trouble trusting people, are they always planning a way to end the relationship at the drop of a hat? How would these character flaws affect their relationships and how they interact with the rest of your cast? Maybe two characters have flaws that really rub against each other in the wrong way; someone is brutally honest because they think lying is wrong, and someone refuses to say anything critical because they can’t not people-please. Does person A think lying is wrong because they were lied to very badly in the past? Is it just related to the way their brain and sense of justice works? Does person B have a past of being insecure, from friends or from family members? Maybe they have abandonment issues and don’t want to say anything that makes people leave them again?
🍂 Scale of your stakes
There are many different kinds of stakes and conflict, and not everything has to be world-ending superhero action movie number five hundred. The stakes of a romance novel will usually be centered around the main characters getting together, or falling out. There’s plenty of cozy stories about being unsure if they’ll be able to raise enough money to buy back the family bakery. Any level of stakes are viable, as long as they’re important to your characters. If your character can leave and never do anything to further the plot again with no consequences, your stakes are nonexistent. You need to find a reason they can’t walk away from this.
If there’s a murder at your magician’s university, maybe they’re a suspect and need to clear their name. If their magic becomes corrupt, maybe they have a clock ticking down on how long they have to fix it before it corrupts their soul and they die. If your assassin recognizes their target, they have to weigh what’s most important to them; completing the job successfully, or keeping a person they know alive. They could leave, but that would be a failure too, and they would probably be pursued. If they fail to catch their target, maybe they’re put on probation, maybe their employers are starting to question their worth, and they need to complete this next mission perfectly in order to avoid getting disappeared.
🕰️ Themes
What is the story about? What conversation are you having with your readers? What ways can you incorporate that into the plot?
Maybe the magician’s story is about coming of age, maybe it’s about the elitism of academia, maybe it’s about pursuing your own dreams instead of what your family wants/generational trauma. Maybe the assassin has to learn it’s okay to open up and be soft, maybe it’s about revenge, maybe it’s about the cycle of violence. These can inform the direction your story goes, and what sort of choices and development your characters have. Every story will have several themes, but thinking about a few of them to inform your plot direction can be a good start.
☕️ Genre and tropes
What genre does your story fall into? There are different expectations for each genre (for example, romances need to have a happily ever after/happily for now to be considered a romance), and there’s a lot of common tropes and themes in each genre. Most stories will fit into 2-3 genres, some of the most popular being crime, fantasy, romance, sci-fi, and horror, each of which have many subgenres within them, I recommend doing research into these yourself. For example, my main project would fall under fantasy as a main genre, since it uses magic and is in a world different than our own, but more specifically would fall under dark fantasy for darker tone and horror elements, and gaslamp fantasy for a Victorian-inspired setting that involves magic. If I wanted ideas, I would want to look at common dark fantasy and gaslamp tropes, prompts, and themes.
There’s hundreds upon hundreds of tropes, because tropes are just, things that happen in your story. You cannot make a story without utilizing tropes. There’s a lot of tropes that can be used regardless of genre (found family, villains and heroes working together, redemption or corruption arcs, etc), or tropes that are more genre-specific (enemies to lovers in romance, chosen ones in fantasy, the final girl in horror, etc). There’s plenty of lists of tropes in each genre, and finding ones you’re interested in may help spur plot ideas.
The magician’s story is going to be fantasy for sure, because magic is involved, but could fall into a number of subgenres; urban fantasy, fantasy of manners, dark fantasy, magical realism, etc. The assassin’s story has a lot more wiggle room, it could fall into grimdark, contemporary, thriller, or mystery, as well several others if we were to add fantasy, sci-fi, romance, historical, etc. elements.