I can come up with themes, general situations or abstract ideas

>>7975828
>writing for plot

>>7975828

>Plots
They're a construct. Just look at Dostoevsky

>>7975828
Not saying that some author's don't start with plot, but I think more often they begin with characters.

From the Preface to Portrait of a Lady:

Trying to recover here, for recognition, the germ of my idea, I see that it must have consisted not at all in any conceit of a "plot," nefarious name, in any flash, upon the fancy, of a set of relations, or in any one of those situations that, by a logic of
their own, immediately fall, for the fabulist, into movement, into a march or a rush, a patter of quick steps; but altogether in the sense of a single character, the character and aspect of a
particular engaging young woman, to which all the usual elements of a "subject," certainly of a setting, were to need to be super added. Quite as interesting as the young woman herself at her
best, do I find, I must again repeat, this projection of memory upon the whole matter of the growth, in one's imagination, of some such apology for a motive. These are the fascinations of the
fabulist's art, these lurking forces of expansion, these necessities of upspringing in the seed, these beautiful determinations, on the part of the idea entertained, to grow as tall as possible, to push into the light and the air and thickly
flower there; and, quite as much, these fine possibilities of recovering, from some good standpoint on the ground gained, the
intimate history of the business--of retracing and reconstructing its steps and stages. I have always fondly remembered a remark
that I heard fall years ago from the lips of Ivan Turgenieff in regard to his own experience of the usual origin of the fictive picture. It began for him almost always with the vision of some person or persons, who hovered before him, soliciting him, as the active or passive figure, interesting him and appealing to him just as they were and by what they were. He saw them, in that fashion, as disponibles, saw them subject to the chances, the complications of existence, and saw them vividly, but then had to
find for them the right relations, those that would most bring them out; to imagine, to invent and select and piece together the situations most useful and favourable to the sense of the
creatures themselves, the complications they would be most likely to produce and to feel.

"To arrive at these things is to arrive at my story," he said, "and that's the way I look for it."

>>7975828
it means you suck at writing but want to think you're a gifted visionary

fuck off

Yeah I'm the same. I come up with a "point" that I want to get across, but when I actually write it, it's like a shitload of peanut butter drowning a tiny crumb of bread. Eating sixteen pounds of peanut butter may be the real reason you wanted toast, in a sense, but the toast is just as necessary.

You have to give your abstract concepts room to breathe, in a world big enough to hold them. Try doing some free association while thinking of the basic setting or outline of your story, just letting your mind wander. Listen to some music that reminds you of the underlying "vibe" you have when you think of the story. Then flesh it out naturally, creating all the incidentals that your conscious mind doesn't really notice when you're reading a good story, but your unconscious mind does. Your conscious mind remembers the point of a good story, but the language that point is written in is the unconsciously felt fullness of the story's mental imagery. The unconscious part is just as important because it breathes flesh and blood onto the philosophical skeleton of your story.