Australian & Oceanian Plot Generator
Generate plots from Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific: convict ships, gold diggings, cane fields and the long reckoning between settlers and the people who were already there.
- Sample
The Marriage Line
Parramatta, 1827. Bridget Coyle, transported for stealing a bolt of cloth, is in the lowest class of the Female Factory, and she means to get out through the only door open to her: being chosen by a settler who comes looking for a wife. When the women riot over cut rations and Bridget is named a ringleader, her one suitor, a widowed farmer, has to decide whether to take her anyway.
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Two Texts at Waitangi
Bay of Islands, February 1840. Hōne, a mission-school pupil who reads both English and Māori, is asked to read the new treaty aloud to his uncle's people the night before the signing at Waitangi. Comparing it with the English draft, he sees that the English gives the Queen sovereignty, while the Māori word, kāwanatanga, promises something far less. His uncle trusts the missionaries completely.
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Three Years and a Box
Queensland, 1883. Tavo signed on at Tanna for three years cutting cane, for wages and a trade box to carry home. His time is up and his box is packed, but the ship that should return him sails without him, because his employer swears he signed for three more. The only person who can prove otherwise is the government agent who was drunk for most of the recruiting voyage.
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The Overland
In the harsh Australian outback of the late 1800s, a disgraced British officer finds redemption, love, and a deadly secret while constructing the Overland Telegraph Line.
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Silver in the Sacred Mountains
A Maori girl in 1940s New Zealand discovers a hidden silver mine on her ancestral lands, setting off a dramatic conflict between her tribe and greedy European prospectors.
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Rush for Gold
Amid the 1850s Australian gold rush, a Chinese immigrant and an Irishman form an unlikely friendship, fighting adversity, betrayal, and their own haunted pasts to stake their claims.
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Coast Watcher
In 1942, amidst the Battle of the Coral Sea, an indigenous Australian coast watcher and an American pilot must race against time to relay critical intelligence while evading Japanese forces.
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Tracking Freedom
In Tasmania’s penal colony in the 1820s, a mute convict woman and an Aboriginal tracker escape, embarking on a grueling yet transformative journey through wilderness, society's prejudices, and personal redemption.
Australian & Oceanian: what makes the plot work
Australian & Oceanian fiction delves into the distinctive cultures, ancient traditions, and modern challenges of the region.
Tell the frontier from both banks
Settling Australia meant taking land that Aboriginal nations already lived on, and the strongest novels don't look away. Kate Grenville's The Secret River follows William Thornhill, a former convict, as he claims a bend of the Hawkesbury River and is drawn into violence against the Darug people. Give the people being displaced their own wants on the page.
Use the convict system's rules
Assignment to a master, a ticket of leave, secondary punishment at Port Arthur or Norfolk Island: the system had rungs up and down, and each one is a plot turn. Marcus Clarke's For the Term of His Natural Life drags its wrongly convicted hero, Rufus Dawes, through Macquarie Harbour, Port Arthur and Norfolk Island. Know which rung your convict stands on and what moves them.
Treat a gold rush as a pressure cooker
Gold rushes packed people from everywhere into a few muddy streets, with too much money and too little law. Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries opens with twelve men gathered in a Hokitika hotel in 1866, each holding a piece of the same mystery. Ballarat, Bendigo and the Otago fields offer the same mix of luck, debt and suspicion.
Remember the Pacific was never empty
Polynesian navigators settled islands across thousands of miles of ocean centuries before Europeans arrived. Pacific history kept going after contact, too: labor recruiting, known as blackbirding, took tens of thousands of Islanders to Queensland cane fields between the 1860s and the early 1900s. Islander characters can drive a plot, not just greet or resist a ship.
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Or see the whole shelf: Historical Fiction plot ideas.
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Names, a first scene and a title
- Name generatorIrish namesName the cast before they walk on stage.
- Name generatorBritish namesName the cast before they walk on stage.
- Writing promptsAustralian & Oceanian writing promptsA first scene to write from, today.
- Title generatorHistorical Fiction title generatorTry a title on the plot you picked.
Questions about Australian & Oceanian plots
How do I write Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander or Māori characters respectfully?
Name the specific nation or iwi rather than a general group, and research through community-approved sources such as AIATSIS in Australia. Keep sacred or restricted knowledge off the page, and be aware that some communities avoid naming or showing images of people who have died. Sensitivity readers from the community are standard practice now.
When did convict transportation to Australia end?
The First Fleet reached Sydney Cove in January 1788. Transportation to New South Wales largely ended in 1840 and to Van Diemen's Land in 1853, while Western Australia took convicts until the last ship, the Hougoumont, arrived in January 1868. A story set in Sydney in 1860 has free immigrants and former convicts, but almost no one arriving in chains.
Should I use Australian slang in a colonial-era novel?
Yes, but check the dates, because much of what sounds old is later than you'd think. Plenty of familiar Australianisms first appear in print in the late 19th or early 20th century. The Australian National Dictionary records first known uses and is the quickest check.
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