The Golden Rules for a Good Plot

This is really all you need to know about plots. Below are the four golden rules to a golden plot.

Choose your complication and the steps to its resolution as detailed by the plot skeleton—this is your plot.
Flesh out your plot with colourful characters, a vivid setting, and carefully plan each scene and event to bring the readers a step closer to the climax (resolution).
Let your story end at a natural stopping place. Don’t give in to the temptation to let it linger on.
Make sure that you haven’t created a ‘paper dragon’ and that your character(s) resolve the issue (or not) under their own power.

I realize that this isn’t quite as easy as I’m making it sound. It’s like me telling my cat that if he races thought the mud, leaps over the fence, does a three-quarter corkscrew and catches the Frisbee in mid-flight—all in time to a racy samba tune—he’ll finally gain the respect of the dogs in the park. This is true, I imagine, but it will take me a good long time and many sessions of trial and error to teach him such a feat. Your first attempt might not be perfect, and it will likely take time and practice to come up with a great plot—even then you still have the hurdles of character, setting, and general style to overcome to make a great novel. However, if you have a good solid structure for your plot, you can take it into any setting and act it out with any set of characters and it will never let you down.