Elements of Fiction (66)

Element 66: Plot

Now here’s another one of those big ones. Every book on writing and every teacher still set aside a chapter or a lecture (or two or three) on Plot.

And in the same spirit of Plot-importance, quite a few quality writers have given the subject some thought and many of them have shared them.

John Gardner, for example, “In the best fiction, plot is not a series of surprises but an increasingly moving series of recognitions, or moments of understanding.”

I love this John le Carre quip, “The cat sat on the mat is not a story; but the cat sat on the dog’s mat is.”

“We must distinguish plots,” says Eudora Welty, “not by their skeletons but by their full bodies; for they are embodiments, little worlds.”

Then she goes on to say, “Plots are what the writer sees with.”

And I really like this Kurt Vonnegut take, “I guarantee you that no modern story scheme, even plotless-ness, will give a reader genuine satisfaction, unless one of those old fashioned plots is smuggled in somewhere. I don’t praise plots as accurate representations of life, but as ways to keep the reader reading.”

“Plot,” says Joyce Carol Oates, “is the aesthetic approximation of gravity.”

Back to Gardner, “Profluence — the sense that things are moving, getting somewhere, flowing forward. The common reader demands some reason to keep turning the pages. Two things can keep the common reader going, argument and story. (Both are always involved, however subtly, in good fiction).”

And from Aristotle, “Plot is structuring the events of the story.”

As for Jim Thompson, “There is only one plot — things are not as they seem.”

This from John Dufresne, “Character, of course, is the heart of fiction. Plot is there to give the characters something to do.”

How about this observation from Ivy Compton-Burnett, “As regards plots I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plot.”

Henry James also gave this some thought, “When a character does something, he becomes that character; and it’s the character’s act of doing that becomes your plot.”

As did Jorge Luis Borges, “Writing a plot summary makes the writing of the actual book a needless extravagance.”

Gerald Brace observe, “Plausibility lies not in the plot, whether it be myth, fable or fantasy, but in the treatment of it.”

Another insight from Gardner, “Ultimately, in fact, plot exists only to give the characters means of finding and revealing themselves.”

Elizabeth Bowen offers a couple of great views, “For the plot, as related (or told) by the author to the reader, an apparent simplicity is essential. And yet, what is told to have happened must gain significance, background from what is not told. The story’s action, for instance, may take place on a Friday; but the reader must sense, through the author’s knowing, what sort of Wednesday, Thursday, led up to it, and what sort of Saturday, Sunday are to follow.”

“Also, the alternatives to the plot, owing to the latent alternatives in the behaviour of the characters, must be felt by the reader up to the last moment — it is indeed in this that suspense consists; and no novel, whether the action in it be psychological or physical, ought to omit the factor of suspense. The existence, inside the author’s mind, of a possible, far vaster range of the plot than is ever told gives what is told, for the reader, certainty and validity…. The same is true with regard to the scenes of happenings, which must be by the author envisages down to the final detail, though descriptions of them must not be categoric.”

A pragmatic Ursula K. Le Guin says, “The chief duty of a narrative sentence is to lead to the next sentence. Beyond this basic, invisible job, the narrative sentence can do an infinite number of beautiful, surprising, powerful, audible, visible things…. But the basic function of the narrative sentence is to keep he story going and keep the reader going with it.”

Ayn Rand takes plot seriously, “The most important element of a novel is plot. A plot is a purposeful progression of events. Such events must be logically connected, each being an outgrowth of the preceding and all leading up to a final climax. I stress the word events because you can have a purposeful progression of ideas, or of conversations, without action. But a novel is a story about human beings in action. If you do not present your subject matter in terms of physical action, what you are writing is not a novel.”

“Proper plot action is neither spirit alone nor body alone, but the integration of the two, with the physical action expressing the spiritual action involved.”

As for Milan Kundera, “An adventure is a luminously causal chain of acts.”

Quips Ernest Hemingway, “I start to make it up and have happen what would have to happen as it goes along.”

Some more from Gardner, “Because he is intellectually and emotionally involved — that is, interested — the reader is led by successive, seemingly inevitable steps, with no false steps, and no necessary steps missing, from an unstable initial situation to its relatively stable outcome.”

“It is Aristotle’s energeia, energeic action, that is, the actualization of the potential which exists in each character and situation.”

“The wise writer counts on the characters and plot for his story’s power, not on tricks of withheld information.”

“Plot exists so that the character can discover for himself (and in the process reveal to the reader) what he, the character, is really like: plot forces the character to choice and action, transforms him from a static construct to a lifelike human being making choices and paying for them or reaping the rewards.”

“In nearly all good fiction, the basic — all but inescapable — plot form is: A central character wants something, goes after it despite opposition (perhaps including his own doubts), and so arrives at a win, lose, or draw.”

“There is nothing wrong with fiction in which the plot is relatively predictable. What matters is how things happen, and what it means that they happen, to the people directly involved and to the larger humanity for whom the characters serve as representatives. Needless to say, it is always best if the predictable comes in some surprising way.”

“Though character is the emotional core of fiction, and though action with no meaning beyond its own brute existence can have no lasting appeal, plot is — or must sooner or later become — the focus of every good writer’s plan.”

“Throughout the entire chain of causally related events, the writer asks himself, would a really cause b and not c, etc., and he creates what seems, at least by the test of his own imagination and experience of the world, an inevitable development of story. Inevitability does not depend, of course, on realism. Some or all of the characters may be fabulous — dragons, griffins, Achilles’ talking horses — but once a character is established for a creature, the creature must act in accord with it.”

And some more from Le Guin, “To my mind, plot is merely one way of telling a story, by connecting the happenings tightly, usually through causal chains. Plot is a marvelous device. But it’s not superior to story, and not even necessary to it.”

“Unceasing violent action is usually a sign that there is, in fact, no story being told.” Ursula K. Le Guin

Othello Bach observes, “The series of problems that a character faces and her attempts to solve those problems are what makes a story interesting.”

“The first point to remember about plotting is this: every story must open with a problem — not just any character’s problem but the main character’s problem.”

“Learning to plot means learning to think in a clear, logical way. It means creating believable problems and solving them with believable solutions.” Othello Bach

Says George Sand, “Traveling is like a novel; it’s what happens that counts.”

This from John Fowles, “I find [plotting] difficult in the sense that you’re continually coming to forks…. And you’re not quite sure, very often, which road to take. It’s been a great dilemma for me. I don’t think this basically matters too much. It’s the quality of the chapter-by-chapter writing that’s important. And also, I think it’s true of life. I’d be suspicious, I’m always suspicious of beautifully automatic plots. You know, that go click, click, click. They’re attractive in detective novels and films, but that’s not what real life is like. Real life is far more complex and ill-functioning.”

“This inner or mental reversal of the actual movement, common to all traveling, comes very close to what I like most in all narrative art, from the novel to the cinema: that is, the motion from a seen present to a hidden future.”

The way Ulf Wolf (yours truly) views it, “A good plot is like a melody, logical and fulfilling.”

Stephen King has his own take on plot, “Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice. The story that results from it is apt to feel artificial and labored. I lean more heavily on intuition, and have been able to do that because my books tend to be based on situation rather than story.”

“None of the story’s [Misery] details and incidents proceeded from plot; they were organic, each arising naturally from the initial situation.”

“Please remember, however, that there is a huge difference between story and plot. Story is honorable and trustworthy; plot is shifty, and best kept under house arrest.”

I’ let Eudora Welty round things off, “The plot is, of course, life versus death, which includes nearly every story in the world.”

Happy Writing.

© Wolfstuff