5 Tips on Plot

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I should point out that plot is also called storyline; to paraphrase the definition from Dictionary.com: plot is the plan, scheme, or main story of a dramatic work. Plan and scheme, geddit?  Plot is the scheme of your characters to overcome their obstacles, whether it go wrong or right.  Since action reveals character, the entire chain of actions becomes plot, preferably with quite a bit of suspense and a twist or two.  Also, if you haven’t heard of the guy before, Joseph Campbell and freaking Hero With a Thousand Faces.  The man was a god.  Breathe in his essence, and ye shall know plot.

1.  The ideal scene reads like a story by itself, complete with exposition, rising action, a climax, and denouement. This is rarely noticed by most readers; the same way one doesn’t notice the genius of cinema shots because we’re too busy watching the story unfold.  If you treat every scene like a stand-alone story, structure-wise, it’s easier to obtain rhythm.  Of course, having said that: easier said than done.  But let’s say you’ve got a charming thief character and manage to find him some conflict: stealing from a dragon.  You might introduce the character in medias res, to give us some action right off the top; this guy is ducking a gout of flame while cradling an egg in the first sentence.  You could then provide us with a few smidgens of exposition; what our thief looks like, a few quips to give us a sense of his character, and maybe (or maybe not) how he ended up in this predicament, just not enough to derail the action.  Then we move onto rising action: the dragon is closing in, furious; it looks like it could be the end!  Then climax; the hero escapes through a clever trick and lives to steal another day.  And lastly, denouement: the thief returns his prize, and, shocker, gets caught by the authorities, or is given his real mission, or we learn the real reason he was stealing was to save his mysterious lover, or whatever the main vein of the story is.  Congratulations, you’ve just written a scene that reads like a story.  Most writers make use of a hook in the denoument, that bit of wham at the end of the chapter that makes the reader say “Well, maybe just one more chapter ...”  This is not a tried and true formula; very few rules of plot are, but you could do worse than start here.  Better yet, take a look at some of your favorite opening chapters and see if you can identify the main pieces of the scene, and how the author uses them.  (It’s very easy to shuffle them around like a deck of playing cards.)

2.  Plot benefits from clench and release, scene and sequel. Most movies scary or shocking in nature will have moments in them where the audience can laugh.  This is to relieve pressure, to blow off a little emotional steam, before we continue with the ordeal of the characters.  Even movies like Saving Private Ryan or Titanic have these; often the humor benefits from the tension.  (When you don’t have this, you get what Hitchcock did: driving his viewers to the edge of utter madness by never relenting on the suspense.)  In novels, this concept is called scene and sequel (I've also heard it called clench and release).  A scene is a time for action, for a character to act on their beliefs, to confront their conflict proactively, to be injured and rebuffed, to fail or triumph.  The followup to this is sequel, wherein the character ruminates on their failure or success, processes emotions, and perhaps has a change in feeling that will allow him to take new actions in his next scene.  This ties in with both Rule#1 and Rule#3, because we’re once again in the realm of rhythm.  The beats of character arc, plot, and possibly theme marching in tandem.  Scene and sequel can be thought of as any choice of mirror you like: loud is scene, quiet is sequel, scene is active, sequel is passive, scene is suspenseful, sequel is relief, and so on.  Again, this isn’t locked in; you may well find that an author does scene, scene, scene, sequel, scene, scene, scene, sequel; OR scene sequel sequel, blah blah.  One thing I can tell you is that if you give us sequel, sequel, sequel, sequel, eventually your readers are going to stop paying attention, because nothing will be happening.  Character is action; scene is action.  Exposition is sequel; sequel is exposition.  Relegate the appropriate story element to the appropriate time, so that we don’t have our thief fellow explaining to us why dragons breathe fire (exposition) when he’s running from the dragon (action).  If the dragon is breathing fire, for the moment, we can accept that because we're more interested in seeing whether the thief gets out alive.  Also, don’t mistake emotion for quiet; emotion is more than capable of being the most action-oriented scene; in fact, you can make anything exciting and anything serene, just make sure you’re not chucking your serenity in our excitement.  It just kind of ruins the effect.

3.  A plot should have connective causation.  The best kind of plots have rhythm, where actions or items in certain scenes echo or reverberate in later scenes.  I must, MUST give massive props to the Firebringer trilogy by Meredith Ann Pierce for using this to its absolute best execution.  There is nothing in those books that is not significant to the plot in some way.  Nothing is extraneous; it reminds me of one of those baskets so well-woven that they can hold water without spilling a drop; you could do worse then deconstruct that one.  Humanity looks for the gestalt in everything, the parts that make up a harmonious whole.  In short, we like for things in the story to be related to each other.  When stuff just shows up out of the blue for no reason, we hate it.  It’s just the way our brains are wired (I mean this in a contemporary sense, of course; the Greeks had no problem with Dues ex Machina and a lot of Native American folklore has crazy stuff that happens for no reason).  One term used on TvTropes is called the Chekov’s Gun: if you show us a gun in Act One, it better go off by Act 3.  We’ve had our attention brought to it, so it must have some kind of significance.  (The more subtle execution of this, where something innocuous has plot significance, is even better, because we get that “Oh!  Ah ha!” moment in addition to the causation.)  Fan fiction is rife with this broken rule; “Suddenly, Sonic’s dragon showed up!” and the reaction of the reader is “WTF!?”  We don’t know where the dragon came from or why it wants to help Sonic; there is no connective causation.  Also, fanfiction writers tend to fail on follow-through: that outfit that took three pages to describe is just that: an outfit.  It has nothing to do with saving the world or getting the girl.  Nothing to do with plot.  Which leads us to one of the few tried and true truths of good writing: if it’s not important to the story, LEAVE IT OUT.  And for those of you willing to argue the point, I will offer no argument against your extraneous characters and descriptions; I will merely point to the word “good” in the aforementioned truth and allow you to resume skipping.  (Skip Paolini!  Skip, you rich bastard!)

4.  A plot should have at least one reversal, if not more. A reversal in a story is merely a status change.  It’s that easy (hey, we actually got one in plot!?)  Status change is very important in humor and in animation; reversal is a huge cornerstone of storytelling.  A prince becomes a pauper, a soldier becomes a pacifist, a boy loses his girl, a priest becomes a werewolf, whatever.  Granted, your entire story can be about that, as those examples are pretty extreme to happen overnight (except maybe the werewolf guy).  However, getting back to our thief guy: in his opening scene, he’s in control.  He’s smirky, he’s got a plan, everything is well in hand.  But if he gets arrested in the next scene, his status changes: he’s no longer in control, he might not be so smirky if the guards have nightsticks and bad tempers, and if nothing else, he better start coming up with a new plan.  Mild reversals can garner suspense; major reversals lead to the shocking swerve or wham episode that has everyone talking at the water cooler the next day.  Please keep in mind that, for the most part, reversals have to have some degree of plausibility and still, in some way, abide by Rule#3.  I mean, there’s very little satisfaction in building a spy thriller where everyone gets nuked halfway through (although in the hands of the right writer, that would be awesome.)  Mary Sues can’t pull off this rule.  They can never suffer a status change that’s actually real, although the author will certainly try to convince you it’s so; but status changes have ramifications for the character and Mary Sue is always emotionally and physically on top and “in the right”.  Characters may change status from scene to sequel, or the entire story may be about someone losing their status and climbing back up to get it back.  What a character’s status is depends entirely upon their, well, character: what they value, what they fear, what they would kill for, die for, how they see themselves, things like money, family, career.  These make for the best reversals because we know what's important to the character; a Bhuddist who has forsaken all material things isn't going to be as badly affected by bankruptcy as a materialistic billion are with a coke habit.  The possibilities are endless; you just have to make them story stakes to establish status.  A plot that lacks reversal is, uh, not really a story.  It’s why a summary of a police chase where they get the guy isn’t that big a deal, but if the guy jumps out of the car holding a baby and a gun, the story may well be at the top of the news hour.  Because the cops lose their status, and have to figure out a way to get it back without losing their stakes.  (In this case, the baby and their own sense of competence in the public’s eye.)

5.  Dues ex Machina is not an acceptable ending. It might’ve been when the Greeks were the literary elites, but not so much anymore.  If you don’t know what this is, Google is your friend.  Any time a hero’s problem at the climax is solved without his effort, you’ve got this.  I’ve only seen one instance of a Dues Ex Machina that sort, kind of worked without me getting all affronted and angry, and that was the Disney animated version of 101 Dalmatians.  Every other time it’s pretty much a cardinal sin; my faith in Dean Koontz was irrevocably shaken when he used one at the end of The Darkest Evening of the Year.  (I spent $15 on the hardback of it; that may have been why.  There’s only so hard one can throw something and have it ease the pain.)  Mary Sues tend to have this happen to them all the time, and why shouldn’t they?  They control the very world around them.  Dues ex Machina basically breaks Rule#3 at the worst possible time: the climax of the story, where instead of triumph, we have rescue.  If your character doesn’t ultimately fight his own battle, you’re probably somewhere in this territory.
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EngineGear's avatar
You spelled "Deus" wrong.