Saturday, April 7, 2012

Plot and Plotting

Being by nature the sort of person who tends to bite off more than he can chew (and being spurred on by my irrepressible colleague), I have undertaken to write a very long series of articles treating every area of the plot of a story. The different subjects, such as theme, moral tone, conflict, etc., that I have thus classed as belonging to a plot could in theory stand on their own as separate subjects relating to many different parts of a story. I instead chose to show their effect on the course of a plot.
It is true that a story, whether in the form of a novel, short story, ballad, or play, is a complex organism, in which every part connects to and affects every other part. Therefore, the characters are greatly influenced by the setting; the conflicts have a great bearing on the mood; and so on. However, I believe that the most central part of a story and the one thing that affects all else is the plot of the piece. It is through the story, apart from its characters, themes, conflicts, etc. that an author conveys to his audience the message he wishes to communicate.
Therefore, somewhat tardily, I come to treat the greatest part of a story. I have said before that the characters are the most important element of any story, and in making the above statement I do not deviate from that conviction in the slightest. However, the things that happen to the characters are the story and they are an intrinsic part of the characters themselves. Each character’s story belongs to him in a way that nothing else can because he not only has the opportunity to make the most out of his own story--it has the opportunity of making the most out of him.
I want to say before I begin that it would take a book (and I mean to write it one of these days) to discuss everything there is to say on the subject of plot, or any other part of fictional narrative, for that matter. Though I may attempt, I do not expect to achieve an exhaustive study on the theme. I hope instead to analyse and categorise some of the elements of plot and relate my own experiences of it. If I offer some useful information to the reader, I shall be satisfied in my endeavour.


Plot Architecture
I begin at the basic level, which is the structure of the plot. Every plot has five basic components: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement, which will all be discussed in their turn. The main thing to consider when constructing the plot of a story is that it must build up to the climax—the emotional high point of the story. Each event must impel the story towards a successful resolution.
A story is a complete thought, not a collection of similar thoughts. Every single part of it builds on the preceding parts and is in turn built upon. If one part of your story is weak therefore, the whole structure of the story will be shaky.

Exposition:
In the exposition, the author introduces three main things to the audience: the Setting, the Characters, and the main Problem of the story.
The Setting is where the story takes place, in what era, and in what social background. There is much to be said about setting and I will save it for another article.
The Characters introduced in the beginning will include the main character and other important characters. You may continue to introduce characters as the story progresses, but the main character—the protagonist—should appear early enough in the story so that you have time to develop him properly.
The main Problem is the thing in the story that bothers the protagonist—what he is ‘up against’. Every story must have a main problem to drive the plot forward. It might be that the protagonist’s evil uncle doesn’t want him to get the inheritance, such as in Kidnapped. Or, perhaps the protagonist must foil the Confederates’ dastardly plan, as in Rifles for Watie. Or, perhaps he must find a way to support an expensive hobby, such as in Mr. Popper’s Penguins.
The exposition may take up quite a few chapters—sometimes the whole first half of a book—especially if the main character or problem is not introduced at the outset. Sometimes the author includes a back story, which is a narrative of events that have occurred before the story started, and this is often included in the exposition as well.
It is very important as an author to capture the attention of your audience in the very beginning of your story—certainly in the first chapter and if possible in the opening lines. You want your audience to be drawn into the story and begin to care about what happens to the characters in it.

Rising Action:
After the audience discovers what the main problem is, they are interested in finding out how it is going to be solved. You as the author will not tell them right away—you will instead begin to develop the story. There are several ways to do this.
You will need to develop your characters, telling what sort of people they are, what challenges they face, and what sort of roles they will play in the story. Some of the characters will begin to change as the story goes on and they learn from their experiences. You may want to introduce new characters as the story progresses.
You may wish to present other minor problems besides the main one. These are called subplots and they make the story more interesting, but they also mean you will need more solutions at the end.
As you go, the tension must build. It will keep on building until the climax when it is finally resolved. To create tension you can use several different elements, such as suspense or emotion (I will discuss these elements next). Conflicts are good catalysts for plot and character development; they create problems for the characters to solve and cause the characters to grow. As the subject is very broad, conflicts will be discussed in a separate article.
To build tension you must continue to make the events of the story more and more exciting, suspenseful, or emotional, as the case may be. The audience may start the story in a state of relaxed indifference but they must end it with a definite anxiety about how things are going to turn out. You must draw them bodily into the stream of events.

Climax:
This is the moment of greatest tension—the ‘point of no return’. After the climax the conclusion is decided; the audience may not know what the conclusion will be, but they know that no further events can change it. The outcome is set. The hero can no longer repeal his choice. It is final.
Throughout the story, if there are several minor problems, there will be several smaller climaxes, but as the author you should make sure that your audience can tell what the major climax of the story is.
Your main problem will be solved at this point. Again, the audience may not know how it is solved but they should sense that its outcome is decided. In my opinion, one of the most fatal defects of a story is a disappointing climax—usually because the author did not make it live up to his main problem. He may have simply not made it exciting enough, or he may have made the problem too easily solved, or made the wrong character solve it. As you develop the plot of the story, especially if you have a particularly interesting and difficult main problem, your audience will begin to expect a lot from the climax. This is the high point of the story—quite often it is the whole ‘point’ of the story—so you must take great care with it.
In some stories the resolution is purposefully anti-climactic (such as in The War of the Worlds or The Cop and the Anthem) in order to surprise the audience, but even an anticlimax can be exciting and satisfactory.
The climax is the most exciting part of the story, so it must have lots of tension. This is it: this is the high point: this is where you can unleash unstinted enthusiasm.

Falling Action:
The effects of the hero’s choice are played out. Events follow to a conclusion. The story tumbles down to its close without anyone being able to greatly influence it. There is still plenty of interest as the audience begins to see how the story will end and as minor mysteries are cleared up.
Minor problems should be resolved before the end of the story. There will probably be a falling of tension after the climax, so that the audience is not required to stay on the edge of their seats until the end—unless it is a detective story or murder mystery where the audience sometimes does not find out until the last sentence ‘who done it’.

Denouement:
The readers find out the end of the story. All mysteries are cleared up at last. This is the author’s last chance to get across to his audience what he has been trying to get across all the time through his story and to give them one final dose of it at the end (colloquially, ‘pack the punch’).
Some authors enjoy creating surprise endings and will wait until the very last chapter to reveal to the audience the truth of the story. Sometimes they reserve the surprise until the very last sentence, which takes ingenuity and creativity.
Ending a story is usually as difficult, if not more difficult, than beginning it. The end does not have to sound profound, but it should sound like the end. It is important to make sure you have solved all the problems and revealed all the mysteries in the story so that you don’t leave the audience with unanswered questions—unless you intend to write a sequel...
. . .

These are the five components of plot structure. Some like to visualise these components as making up a triangle or mountain peak, with the exposition at the base on one side, the rising action climbing up from there, the climax at the apex, the falling action coming down the further side, ending at the denouement at the bottom corner. Though helpful, this diagram does not accurately portray an average plot because the climax is almost always nearer the end than the beginning, sometimes not arriving until the final chapters.
This diagram is accurate, however, in the sense that it shows a rising of tension towards the climax and a falling of tension from there.
Building a plot is much like constructing a building. Each event is another block in the structure, adding new dimensions, problems, and possibilities to the story. As a story progresses, it grows larger like a living thing, spreading and branching out into new directions. The important thing for you as the author is to bring these loose ends neatly together at the close of the story.

One of the most important things to do is to keep the interest of your audience. There are many different elements that an author may use to catch and hold the audience’s attention.

Action
Technically, this is all of the events that happen in the story, but I am going to use the word to refer to only the exciting and cataclysmic events. These could be anything from aeroplane crashes to flash floods to swordfights to atomic explosions to high-speed automobile chases. In adventure stories, spy thrillers, detective stories, war stories, and any stories written primarily with young boys in mind, action is the main tension-creator.

Mystery/Suspense
I list these together because although they are different they usually are used in conjunction. You can’t have much suspense, after all, without some mystery. Mystery is, of course, something curious and unexplained in the story that has strong significance and influences the course of the story. For instance, what is the hero’s father’s deep dark secret? Or, where did the pirates hide the map that tells where they buried the treasure? Why are there spooky sounds emanating from the castle dungeon at midnight? Who killed Mr. Body? There are plenty of possibilities for mystery and the only thing to be careful of is that you make the mystery truly mysterious and not easy for the audience to guess the solution to.
Suspense requires a little mystery, but the mystery does not always have to be deep and dark—it could simply be how will the hero save enough money to buy the piano he has wanted all his life? Or how is the heroine going to get to the ball so she can meet the prince? Even just a little suspense, such as in these examples, can keep your audience interested in what is going to happen.
Not every story needs intense mystery and suspense, but every story uses at least a little of both because the author is not going to reveal to his audience what he plans to do until the end of the story. That’s what makes the story interesting. In stories that don’t have a great deal of action mystery and suspense help create tension and excitement.

Emotion
Here is an example of using emotion to make a story interesting:
An elderly woman in shabby garments stands outside of a hotel. A well-dressed gentleman comes out of the hotel, gives her a passing nod, and hurries on.
This brief incident would be very dull—unless the audience is told that the gentleman is the woman’s son whom she has not seen for many years. Suddenly the audience feels how excited the woman must be at seeing her son again and her inevitable disappointment when he does not recognise her. Suddenly the story becomes interesting.
In order to use emotion effectively, the author must first make the audience sympathise with his characters. Once this is accomplished, the audience will feel the same emotions that the protagonists in the story do. They will be happy when things turn out well for the hero, upset when the heroine jilts him, excited when the hero’s long-lost cousin shows up, and frightened when the villain appears on the scene with a pistol.
In stories that tend to be more on the boring side, such as love stories, emotion is very useful for keeping the audience interested. To create it, the author must get inside his characters, find out what they are feeling, and describe it to the audience in a way that makes them feel the same way.

Thought
Elements that provoke thought in a story would be philosophising, or talking about the author’s personal views of the world; moralising, or telling the audience how they ought to behave; and didacticism, or giving the audience a lesson in some subject, such as geography, science, etc. Nearly everyone has read books in which the authors do these things and most find the books boring, either because they do not agree with the author, they already know what he is telling them, or they simply do not want to take the trouble of thinking. For some people (the more mature), thought elements make the story more interesting. When deciding whether or not to put them in your story, determine whether they improve the story, and whether your intended audience will appreciate them.

Humour
It is easy to use humour in a story and a great deal of fun as well, however a necessary prerequisite is a good sense of humour. If your friends do not tend to enjoy your jokes, you may not want to try your hand at this sort of thing.
There are many ways of using humour. Satire is using humour to make fun of something or someone, usually in order to influence the audience against that thing or person. Humour is also useful to lighten up a story, particularly a sad or depressing one. It almost always relieves tension, so although it adds interest, don’t use too much of it when the tension is supposed to be building.

Horror
I put this one last because it isn’t used as often as the other types and because I personally do not care much for this method. It may certainly add interest to a story to make Boris Karloff chase the hero around a meat factory with a cleaver, but it does not necessarily make a better story. Still, horror can be used to good effect and it is excellent for creating tension. A good villain too, is sometimes all the better for being rather horrible.

Here I conclude a theme which I shall revisit in future articles. I have only covered the very basics of plot development and structure under the constrictions of time and space. This must, for the moment, suffice.

-A.P.

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