Plot considerations

[resonant]

I've been reading a book about plotting. I'm finding it very inspiring, though I'm not sure whether that means it's an outstanding book or not; it's possible that it's just wildly exciting for me to have even the most incomplete and flimsy sort of conceptual framework for thinking about story structure.

(For what it's worth, the book is Plot, the author is Ansen Dibell, and it's part of the Elements of Fiction Writing series from Writer's Digest.)

Ever since I started writing fanfic, I've been wondering: How did I manage to read so much fiction without getting an intuitive grasp of what's necessary to make a good plot? I mean, I picked up other aspects of fiction writing -- sentence structure and characterization and dialog and how to write explicit sex and so on -- just from reading; why didn't I do the same with plot?



And then I hit this quote:

"Play with Murphy's Law. Try to think of what, within that fundamental situation, could go surprisingly wrong."

And suddenly I realized: It's a personality trait.

See, I've got a puzzle brain. I solve problems. Present a knotty hypothetical situation to me, and I will automatically go through a process like this:

1. Clarify where we are.
2. Clarify where we want to be.
3. Find the shortest path between those two points.

(This is assuming that I've got enough distance on the situation to see it clearly, and that doing item 3 doesn't conflict with my fundamental laziness.)

Seriously: I'm good at doing that. It's fun for me to do that. But it's exactly the opposite of the kind of thinking that gives you a story, which apparently goes more like:

1. Clarify where we are.
2. Confuse the characters, so that they think they're someplace else. Two different someplace elses.
3. Clarify where each character wants to be, and make sure the two destinations are as far apart as possible.
4. Tie their ankles together, then send them off in the opposite direction of where they want to go, and at right angles to each other.
5. Every time they appear to be on the verge of getting somewhere, fling an angry wombat into their path.

Comments

[norah.livejournal.com]

WOMBAT!!!!!

SQUEEEE!!!!

And yes, plot is hard for those of us who are linear thinkers. :)

[panisdead.livejournal.com]

Wow.

Very interesting; I think similarly, and am well nigh unable to plot.

[electricandroid.livejournal.com]

happened across this on my fof List.

The wombat made me cough up soda all over my screen. Hillarious! Thanks so much for posting this, I'm certain it will stick in my brain!

[celandineb.livejournal.com]

*little twinkly bulbs start flashing*

THAT'S IT! That's the problem I have too - the urge to fix, to solve, to make it all better as quickly as possible. Good for RL - arguably - not good for plotting.

[raveninthewind.livejournal.com]

I'm linear, too, and as a reader I get impatient with plotless novels, even if the writing is good. There are some pro novels out there that make me toss them aside impatiently if the author is being too subtle for my get-to-the point brain, and there are plenty of meandering, never-ending WIPs in fandom that I bail on.

Style is good, but there has to be some substance or action.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Hee! And, yeah. Pretty much. Conflict = plot. Otherwise the story's very short. Though I do prefer if the conflict can be achieved without making the characters appear to be very stupid or the angry wombats of coincidence implausibly common.

The thing about plot is that while it may be the most important thing to the characters, to the author most of the time it's just the mechanism of character development. The real "where we want to be" is in having the characters grow/learn/change/bond/whatever. Viewed that way it you can keep your "shortest possible line" approach, because it will avoid bloating the story with unnecessary scenes. You'll include only as much plot is strictly necessary to provoke the learning experiences and attitude changes you want.

It is, however, necessary not to create a too-easily solveable problem in the first place. If you have two characters who already are in the place they want to be, emotionally speaking, then the shortest possible line is a point and you're done.

[beledibabe.livejournal.com]

Ah! What a good book! Nan Dibble (aka Anson Dibell) has the knack of explaining things clearly, which is surprisingly rare, even in books on writing. (And she's a damn nice person to boot.) ::g:: I like your precis -- I think I'll print it out and post it above my desk.

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

Your five rules are my new favorite guidelines. *loves and appropriates them*

I was talking to cmshaw the other day about how the plot for the orignial novel I'm trying to outline is coming to me in the form of Character Billiards: "Okay, so A. goes spinning away from the fight with T. and careens into I., and somehow imparts a spin onto him that sends him spiralling down into this vortex of activity with K1, and they both get flung out of it at high velocities in different directions, and one or both of them crash into K2 and send *him* whirling off down the path that gets him killed..."

[kupukello.livejournal.com]

Hee! :D You'd make an excellent bit nerd, or a housewife, or both :D That's the reason I've never even tried to write anything, my brain works too much like "slice-dice-and-pile" to create an interesting plot. In your case your current system works wonders, there is absolutely no need to change it! *loves your stories*

[vampiresetsuna.livejournal.com]

oooh, yeah~~! Those are good plot tips! I think the reason that i sturggle with plots, is that i see everything in images, which makes pretty scenes, but a bunch of pretty scense strung together and tied with a bow do not make a plot. : /

[crysothemis.livejournal.com]

LOL! That's beautiful. Particularly the wombat.

Seriously, though, your puzzle brain *is* useful for plotting. You just have to engage the wombat-flinging part of your brain at the same time. Fling the wombats, *then* solve the puzzle. And maybe the wombats will have spawn-of-wombat and there will be further complications down the road. But without the puzzle-solving side, you can fling all the wombats you want and still never have a plot.

Okay, I think I've stretched this wombat metaphor so thin it's a see-through marsupial.

Or something like that.

Anyway, thanks for the book rec. Might check it out.

[kestrelsan.livejournal.com]

I obsess about plot a lot, because I'm not very good at it (and I think for the same reasons you list--I like *peace*, man *g*).

But I also some reservations about the conflict-model of plotting (born solely of my idle thinking about it in terms of my own writing patterns, so I don't know how applicable or useful it would be to other people).

Reservation 1: It fosters a kind of backward-looking thinking process. In other words, you (me) come up with point A and decide on an ending point B, and then backtrack to create roadblocks and confusion along the way. The problem with this for me is that I think readers *want* that shortest path from A to B. And if they're able to see the short path, but yet are taken along the long path by the author, then it can either:

A. Create this Three's Company-like narrative confusion (which honestly, a lot of readers must like, just as a lot of viewers liked the show. Me, it drives batshit.)

B. Lose the trust of the reader. As a reader, I want the author to know more than I do. If I see they're taking the long route when there's a short route available, then what does the author really have to offer me?

(a good answer to this is: insightful character development. And I'm okay with a plot that merely serves to advance character development (which is why cliched plots can be fun). But if that's what you're going for, why worry too much about plot at all? Anything will work in that instance--and while it's true that conflict exposes more of a character, the focus there is on what kind of conflict will expose more of that character, not what kind of conflict fits in best with the plot).

Reservation 2: I don't always *like* the concept of conflict. And I think conflict tends to be seen very narrowly (not saying you or the book are doing this--and in fact, I'm very keen now to check it out, in light of my plot obsessiveness and insecurity *g*) as high-tension situations, when in fact it could be something broad and undefined, yet still present.

I guess generally I'm saying that I like reading books that take long rambling roads to get where they're going, with little to no "conflict," as I do books that are high-intensity and fast-paced and present multiple challenges.

[julad.livejournal.com]

I like your icon. *g*

And I've heard very good things about that book and haven't been able to find a copy. (That series is pretty good, the OSC one on character I got a lot out of, although the dialogue one was a piece of shit.)

I'd also recommend Robert McKee's Story, if I haven't already. It's on screenwriting and I haven't even finished yet, but I read the first few chapters with a funny sense of deja vu, going yes, yes, okay, learned *that* the hard way, right, yes.

[sine-que-non767.livejournal.com]

How did I manage to read so much fiction without getting an intuitive grasp of what's necessary to make a good plot?

I'm in the exact same position. And your post is really helpful, b/c I'm one of those types of people too! It's the willingness to *create* problems instead of solving them, and that makes me feel...itchy. Uncomfortable. I think I have to work out a way of doing plot that doesn't piss me off, too, since plot for the sake of plot just annoys me immensely. You can totally see through that type of plot - the author wanted to stretch out the book and thus included this pointless situation which doesn't contribute much at all, and could have been left out. There must be a balance, somewhere...

[iibnf.livejournal.com]

Please put more angry wombats into your fics!?

After an angry wombat caused serious and long term suffering to the boss at work that gives me a lot of grief, I have an enormous fondness for angry wombats. They deserve to be immortalised in porn.

[shayheyred.livejournal.com]

This is exactly what a writing teacher one told my class - hell, beat into our heads. Don't solve the problem. Create one.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

The problem with that sort of plotting is that too much tends to alienate the readers. Some complications are necessary, yes, but too much (especially too much happening to the same person/couple) will make the reader fling the book across the road, and that is not easy. The trick is to write an interesting plot with enough complications to entertain without alienating.

Case in point: Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy's last novel. Now, Hardy was a gloomy sort, and his novels rarely have conventionally happy endings. But there's usually some glimmer of hope that makes them tolerable.

Not this one! By the end of the book every single sympathetic character, bar none, is either dead or insane. The protagonist has lost his children to suicide, his reputation to scandal, his love to madness, and he has never achieved his dream of obtaining an education. He himself dies while listening to the bells of Oxford, where he never went, tolling. It's not a fun read, and the tone is so relentlessly pessimistic that it's not even a *rewarding* read. And contemporary critics agreed; the reaction was so negative that Hardy gave up writing novels permanently.

From Snitch

[scarah2.livejournal.com]

OMG. You're me, only a better problem solver, because you found out why I suck at plots!

[julia-fractal.livejournal.com]

I love your succinct, 5 step guide to creating plot! I liked Ansen Dibell's Plot as well. Out of the 6 or so "how to write" books I've read, it's definitely the most helpful and interesting one.

For me, the problem isn't a reluctance to create conflict so much as difficulties in creating anything, whether it's the central dramatic conflict or what the protagonist had for lunch. Which is probably why I'm most comfortable writing drabbles and take eons to finish anything longer :)

Thanks for posting this!

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

the angry wombats of coincidence

My god, that's beautiful. It's even iambic pentameter, did you notice? I've been murmuring it to myself all day long.

And, yeah, I know what you mean -- sometimes there's not enough conflict; sometimes it's not difficult enough; there are so many ways to go wrong! I flung Lynn Flewelling's The Bone Doll's Twin down about halfway through because the whole issue could have been resolved in five minutes' conversation, and I just couldn't buy that nobody would have told.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

You know her? How cool!

[delurker.livejournal.com]

5. Every time they appear to be on the verge of getting somewhere, fling an angry wombat into their path.
*dies*

Although I think this only works if the characters go, 'Aaagh! Angry wombats! Quick, let's climb the trees and work our way through the canopy instead. No wombats there.' If they go, 'Oh look, angry wombats. Woe.' and then do nothing, it gets annoying. I want to hit them until they actually try to do something to fix the problem.
(And then, of course, when they take to the trees, they find the angry koalas... *g*)

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that's a really interesting way of thinking about it. I may have to try that.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

[beaming at you] Thanks.

To the extent that my stories have plots, I sweat blood over them. (Or else julad does them for me.)

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Hee! I'm not visual at all -- I hear most of mine. Which I guess explains why there's so much dialog. Left to myself, my plots would go, "And then they have a conversation. And then they have a really intense conversation."