20 Master Plots Read online

  CHECKLIST

  As you write, keep these points in mind:

  1. In the pursuit plot, the chase is more important than the people who take part in it.

  2. Make sure there's a real danger of the pursued getting caught.

  3. Your pursuer should have a reasonable chance of catching the pursued; he may even capture the pursued momentarily.

  4. Rely heavily on physical action.

  5. Your story and your characters should be stimulating, engaging and unique.

  6. Develop your characters and situations against type in order to avoid cliches.

  7. Keep your situations as geographically confined as possible; the smaller the area for the chase, the greater the tension.

  8. The first dramatic phase should have three stages: a) establish the ground rules for the chase, b) establish the stakes and c) start the race with a motivating incident.

  Like the adventure plot, the hero of the rescue plot must go forth into the world. Like the quest plot, the hero of the rescue plot searches for someone or something. And like the pursuit plot, the hero ordinarily chases the antagonist. The rescue plot, like the others, is a physical plot: It depends on action more than it depends on the psychological subtleties of character. But the similarities end there. The rescue plot is the first we've looked at that relies heavily on the third arm of the triangle: the antagonist.

  The story depends on the dynamic among the three characters—the protagonist, the victim and the antagonist—each of whom serves a specific function. The characters serve the plot (as opposed to the plot serving the characters), which is a condition of a physical plot. As readers, we care more about the action as it involves the three majors than we care about them as unique human beings. The conflict is a result of the search and the hero's attempts to gain back what he has lost.

  Before we look at the role of each of the major characters, let's look at the role of the plot itself.

  The moral argument at the heart of this plot is most commonly clear-cut: The antagonist is wrong, and the hero is right. The reader tends to enjoy the chase more than anything else and seems satisfied with the shallow morality that lies at the foundation of the story. Under these conditions it's difficult to develop

  an argument that has two equally valid, compelling and logical sides to it.

  Let me give you an example. As a writer for television, I keep my eye on the kinds of stories that networks like to produce — not the movies they get from theaters, but the films they produce themselves, often called Movies of the Week. These films often are topical; the news story of the day is almost certain to end up as a television drama. Several television films have been made about child abductions. One estranged parent, having been denied custody of his child by the courts, kidnaps the child and disappears. The character triangle is the father, the mother and the child. The primary conflict takes place between the father and the mother; the child is the victim.

  All of the Movies of the Week I've seen have treated the subject in the traditional way: one hero (the good parent), one villain (the evil parent) and one victim (the child). The most common scenario has been about a psychologically disturbed and abusive father who kidnaps his child once the court denies him custody. Claiming the rights of fatherhood (his moral platform), he disappears after abducting his child either from the home or schoolyard. The mother (who has her own moral platform) spends the rest of the film finding and retrieving her child. Sound familiar?

  You might remember from an earlier chapter when I (and Tolstoy) said the best stories don't come from good vs. bad but from good vs. good. What would happen if you eliminated the villain, the evil parent who defies the court order and cruelly kidnaps the child? The story I find interesting—the story I have yet to see on television—is when both parents have an equal moral claim on the child. What happens then? That's what I mean when I talk about being between a rock and a hard place.

  But in rescue plots, the concept of rescue seems to imply right vs. wrong. It's inherent in the word "rescue." To be rescued is to be delivered from confinement, danger, violence or evil. The more interesting story, it seems to me, lacks these elements, and therefore no rescue is possible. You can see how this plot in some ways doesn't allow the kind of character development that you would need to make an interesting story except as an action plot, where the chase and the rescue are the main focus.

  Now let's look at the role of each of the three major characters. THE PROTAGONIST

  The action of the plot tends to focus on the protagonist because she is the character who does all the searching. The situation is straightforward. The protagonist has some kind of attachment to the person who's the object of the search. This attachment provides the motivation for conducting the search.

  The strongest and most common attachment is love. The prince wants to rescue the princess. The husband wants to rescue his wife. A mother wants to rescue her children. The attachment can be for reasons much less ideal, as in the case of mercenaries who've been hired to find someone, but almost always some idealistic notion surfaces in their motivation. Even in a case such as The Magnificent Seven (based on the Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai), the battle-hardened hired guns who agree to rescue the small, meaningless village in Mexico from bandits do so out of a sense of justice. Whatever the motivation, it is a strong moral urge to right a wrong.

  The hero often must go to the end of the world to find what he's looking for. It may be literal, in the sense of princes who must travel to the evil kingdom, or it may be figurative, in the sense that the hero must go to a place that's alien to him (another city, for instance). The point is that the protagonist goes to a place he's unfamiliar with, which puts him at a disadvantage. He must overcome that disadvantage to affect the rescue. It's a sign of greater strength for the hero to fight his battles on the villain's turf and win than for the hero to fight on familiar ground. It's also a source of greater tension. The protagonist's emotional focus in these situations is usually fixed more on his opponent than on the person or thing he's lost, making the plot seem like a contest or duel between him and the antagonist.

  Alexander Pushkin wrote a poem called "Ruslan and Lyud-mila," which was later turned into an opera by the same name by Mikhail Glinka. The story begins with the marriage of Lyudmila, the daughter of Vladimir, grand prince of Kiev, to Ruslan. It's a grand wedding. After the wedding feast the newlyweds go to their nuptial chamber to consummate the marriage. But before the cou-ple can become as one, there's a burst of thunder and light, and the evil magician Chernomor steals Lyudmila from Ruslan's arms!

  The grand prince is so outraged by the crime that he promises his daughter to any person who can bring her back. Ruslan must now go into the world, confront the dark wizard and rescue his beloved, proving his worthiness.

  The story is Ruslan's more than it is Lyudmila's or Cherno-mor's. He is the hero and must perform the tasks necessary to retrieve his lost love.

  THE ANTAGONIST

  The majority of the literature that deals with rescue deals with kidnapping. We know the pattern well. The evil magician kidnaps the beautiful princess and takes her to his castle for himself. This model hasn't changed much in five thousand years. The evil magician takes many disguises in modern literature, but he's not hard to spot. He may have lost all his powers of magic, but the evil part of his character remains intact.

  The antagonist plays backseat to the protagonist, of course. Since it's the protagonist who must do the searching, and since we generally follow the protagonist and not the antagonist, we only encounter the antagonist from time to time as a reminder of his powers and what the protagonist must overcome to succeed. The more powerful the opponent, the more meaningful the victory. Therefore, the villain must interfere constantly with the protagonist's attempt at rescue. The pair interact to create the story's tension. It doesn't matter whether it's the title character in the play Madame Ranevskaya trying to rescue her cherry orchard from Lopakhin, or John Wayne trying to re
scue Natalie Wood from the Comanchero Scar in The Rescuers.

  That doesn't mean the villain is an incidental character, because the times the hero encounters him are crucial. (I'll discuss these interactions later in the chapter.) The antagonist is a device whose purpose is to deprive the protagonist of what she believes rightfully belongs to her. He is often clever (devious), which allows him to consistently outwit his opponent until the third act.

  THE VICTIM

  The conflict in the rescue plot lies between the protagonist and the antagonist. The victim is the least part of the triangle. Without the victim, of course, there is no story, but the victim is, in fact, incidental to the plot. Rarely is the victim more than a shadowy embodiment of that which the hero seeks. In William Goldman's The Princess Bride it's the princess who must be saved, and all we need to know is that she's beautiful and pure. In a way, the victim is like Hitchcock's MacGuffin: She is the character everyone looks for and no one really cares about. We don't care much about how she feels and even less about what she thinks. In this sense, the victim is more object than human. We know Rapunzel for her beautiful, long hair, but what else do we know about her? We only know she's been made a prisoner by a witch for the sins of her parents. We don't know if she graduated high school, has any brothers or sisters, is ambitious, etc. What's important is that she's there so the king's son can try to rescue her. (He fails.)

  Of the three majors in the triangle, the victim is the least important.

  STRUCTURE

  In an adventure plot, the protagonist may encounter a variety of events that only loosely relate to the plot. But in a rescue plot, although the protagonist goes forth into world, she is tightly focused on a task (that of rescuing someone). The point of the adventure plot is for the hero to learn, but the point of the rescue plot is to save someone or something.

  The rescue plot has three dramatic phases, which correspond to the three-act structure.

  The first act is separation. The protagonist is separated from the victim by the antagonist, which is the motivating incident. The first act establishes the hero and the victim, as well as their relationship, so we can understand why they should not be denied each other's company. The abduction takes place toward the end of the first act (as the first reversal). Chernomor snatches Lyud-mila from the marriage bed. King Kong snatches Ann Redman (Fay Wray).

  The second act is pursuit. The protagonist, denied, pursues the antagonist. What the protagonist does and where she goes is defined primarily by the actions of the antagonist. If the antagonist lives in the Dark Kingdom, the protagonist must journey there. If the antagonist hides in a corn field in the middle of Kansas, it behooves the protagonist to follow. The obstacles the protagonist meets along the way are usually the products of the antagonist. Traps, tricks, diversions, red herrings and the like. The true hero perseveres and overcomes the obstacles, but not without difficulty. The adventure hero rarely suffers any meaningful disability. If she is wounded, it's not bad enough to force her to discontinue; there is no obstacle she can't overcome in the pursuit of the antagonist. Since the reader knows, at least intuitively, the outcome of the chase, it's important for the writer to make the chase as entertaining as possible. The traps, tricks and turns should be clever and surprising. If they are predictable, you have precious little left to offer the reader.

  Eddie Murphy, the Chosen One in The Golden Child, must rescue the Tibetan wunderkind who is born once every thousand generations; his task is to overcome the forces of evil that have stolen the child. Eddie Murphy's character is unlikely as the Chosen One, but a variety of tasks prove his worthiness and his inner righteousness. The task often elevates the common person to heroic proportion. Only then can he take on the awesome powers of the Chosen One.

  The third act is the inevitable confrontation between the protagonist and the antagonist. Usually it's an action-packed clash between the forces of good and evil. You know the type. As in the second act, since the reader pretty much knows how this will turn out, the writer must provide the surprises in another form: the confrontation scenes themselves. They should be entertaining and filled with surprises. When Luke Skywalker finally faces Darth Vader, we know how it will turn out. After all, Darth Vader is wearing a black hat. The surprise? The duel is between father and son.

  There are other ways of surprising the reader/viewer. In The Searchers, we find out the woman everyone's been trying to rescue doesn't want to be rescued. She wasn't kidnapped; she took off to get away from her husband. You may want to pull the rug out from under the reader by having the hero fail. That would be a surprise for sure, but be careful. Don't disappoint the reader. You'll need a damn convincing rationale for doing something like that. The reader has certain expectations, and unless you've been building a foundation all along for such an ending, the reader will probably reject it out of hand.

  The rescue plot is perhaps more formulaic than most of the other plots. It has standard characters and situations. But don't underestimate its immense appeal. Like the revenge and temptation plots, it is one of the most satisfying emotionally. It confirms the moral order of the universe by overcoming evil; it restores order in a chaotic world; and it reaffirms the power of love.

  CHECKLIST

  As you write, keep these points in mind:

  1. The rescue plot relies more on action than on the development of characterization.

  2. Your character triangle should consist of a hero, a villain and a victim. The hero should rescue the victim from the villain.

  3. The moral argument of the rescue plot tends to be black and white.

  4. The focus of your story should be on the hero's pursuit of the villain.

  5. Your hero should go out into the world to pursue the villain, and usually must contend with the villain on the villain's turf.

  6. Your hero should be defined by her relationship to the villain.

  7. Use your antagonist as a device whose purpose is to deprive the hero of what he believes is rightfully his.

  8. Make sure the antagonist constantly interferes with the hero's progress.

  9. The victim is generally the weakest of the three characters and serves mainly as a mechanism to force the hero to confront the antagonist.

  10. Develop the three dramatic phases of separation, pursuit, and confrontation and reunion.

  The previous two plots (pursuit and rescue) have much in common with the escape plot. The escape plot is physical, and as such, concentrates its energy on the mechanics of capture and escape. That would eliminate stories about characters who try to escape a personal demon (such as addictions, phobias and dependencies). Those are character plots (plots of the mind). Escape in this plot is literal: The protagonist is confined against her will and wants to escape.

  Literature is ripe with examples such as The Prisoner of Zenda by Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins, Typee by Herman Melville, "The Ransom of Red Chief' by O. Henry, Midnight Express by William Hayes and William Hofer (made into a film by Alan Parker), "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce, and films such as Papillon, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Great Escape and Stalag 17. It is also a familiar theme of fairy tales: the child who is being held prisoner by a witch or an ogre.

  The thrust of this plot is in many ways the flip side of the rescue plot. In the rescue plot the reader follows the rescuer, and the victim waits patiently to be saved. In the escape plot, however, the victim frees herself.

  The moral argument of this plot tends to be black and white: The hero is unjustly imprisoned. But not always. Sometimes the essence of the escape plot is nothing more than a test of wills between two strong personalities: the jailor and the jailed. They

  devote themselves to the task at hand: the warden to keeping his charge imprisoned, and the ward to escaping imprisonment. John Carpenter's Escape From New York has no meaningful moral structure, not even the basic reaffirmation of right over wrong, but in terms of an escape adventure, it's fun to watch.

  By comparison, read H
ayes and Hofer's Midnight Express, whose title is prison jargon for "escape." It deals realistically with the horror of imprisonment in Turkey and the character's need to escape in order to survive. In it, Billy Hayes is caught trying to smuggle hashish out of Turkey. He tries to make his first escape when he shows the authorities where he bought the hashish, but he's unsuccessful and is sent to prison, which is a Hell on earth. His sentence is four years and two months, which, according to his lawyer, is a light sentence. Hayes is determined to serve his time and get out, even though he must witness homosexual crimes, knifings, even the torturing of children. At first he hopes his lawyer will get an appeal, but nothing happens. Finally, two months before his release date, Hayes gets a summons. Hoping for an early release, he finds out to his horror the court intends to make an example of him and is going to retry him as a smuggler. He's given a thirty-year sentence—a virtual death sentence—and sent back to prison.

  Hayes now knows there's no way out except escape.

  The rest of the story details Hayes' attempts at escape. He makes plans to escape through an underground tunnel system beneath the prison but is thwarted when the tunnel dead-ends. Through a series of incidents that take him to the depths of Hell, he finally gets his chance to escape and takes it.

  ESCAPE PLOT-PHASE ONE

  The story typifies the three dramatic phases of the escape plot. In the first phase, the protagonist is imprisoned. The crime may be real or imagined (the protagonist accordingly guilty or innocent). In the case of Midnight Express, the punishment doesn't fit the crime, so as readers we are offended by the excess and side with Billy Hayes, who's a decent human being among animals.