20 Master Plots Read online

  In the case of "Frog King," the princess is so fed up with the insistent frog (who keeps asking her to kiss him) that she picks it up and throws it full force against the wall. When he hits the wall, presto, a beautiful prince appears. (You must read Bruno Bettelheim's explanation of this act in The Uses of Enchantment, it's almost as entertaining as the story itself. He insists this act of violence is in fact an act of love.) In "Beauty and the Beast," the Beast lies dying, and it's only Beauty's declaration of love that brings him back from death and changes him into a prince.

  In the cases where death is the release, the terms are also fulfilled. Since love cannot remedy the curse, the antagonist or the antagonist's agent must perform the proper ritual to ensure release for the metamorph. The metamorph may die, but it's still a relief to be free from the curse.

  The third phase usually gives us the explanations for the curse and its causes.

  This plot combines the grotesque with the curative power of love, and its appeal is as old as literature itself.

  CHECKLIST

  As you write, keep in mind these points:

  1. The metamorphosis is usually the result of a curse.

  2. The cure for the curse is generally love.

  3. The forms of love include love of parent for a child, a woman

  for a man (or vice versa), people for each other, or for the love of God.

  4. The metamorph is usually cast as the protagonist.

  5. The point of the plot is to show the process of transformation back to humanity.

  6. Metamorphosis is a character plot; consequently, we care more about the nature of the metamorph than his actions.

  7. The metamorph is an innately sad character.

  8. The metamorph's life is usually bound by rituals and prohibitions.

  9. The metamorph usually wants to find a way out of his predicament.

  10. There is usually a way out of that predicament, which is called release.

  11. The terms of the release are almost always carried out by the antagonist.

  12. If the curse can be reversed by the antagonist performing certain acts, the protagonist cannot either hurry or explain the events.

  13. In the first dramatic phase, the metamorph usually can't explain the reasons for his curse. We see him in the state of his curse.

  14. Your story should begin at the point prior to the resolution of the curse (release).

  15. The antagonist should act as the catalyst that propels the protagonist toward release.

  16. The antagonist often starts out as the intended victim but ends up as the "chosen one."

  17. The second dramatic phase should concentrate on the nature of evolving relationships between the antagonist and the metamorph.

  18. The characters will generally move toward each other emotionally.

  19. In the third dramatic phase, the terms of release should be fulfilled and your protagonist should be freed from the curse. The metamorph may either revert to his original state or die.

  20. The reader should learn the reasons for the curse and its root causes.

  Another character plot, closely related to metamorphosis, is transformation. If you read the chapter on metamorphosis, you know that I take the term literally: A character literally changes shape. That shape reflects the inner psychological identity of the metamorph. In the work-a-day world, people constantly change, too. We are always in the process of becoming who we are. From day to day and week to week we may not be able to detect change within ourselves (unless we're undergoing some momentous revolution in our life that forces us to change at a faster pace).

  The study of humanity is the study of change. We change our perceptions of our universe and that, in turn, colors how we think, feel and react to it. The twentieth-century citizen is much different from the nineteenth- or the twenty-first-century citizen. Time, however, hasn't altered certain aspects of humanity, and we share much with a Greek citizen in Athens three thousand years ago or an Egyptian trader in Memphis five thousand years ago. The denominators of basic human psychology have remained the same. We're born, we grow up and mature and we die.

  This shared common experience is the basis for fiction. The plot of transformation deals with the process of change in the protagonist as she journeys through one of the many stages of life. The plot isolates a portion of the protagonist's life that repre-

  sents the period of change, moving from one significant character state to another.

  The key word is significant. One of the tests of character plots in general is the change the main character makes in her personality as a result of the action. The protagonist is usually a different person at the end of the story than she was at the start of it. The transformation plot goes one step further by concentrating its attention on the nature of the change and how it affects the character from the start to the end of her experience. This plot examines the process of life and its effect on people. Given a situation, how will this person react? Different people react to the same stimulus in different ways; similarly, people are affected by the same stimulus in different ways. This is the core of interest.

  PLOTTING A PLOT

  As we near adulthood, we must learn the lessons of the adult world, a new and oftentimes awkward experience for those who have been comfortable in childhood. These issues are addressed in Larry McMurtry's The Last Picture Show and John Jay Osborn's The Paper Chase. Nick Adams in Ernest Hemingway's "Indian Camp" and Sherwood Anderson's unnamed narrator in "I'm a Fool" are such characters.

  War teaches lessons as well. Anyone who's gone into combat cannot help but be changed by the experience. The story may be about learning the true nature of courage, as in Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, Joseph Heller's Catch-22 or Philip Ca-puto's A Rumor of War.

  The search for identity can take a character into the darkest recesses of the human psyche. We always try to understand who we are and what is the essence of human nature, and sometimes we make discoveries about ourselves that horrify us. Such is the case in Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll discovers the dark side of himself and that change can lead to self-destruction. The same is true for other stories, such as H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man.

  People are also changed by the dramatic moments of transition. Judith Guest's Ordinary People explores the troubled Jarrett family. On the outside, the family looks like any upper-middle-class family, comfortable in its affluence. But behind closed doors lurk secrets and an ugliness that has begun to surface. Once the family members are forced to deal with it, it changes them forever. The Kramers in Avery Corman's Kramer vs. Kramer are transformed by the trauma of divorce as they seek to reidentify themselves. And in Siege at Trencher's Farm, (better known by its movie title, Straw Dogs), a timid professor of astrophysics learns there are times when violence is unavoidable. In the process, he discovers a brutal part of himself he never thought possible.

  Francis Macomber in "The Short Happy Life of Francis Ma-comber" is transformed by an incident in the bush after he wounds a lion and is terrified to track it down to kill it. He later finds his courage, during a buffalo hunt. A few minutes later Macomber is murdered by a wife who doesn't like her new husband. Such transformations often do not come without cost.

  George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion is a wonderful example of transformation. In the play (which is very different from the film, titled My Fair Lady), Henry Higgins, a teacher of English speech, transforms Eliza Doolittle, a cockney flower girl, into a seeming English lady by teaching her to speak cultivated English.

  He doesn't transform her simply by teaching her to speak correctly. To speak like a lady doesn't necessarily make her a lady. Higgins tampers with her as a human being by raising her out of her lower class and dressing her up as if she were a member of the upper class. Once Higgins is finished with her, she can't go back to being a cockney flower girl, and she can't go forward as the duchess she's been primed to be. Higgins refuses to accept his responsibility for changing h
er.

  The irony of the story is that Higgins isn't a gentleman, even though he talks like one. Aloof and unapproachable, he refuses to admit that Eliza has made a difference in his own life. He believes he's a self-sufficient man—until Eliza leaves him.

  Once he realizes his mistake, Higgins finds Eliza and pleads with her to return to him so they can live together (with Colonel Pickering) as three dedicated bachelors. At the end of the play, he is sure she will come back, even as she tells him goodbye forever. The transformation of Eliza Doolittle also transforms Henry Higgins. But the play does not have a happy ending. Shaw resisted it even when his audiences demanded it. The point of the story wasn't to show two people falling in love, but to show the human costs of meddling in another person's life. But audiences from his day to ours have refused to listen.

  SMALL-SCALE TRANSFORMATION

  The incident that changes the protagonist doesn't have to be on such a large scale as Hemingway's story or Shaw's play. Anton Chekhov showed that sometimes even the smallest events can reverberate through our lives with the awesome power of an avalanche.

  "The Kiss" is set in a small Russian village in the 1880s. The protagonist is an inept lieutenant in the Russian artillery. "I am the shyest, most modest, and most undistinguished officer in the whole brigade!" he laments. He's a lousy conversationalist, a clod of a dancer—altogether a pathetic mix of officer and gentleman.

  The occasion is an evening of dining and dancing at the home of a local retired lieutenant general. The protagonist attends but is ill at ease because of his lack of social graces. He wanders away from the gathering into a dark part of the house when suddenly a woman throws her arms around him, whispers "At last!" in his ear, then kisses him on the lips. Realizing her mistake, she runs from the room before the officer can identify her.

  Lt. Ryabovich is stunned. The kiss penetrates him to the core. Although the room is too dark for him to identify the woman, he leaves the room already changed. "He wanted to dance, to talk, to run into the garden, to laugh aloud."

  This is the heart of the first dramatic phase: the incident that starts the change in the protagonist's life. Since this plot is about character, it's important to understand who the protagonist is before the change takes place. Chekhov does this with a few simple brush strokes. We should understand enough about the character before the transforming event that when it happens, we also understand how it can affect the protagonist in such a profound way. An accidental kiss by a mysterious woman in the dark would be a great source of amusement for most men, but it wouldn't have the profound impact it has on Ryabovich. We know the lieutenant has low self-esteem, that he feels lonely and unloved, out of the mainstream of human affairs. So suddenly, when this woman's kiss makes him feel connected to the world, we understand why. He has been, as they say, primed for this event. To anyone else, it would've been an insignificant moment, but for Ryabovich, it's the moment of a lifetime.

  Ryabovich rejoins the party. The kiss has already started to turn into a romantic fantasy. He scans the women at the party and wonders which was the one in the dark room. The mystery excites him. Before he falls asleep that night, the fantasy is rooted deeply in his imagination.

  After the transforming incident, we begin to see the first effects of it. Action, reaction; cause, effect. The personality of the protagonist begins its transformation. This is a process plot. We follow the changes in the protagonist as he transforms from one personality state to another. He may pass through several states in the process of becoming what he will ultimately be. There are lessons to be learned, judgments to be made, insights to be seen.

  The next day Ryabovich leaves the Russian village for maneuvers. He experiences a rational moment when he tries to convince himself the kiss was meaningless, that he's making too much out of it. But he cannot resist the temptation of the fantasy; he is already hostage to it. He relates the incident to his fellow officers, who react as normal men might. To them it's one of those wonderfully absurd moments we encounter from time to time. Ryabovich is disappointed by their reaction, for in his mind, the mysterious woman is his goddess of love. He loves her and he wants to marry her. He even begins to fantasize that she really loves him, too. He wants to go back to the village to be reunited with her.

  In the second dramatic phase we see the full effects of the transforming incident. We might better describe the transforming incident as an inciting incident, because it begins the process of change in the protagonist. It's an internal process, an expression of the human mind. Whatever actions the character takes are a direct expression of what the character thinks. The character's nature determines the action, just as Ryabovich's nature determines his resolution to go back to be reunited with the woman he is convinced waits for him.

  The third dramatic phase usually contains another incident that defines the result of the transformation. The protagonist has reached the end of his experience. It's common for a protagonist to learn lessons other than what he expected to learn. The real lessons are often the hidden or unexpected ones. Expectations are baffled; illusions are destroyed. Reality overtakes fantasy.

  Ryabovich returns to the village full of anticipation and tortured by questions: "How would he meet her? What would he talk about? Might she not have forgotten the kiss?" He knows that once the old general hears he's in the village he will be invited back to the house. He can go back to the dark room where it all started.

  But the closer he gets to the house, the more uncomfortable he feels. Nothings looks right or feels right. The details he remembered with such clarity have vanished. The nightingale that sang in May is silent; the trees and grass have lost their fragile scent; the village looks crude and cold. Ryabovich suddenly realizes the true nature of his fantasy. "And the whole world, all of life seemed to be an unintelligible, aimless jest...."

  When the invitation comes from the general, Ryabovich instead goes home to bed. "How foolish! How foolish!" He is saddened by his realization. "How stupid it all is!"

  The clarifying incident of the third dramatic phase allows the protagonist true growth. Ryabovich is sadder but wiser for his experience. Oftentimes that is the lesson of life itself: that sadness comes with greater wisdom.

  CHECKLIST

  As you write, keep the following points in mind:

  1. The plot of transformation should deal with the process of change as the protagonist journeys through one of the many stages of life.

  2. The plot should isolate a portion of the protagonist's life that represents the period of change, moving from one significant character state to another.

  3. The story should concentrate on the nature of change and how it affects the protagonist from start to end of the experience.

  4. The first dramatic phase should relate the transforming incident that propels the antagonist into a crisis, which starts the process of change.

  5. The second dramatic phase generally should depict the effects of the transformation. Since this plot is about character, the story will concentrate on the protagonist's self-examination.

  6. The third dramatic phase should contain a clarifying incident, which represents the final stage of the transformation. The character understands the true nature of his experience and how it has affected him. Generally this is the point of the story at which true growth and understanding occur.

  7. Often the price of wisdom is a certain sadness.

  Think about all the books you've read and the films you've seen. In what percentage of them does the character change for the better during the course of the work? Definitely the majority, right? Writers are free to write about whatever they please in any way they please. So why do an overwhelming number of works show characters improving themselves and their lot? It's a curious phenomenon. Could we say that ultimately the writer's nature is to be optimistic? Sure, Hollywood prefers happy endings—we know that. But that doesn't account for the predisposition of writers to create stories that are socially and morally constructive.

&nbs
p; The maturation plot—the plot about growing up—is one of those strongly optimistic plots. There are lessons to learn, and those lessons may be difficult, but in the end the character becomes (or will become) a better person for it.

  The maturation plot is a close relative to transformation and metamorphosis plots, and yet it's distinct enough to have its own category. You could argue it's a metamorphosis from childhood to adulthood (from innocence to experience), and it certainly includes a physical change. But this plot isn't a metamorphosis plot in the sense that I've outlined it. You could also argue that matura-

  tion is a transformation plot as well, but the maturation plot relates only to the process of growing. One way to look at it, perhaps, is to say the transformation plot focuses on adults who are in the process of changing, and the maturation plot focuses on children who are in the process of becoming adults.

  ENTER THE HERO

  The protagonist of the maturation plot is usually a sympathetic young person whose goals are either confused or not yet quite formed. He floats on the sea of life without a rudder. He often vacillates, unsure of the proper path to take, the proper decision to make. These inabilities are usually the result of a lack of experience in life—naivete—as in John Steinbeck's "Flight."

  This coming-of-age story is often called the Bildungsroman, which is German for "education novel." The focus of these stories is the protagonist's moral and psychological growth. Start your story where the protagonist has reached the point in her life at which she can be tested as an adult. She may be ready for the test, or she may be forced into it by circumstances.

  Ernest Hemingway wrote a series of short stories called the "Nick Adams" stories, about a young boy in upstate Michigan. These stories are about growing up. In "Indian Camp" the boy goes with his father, who's a doctor, to treat an Indian. The Indian has killed himself and for the first time the boy must confront death. But the boy is too young to grasp the experience and rejects the lesson. That is the point of story: He isn't yet capable of dealing with the adult world. In many of Hemingway's other stories, however, the young protagonist learns quickly the lessons of growing up. In what is arguably Hemingway's most famous story, "The Killers," an older Nick Adams must confront evil for the first time in his life.