20 Master Plots Read online

  "THE KILLERS"

  "The Killers" is a template for the maturation story. As a story it is deceptively simple (as is much of Hemingway's work), but it contains the thrust and understanding of the difficulties a young person must confront in the process of growing up.

  The story is seen through the eyes of Nick, who remains a spectator rather than a central character through most of the story. This position of observer is quite common, because the young person isn't old enough to understand or to participate in the action in any meaningful way.

  Two Chicago hoods, Al and Max, come to a hick town to kill Ole Andreson, a fighter who's double-crossed them by not throwing a prize fight when he was supposed to. The hoods go into a diner where Nick works. The dialogue takes place among George, the counter man, Sam, the black cook, and Nick. When Nick learns what the hit men plan to do, he decides to try to help Ole. Young and idealistic, he wants to save Ole from his fate. He runs to the boarding house where Ole is staying and warns him, but the old Swede is tired of running and is ready to accept death. Nick doesn't understand Ole's resignation and refuses to accept it. He is too young and too optimistic. By the end of the story, Nick rejects Ole's attitude and decides that one must resist death and evil no matter what the cost.

  BEFORE: THE FIRST DRAMATIC PHASE

  The actual process of maturation in a young person covers many years. You can pick up at any point, from a young, impressionable child to someone in young adulthood. You may explore one day in the life of the protagonist, or you may follow him for months or even years. Two works that are consummate masterpieces of the maturation plot are Dickens' Great Expectations and Twain's Huckleberry Finn. We follow Pip and Huck through all the agonies they must confront, and we follow their adventures hoping that they will eventually choose the right course. When they do, we feel a sense of justified satisfaction.

  We begin with the protagonist as he is before events start to change his life. We need to see who this character is, how he thinks and acts, so we can make a decision about his moral and psychological state before he undergoes change. Your character may exhibit a lot of negative (childlike) traits. Perhaps he is irresponsible (but fun-loving), duplicitous, selfish, naive—all the character traits that are typical of people who haven't accepted the responsibilities of adulthood or who haven't accepted the moral and social code that the rest of us abide by (more or less).

  Your character may be endearing (as are Huck and Pip) but will still lack the virtues that we believe adults should have. The audience will forgive these shortcomings at the beginning (after all, the hero is still just a child), but you will raise the audience's expectations that as the story progresses, your character will respond to the test and eventually come through.

  Nick at the beginning of "The Killers" is not prepared to deal with the kind of world that the hit men and Ole represent. He hasn't been exposed to cynicism and what we might call the dark side of human nature. He still leads a sheltered life in small-town Michigan. He looks normal in all respects; and, in fact, he is. But now the ugly outside world will intrude into his peaceable kingdom.

  WHEN SUDDENLY . . .

  Which brings us to the test. The catalytic event. Your character is merrily sailing through childhood without any real worries when suddenly something comes along and smacks her square in the face. It could be the death of a parent, a divorce, or suddenly being cast out of the home. The event must be powerful enough to get the attention of the protagonist and literally shake up her belief systems. If a child believes (as children do) that the family and everyone in it is immortal, and something happens to prove that isn't the case, the child must reassess her beliefs and reac-commodate herself according to the new events. In the child's eyes this event is apocalyptic, although as adults we may see the event as part of the normal course of life.

  You will prove your skills as a writer by making us feel the apocalyptic force of the event on the child's psyche. You want us to feel what the child feels. Don't let your reader react as an adult, because that will undercut the emotional upheaval your protagonist feels. Take us back to when we were young and we felt those same stirrings. Recall those buried emotions. You must be convincing in your portrayal of young people.

  Writers often make the mistake of writing about someone or something they know little about. While it's true that at one time we were all young, some of us can't tap the reservoir of feelings and thoughts we had ten, twenty or fifty years ago. If you adopt the persona of a young person, you must convincingly portray what a young person thinks and feels. Hemingway did it in his stories; so did Steinbeck. And Dickens. They make us empathize. If you don't carry us back, your story will lack the emotional zest it needs.

  Many authors make the mistake of writing like adults pretending to be children. You must have a feel for what children think and feel without resorting to a primitive level. There is a fine balance between maturity and immaturity of character in writing. In a book like John Knowles's A Separate Peace or J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, the protagonists are a mixture of adult and child. They aren't oversimplified characters, but they are still convincing as young people. If you aren't in touch with the sensibilities of the people you want to write about, don't believe you can be convincing.

  Nick's test comes when he overhears the hit men plan to kill Ole Andreson. He doesn't understand a world that will not move to save Ole. He doesn't understand the complacency with which George, Sam, Max and Al accept Ole's fate. He is given two options: Either he does nothing (as George and Sam do) or he becomes actively involved and tries to warn Ole.

  I DON'T WANNA: THE SECOND DRAMATIC PHASE

  The lesson about growing up rarely just falls into place. A bulb doesn't suddenly go on inside the head of the protagonist. Your protagonist now must react to the cataclysm. Generally the child's reaction is to deny the event, either literally or figuratively. Mother isn't really dead. Or Mom and Dad aren't really getting a divorce. Or I don't really have to get a job. Denial is a strong emotion. It tries to protect the protagonist from reality. It's not unusual for the protagonist to do exactly the wrong thing. He resists; he becomes more difficult, less predictable. His character may even degenerate. Children don't like to be forced into dealing with the cold, cruel world. They prefer the relative warmth and security of childhood.

  But like Hansel and Gretel, who are abandoned by their parents in the forest because they can't afford to feed them anymore, they are forced with a do-or-die reality. Fairy tales are short and get right to the point, and Hansel and Gretel, in spite of their lack of maturity, pretty much have the skills it takes to survive (although they become victims of the witch by giving into the childlike behavior of eating her gingerbread house). In longer and more realistic stories, the process of resistance may take longer.

  It may be, in fact, that your protagonist is actually trying to do the right thing, but doesn't know what the right thing is. That means trial and error. Finding out what works and what doesn't work. That is the process of growing up, the journey from innocence to experience.

  Nick Adams is in this position. He does what he believes is right. He can't conceive of any other action. But what he doesn't understand is Ole's reaction (and in fact all the adults' reactions to what seems like an unwillingness to resist fate). He resists their fatalistic attitude.

  The lessons your protagonist learns usually come at a price. The costs may be tangible or intangible. He may lose his sense of confidence or self-worth; he may lose all his earthly possessions. He has moved from a world that was safe to a world that is unpredictable and perhaps even hostile.

  You can play this story out on any scale. The lesson may be a small one learned in a day, a small, almost unnoticeable lesson that no one else notices but that is important to the protagonist. Or the lessons may continue over months or years and result in a socially stable, mature individual.

  The point of the second dramatic phase is for you to challenge your protagonist's beliefs. Test t
hem. Do they hold up, or do they fail? How does your protagonist deal with change? This character, perhaps more than any other in our repertoire, is always undergoing change.

  FINALLY: THE THIRD DRAMATIC PHASE

  Finally your protagonist develops a new system of beliefs and gets to the point where it can be tested. In the third dramatic phase, your protagonist will finally accept (or reject) the change. Since we've already noticed that most works of this type end on a positive note, your protagonist will accept the role of adult in a meaningful rather than a token way.

  Obviously, adulthood doesn't come all at once. It comes in stages, lesson accumulating on lesson. Nick glimpses a world he never knew existed. It is a dark, foreboding world, and it goes against everything he knows and feels. At the same time, he senses the power of this world. George and Sam give in to it. So does Ole. Nick isn't old enough to understand why they give in to it, but he knows how he feels, and that is to resist it. The story implies that this experience represents a turning point in Nick's life. He resolves to struggle against what Ole cannot. He has this day seen the world and the people in it in a different way, and it has changed who Nick is and how he thinks about the world.

  Don't try to rush all the growing in one day. It doesn't happen that way. In the small event lies hidden the meaning of life. Don't lecture or moralize; let your protagonist slowly peel away one layer at a time. Our focus as a reader is on how your protagonist deals with the event and how she interprets it in the scheme of life. What has she learned? Has she taken another step toward adulthood? Or has she resisted that step?

  Don't try to capture all good and evil in your story. Choose your moment carefully. Make it happen in your story as it does in life. Find meaning in the seemingly trivial. Remember that what may seem trivial to an adult may be earth-shattering to a child. That's your key: to tune in at a child's level of consciousness and read the world the way you did years ago.

  CHECKLIST

  As you develop your story, keep the following points in mind:

  1. Create a protagonist who is on the cusp of adulthood, whose goals are either confused or not yet clarified.

  2. Make sure the audience understands who the character is and how she feels and thinks before an event occurs that begins the process of change.

  3. Contrast your protagonist's naive life (childhood) against the reality of an unprotected life (adulthood).

  4. Focus your story on your protagonist's moral and psychological growth.

  5. Once you've established your protagonist as she was before the change, create an incident that challenges her beliefs and her understanding of how the world works.

  6. Does your character reject or accept change? Perhaps both? Does she resist the lesson? How does she act?

  7. Show your protagonist undergoing the process of change. It should be gradual, not sudden.

  8. Make sure your young protagonist is convincing; don't give her adult values and perceptions until she is ready to portray them.

  9. Don't try to accomplish adulthood all at once. Small lessons often represent major upheavals in the process of growing up.

  10. Decide at what psychological price this lesson comes, and establish how your protagonist copes with it.

  Remember chapter two, when we discussed "Boy Meets Girl"? (Or even the 1990s twist of the same story, "Girl Meets Boy.") Since we know conflict is fundamental to fiction, we also know "Boy Meets Girl" isn't enough. It must be "Boy Meets Girl, But..." The story hinges on the "But..." These are the obstacles to love that keep the lovers from consummating their affair.

  In "forbidden" love, the love affair violates some social taboo, such as race in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, rank in the medieval love romance Aucassin and Nicolette; incest in John Ford's 'Tis a Pity She's a Whore; or adultery in the great medieval romance of Tristan and Isolde.

  Sometimes the lovers are within what we might call social norms, but situations arise that aren't conducive to love, and people won't condone it. Unlike the lovers in forbidden love, who usually pay for their "folly" with their lives, these lovers have a decent chance of overcoming the obstacles that make their affair such rough sailing.

  The obstacles may be confusion, misunderstanding and general silliness such as mistaken identities. Shakespeare's romantic comedies such as Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night and his tragicomedies such as Cymbelene and Measure for Measure fall into this category. So does Jane Austen's comedy of manners Pride and Prejudice, in which an empty-headed and argumentative

  mother decides her mission in life is to find a suitable husband for each of her five daughters.

  The obstacle may be a simple gimmick, such as R.A. Dick's The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (later made into a film and a television series). Mrs. Muir, a recent widow, buys a cottage that's haunted by the benevolent ghost of a sea captain. The two fall in love, but obviously they're incompatible. By the end of the story, however, they find a way to become compatible. Although the television series played it as a comedy, the original story is a serious romantic drama about a woman who chooses one suitor over another and is both literally and figuratively haunted by her scorned lover.

  In some cases the story is agonized and tortured, the grand-daddy of which may be Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Or what about Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, in which Jane finds out on her wedding day that her husband-to-be is already married— to a lunatic?

  In literature, love is often not easily found, or if it is, not easily kept. Often the story of love is the story of frustration, because someone or something always gets in the way. In the case of forbidden love those barriers are social, but in other love stories, the barriers can come from anywhere in the universe. In Cyrano de Bergerac, the obstacle to love is the size of Cyrano's nose. In Ron Howard's Splash, the obstacle to love is the size of the woman's flipper: She's a mermaid.

  In the case of "Orpheus and Eurydice," fate seems to conspire against the lovers from day one. Orpheus, the tale goes, was such a good musician that not only did the wild animals come out of the forest to hear him play, but so did the rocks and trees.

  Orpheus meets Eurydice and falls for her in a big way. He woos her with his music, which is obviously irresistible. He pops the question and she says yes. A good start.

  They get married but before they can set up house, a shepherd tries to rape Eurydice. Eurydice fights him off (or, as they said in the old days, "she resisted his advances"). While trying to escape the shepherd, Eurydice steps on a poisonous snake that kills her.

  End of love story, right? You can't have a love story if one of the lovers is dead. (Except maybe in stories like William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" or Robert Bloch's Psycho.)

  Orpheus is heartbroken. He mopes around playing sad songs and wrenching everybody's heart. He decides life isn't worth living without Eurydice, so what does he do? No, he doesn't kill himself. Instead, he decides to go to Hades and bring Eurydice back himself.

  A neat trick if you can pull it off. We've always been fascinated by the idea of bringing loved ones back from the dead, and I don't know of a single story where it works, including the outrageous Frankenhooker.

  Orpheus uses his music to charm his way past the security guards to Hades. All Hades stops to listen. Even the ghosts shed tears when they hear him sing. Orpheus makes it to the head honcho, Pluto, and with the power of his lyre convinces the ruler of Hades that he should give back Eurydice.

  But on one condition: Orpheus must promise not to turn around and look at her until they get out of Hell.

  Orpheus agrees. The two journey back to the Upper World, past the Furies, past the great doors of Hades, climbing out of the darkness. Orpheus knows Eurydice must be right behind him, but he longs to see her for himself. Unlike Lot's wife, who didn't heed God's admonition not to turn around to look or she would turn into a pillar of salt, Orpheus resists the temptation until the moment he steps in the sunlight of the Upper World.

  Too soon. Eurydice is still in the shadow of the c
avern, and as he holds out his arms to embrace her, she disappears with only a faint "Farewell."

  Orpheus desperately tries to follow her back into Hades, but everybody is wise to him and won't let him in a second time.

  Obstacles compounded.

  If Orpheus was unhappy before, he's impossible now. He must go home alone, in utter desolation. He tortures everybody with his melancholic songs until no one can take it anymore. Some gorgeous Greek maidens try to get him to forget Eurydice, but he rather rudely tells them to go away. In classical Greek fashion, the scorned maidens avenge themselves by ripping off Orpheus' head and tossing it into the river.

  As the story begins, we learn the basics: Orpheus loves Eurydice, and Eurydice loves Orpheus. We witness the quality of their love for each other and give them a taste of happiness. But only a taste. Before the wedding cake can get stale, disaster strikes. That disaster could be anything from an automobile crash, to a disease, to the I.R.S. (mistakenly) deciding she owes a zillion dollars in back taxes or the I.N.S. (mistakenly) deciding he's a former guard in a Nazi death camp. It doesn't matter what the obstacle is; what matters is if the lovers can jump the hurdles and make it to the finish line.

  The first attempt to solve the obstacle is almost always thwarted. Don't forget the Rule of Three. The first two attempts fail, the third time's the charm. One love is the protagonist (in this case Orpheus), who does all the "doing" while the victim (in this case Eurydice) waits passively for something to happen. Sometimes the victim lover is more active in her own rescue, but her action is secondary to the protagonist's. There may be an antagonist/villain who creates the obstacle; but then again, as in the case of Orpheus, it may just be what we conveniently call Fate conspiring against happiness.