20 Master Plots Read online

  All of these answers are right to some degree. Be suspicious of any magic number of plots, because I doubt anyone can completely catalogue the range of human feeling and action in tidy little packages numbered from one to whatever. These people really say the same thing, but in different ways.

  Another way to put it might be to say that you can package plot any number of ways, and the way you package it decides what number you'll end up with. There is no magic number, one or one million. This book deals with twenty, but these aren't the only ones in the world. They're twenty of the most basic plots, but any enterprising person can find more, or find another way to package the concept and come out with a different number. Plot is a slippery thing, and no one can hold onto it for long.

  In its most basic sense, a plot is a blueprint of human behavior. Thousands of years of human behavior has developed patterns of action and feeling. These patterns are so basic to being human that they haven't changed in the last five thousand years and probably won't change in the next five thousand. On a cosmic scale, five thousand years is a drop in the bucket, but for us mere mortals who eke out lifetimes of about eighty years, five thousand years is a very long time.

  In the history of human events it's a long time, too. Some of these patterns of behavior go back even further, to the beginning of humanity and before. We call these behaviors "instincts": the maternal instinct, the instinct to survive, the instinct to defend yourself, and so on. They are primal behaviors, and they are a large part of our own behavior. Remember the story about the mother whose child was trapped beneath an automobile? She was so desperate to save her child she lifted the car with superhuman strength and freed it. We want to protect the ones we love, and sometimes we must go to extremes to do it. This is a basic pattern of behavior that is common to all peoples around the globe, city and jungle alike, at all times in history.

  You can probably think of a dozen other such patterns of behavior off the top of your head. But behavior doesn't make plot; it's just the first step toward plot.

  First, you must understand the difference between a story and a plot.

  THE WHALE HUSBAND MEETS THE CHOKING DOBERMAN

  Before plot there was story. In the days when people lived in makeshift homes that they abandoned daily in search of game, or seasonally as they moved their herds of sheep or yaks, they sat around the fire at night and told stories. Stories about the prowess of the hunter, stories about the swiftness of the gazelle or the slyness of the coyote or the brute strength of the walrus. Story was a narration of events in the sequence that they happened.

  Plot was something that grew out of the religious rituals that predated Christ, which developed into the classic drama as we know it. Plot is story that has a pattern of action and reaction.

  Among the Indians of the Pacific Northwest, the story of the Whale Husband was once popular:

  A fisherman caught a strange fish, which he gave to his wife to clean. When she finished her task, the wife washed her hands in the sea. Suddenly a Killer Whale rose out of the water and pulled the woman in. The Killer Whale took the fisherman's wife to his home at the bottom of the sea, where she worked as a slave in his house.

  With the help of his friend, Shark, the fisherman followed the Killer Whale to his house at the bottom of the sea. Using trickery, Shark snuffed the light in the Killer Whale's house and rescued the wife for the fisherman.

  Compare "The Choking Doberman" to "The Whale Husband." The story about the Doberman arouses and directs our expectations, whereas the tale about the Whale Husband does not. "The Choking Doberman" creates a unity of narration so that each event in its sequence connects along the way to make a unified whole. "The Choking Doberman" integrates the questions of who, what and, most important, why. In "The Whale Husband," we have the who and the what, but not the why.

  Too many important questions are never answered in "The Whale Husband":

  • What does the strange fish have to do with the appearance of the Killer Whale? (We want the events to connect somehow.) We suspect that the Killer Whale took the woman because of the strange fish, but we never find out if that's the case. We can guess that maybe the strange fish was the Killer Whale's wife, so the Killer Whale took revenge. We want the second movement (the Killer Whale stealing the fisherman's wife) to happen because of the first movement (the fisherman steals the Killer Whale's wife). But there are no clues, no connections, no apparent causal relationships.

  • Why does the Killer Whale kidnap the fisherman's wife? Was it for revenge? Or was it just because he was lonely or mean

  or perhaps he needed a new housekeeper?

  • What was the alliance between Shark and the fisherman? Did Shark have something against the Killer Whale? Where did Shark come from? Why does she help? No answers, no clues.

  In all fairness, the story probably has many hidden connotations that are available to the original tellers and listeners, but as it is here it seems to fail our expectations of what a story should be.

  Those expectations are what plot is about.

  STORY VS. PLOT

  Novelist E.M. Forster spent a lot of time thinking about writing. He tried to explain the difference between story and plot in his book Aspects of the Novel. "The king died and the queen died." Two events. A simple narration. This is story.

  But if you connect the first movement (the death of the king) with the second movement (the death of the queen) and make one action the result of the other, we would have a plot. "The king died and then the queen died of grief."

  Add a touch of suspense: "The queen died and no one knew why until it was discovered that it was through grief at the death of the king."

  Story, then, is a chronicle of events. The listener wants to know what comes next.

  Plot is more than just a chronicle of events. The listener asks a different question: "Why does this happen?"

  Story is a series of events strung like beads on a string. (This happened and then this happened and the. . . .)

  Plot is a chain of cause-and-effect relationships that constantly create a pattern of unified action and behavior. Plot involves the reader in the game of "Why?"

  Story requires only curiosity to know what will happen next.

  Plot requires the ability to remember what has already happened, to figure out the relationships between events and people, and to try to project the outcome.

  TWO ENGLISH GENTLEMEN

  The following story is from Maugham's notebooks on writing. Maugham said he liked the story but could never figure out how to use it in his own work:

  Two young Englishmen were working on an isolated tea plantation in India. One of the men—we'll call him Clive — got a handful of letters in every post, but the other man — we'll call him Geoffrey—never got any mail.

  One day Geoffrey offered five pounds to his friend for one of his letters. (In those days that was lot of money.)

  "Of course," Clive replied, and he spread out his mail on a table in front of Geoffrey. "Take your pick."

  Geoffrey looked over the mail and then chose a letter. At dinner that night, Clive casually asked his friend what was in the letter he'd bought.

  "None of your business," Geoffrey replied. "At least tell me who it was from," asked Clive. Geoffrey refused to tell him.

  The two men argued, but Geoffrey wouldn't back down. A week later, Clive offered to buy the letter back for twice the amount. "Not on your life," said Geoffrey and he walked away.

  Maugham's observation about what he saw as the deficiency of this story is interesting:

  "I suppose that if I belonged to the modern school of story writers, I should write it just as it is and leave it. It goes against the grain with me. I want a story to have form, and I don't see how you can give it that unless you can bring it to a conclusion that leaves no legitimate room for questioning." So what happened?

  Nobody knows. You invent an ending: Clive sneaks into Geoffrey's room to steal the letter back, but Geoffrey walks in and surprises
Clive going through his things. The men fight, and Clive accidentally kills Geoffrey. He later finds the letter in Geoffrey's effects and reads it... What does it say?

  Let's try a couple of different endings.

  Ending One

  You want to add an ironic twist, the way 0. Henry and Guy de Maupassant did in their stories. So you decide the letter is from Clive's haberdasher in London, informing him that his new suits have been finished and are on the way. . . .

  The letter turns out to be trivial, hardly worth Geoffrey's death or Clive's torture. Clive became a victim of his own imagination and Geoffrey a victim to his own stubbornness.

  But this ending doesn't satisfy us. Why not? We expect more from the letter than a bit of trivial news; we expect the letter to go deeper into the personal lives of the two men. We expect the letter to contain some kind of secret.

  Ending Two

  The letter is from Geoffrey's girlfriend in London saying that she's making a surprise visit to the plantation, and since Clive was such a good friend, could he please help arrange a surprise reception?

  This ending is more ironic because the girlfriend will indeed get a surprise reception, but not the one she anticipates. We also can't help wonder how Clive will explain her boyfriend's death.

  This ending also explains why Geoffrey would choose that particular letter (since he would've seen his girlfriend's name and return address on the envelope). And it would explain why Geoffrey would refuse to show the letter to Clive. The letter contains a secret.

  Perhaps this version of an ending better fits Maugham's "conclusion that leaves no legitimate room for questioning." Everything's been explained, and we are satisfied.

  The difference between "Two English Gentlemen" and "The Whale Husband" is that "Two English Gentlemen" is a story on the verge of a plot. All it needs is a finish to make the story whole.

  PAPA ARISTOTLE

  Our lives are stories, not plots. Life is often a series of tenuously connected events, coincidences and chance. Real life is too ragged and rarely comes to the kind of conclusion that Maugham preferred, with "no legitimate room for questioning." No wonder life is stranger than fiction.

  We prefer order to disorder in fiction. We prefer logic to chaos. Most of all, we prefer unity of purpose, which creates a whole. Wouldn't life be great if it contained nothing extraneous or coincidental, if everything that happened to us related to a main purpose? (Or would it? I have grave doubts.) "Two English Gentlemen" fell short of our expectations because the story didn't go "the distance." In other words, the story doesn't seem whole. It is a fragment begging a conclusion.

  Aristotle, the grandpappy of dramatic theory, proposed some basic common denominators for drama that haven't changed all that much in nearly three thousand years. His concept of unified action lies at the heart of plot. Cause and effect. This happens because that happened, and so on.

  What I'm about to repeat (via Aristotle) may sound so basic to you that it verges on the absurd, but bear with me. It's scary how many people have never grasped this fundamental principle:

  A unified action creates a whole made up of a beginning, middle and an end.

  We talked about the three movements in each of the three stories so far. The first movement constitutes the beginning, the second constitutes the middle, and the third, of course, constitutes the end.

  In the Beginning

  The beginning, commonly called the setup, is the initial action of the situation, presented to us as a problem that must be solved.

  In "The Choking Doberman" it is when the woman comes home and finds her dog choking.

  In "The Whale Husband" it is when the husband loses his wife to the Killer Whale (and, we assume, wants her back).

  In "Two English Gentlemen" the beginning sets up the situation of two men, one of whom gets mail, while the other doesn't.

  The beginning defines your characters and the wants of your major character (or characters). Aristotle says a character wants either happiness or misery. When you ask yourself "What does my character want?" you've begun the journey of plot. This want (or need) is called intent. In the stories we've looked at, the woman in "The Choking Doberman" wants to save her dog; the fisherman in "The Whale Husband" wants his wife back; and Geoffrey in "Two English Gentlemen" wants mail. Wanting something leads to motivation—why a character does what he does.

  In the Middle

  Once you've established the intent of your character(s), the story goes into the second phase, which Aristotle called the rising action. The character pursues her goal. The woman takes her dog to the vet; the fisherman, with mysterious help from Shark, goes to the Killer Whale's house; and Geoffrey offers to buy a letter from Clive. These actions come directly from intent.

  The action clearly grows out of what happened in the beginning. Cause, now effect.

  But the protagonist runs into problems that keep her from successfully completing intention. Aristotle called these barriers reversals. Reversals cause tension and conflict because they alter the path the protagonist must take to get to her intended goal. In "The Choking Doberman" the reversal comes as the telephone call from the vet. In "Two English Gentlemen" the reversal comes when Clive offers to buy back the letter and Geoffrey refuses. "The Whale Husband," however, doesn't have a reversal in it, and that's where it fails as a plot. The fisherman and the Shark simply complete their intention without resistances. Nothing stops them. No conflict, no tension.

  After the reversal, Aristotle suggested something he called recognition, which is the point in the story where the relationships between major characters change as a result of the reversal. In "The Choking Doberman" recognition comes when the woman flees her house; in "Two English Gentlemen" it comes when the men fight over the letter.

  A reversal is an event, but recognition is the irreversible emotional change within the characters brought about by that event.

  Note that both reversal and recognition come from the story being told, not from out of the blue. In "The Whale Husband," help, in the form of Shark, comes from nowhere. In ancient days this was called Deus ex Machina, which is Latin for "God From the Machine." In the old dramas, the playwright solved the problems of plot by having the gods take care of it. You'd watch characters suffer through their dilemmas, then suddenly some angel or god would float out of a hole in the ceiling (attached to a rope that the audience could see even from the back row), wave his magic wand, and either solve everyone's problems or put them to death. We no longer have patience for this kind of contrived ending. Anything too convenient or too coincidental (sometimes called idiot plot) turns us off. Mark Twain said it best: "The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibility and let miracles alone."

  In "The Choking Doberman," help comes from the veterinarian, who has already been established in the story.

  In screenplays, Hollywood plot structure tends to be formulaic. The protagonist usually goes through two major reversals (sometimes called plot points). Only "Two English Gentlemen" has a second reversal, one that builds on the heels of the first: when Clive kills Geoffrey.

  In the End

  The final stage is the end, which contains the climax, the falling action and the denouement. The ending is the logical outcome of all the events in the first two phases. Everything that has happened to this point inevitably leads to a final resolution in which all is exposed and clarified. We learn about the burglar with the missing fingers; we discover the contents of the letter. Everything—who, what and where —is explained, and everything makes sense.

  In one sense, plot seems like a container. It holds everything. Figure out the shape of your story, add all the appropriate details, and somehow it will all set like concrete or Jello.

  In another sense, plot is a force of cohesion, as I discussed in the first chapter. Whatever metaphor you choose to represent plot—whether it be a form, a road map or the force—its importance is inescapable. Without it, expect to drift aimlessly, never sure where you are or wh
ere you're headed.

  Three thousand years of generating plots has given us some common denominators that hold up as a general rule. And like all general rules, they frequently are broken. Pablo Picasso was on target, however, when he said we must first learn the rules to know how to break them. So, it is within this spirit I present these common denominators.

  LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR ONE: MAKE TENSION FUEL YOUR PLOT

  Without tension, there is no plot. There is only a very short story and probably a very boring one. Remember the basic plot scenario "Boy Meets Girl"? Without tension (or conflict, if you prefer), the story would go something like this: Boy meets girl. Boy asks girl to marry him. Girl says yes.

  End of story.

  What's the point? you ask yourself. So the main character's intention (or goal) is to marry the girl. She says yes. So what?

  So now add tension.

  Boy meets girl.

  Boy asks girl to marry him.

  Girl says no.

  "Why not?" he demands.

  "Because you're a drunk," she answers.

  The tension comes from her denial. We get an explanation of her refusal. What he does next constitutes effect to the cause (his rejection). Whenever intention is denied, the effect is tension.

  LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR TWO: CREATE TENSION THROUGH OPPOSITION

  The role of the antagonist is to thwart the intention of the protagonist. This opposition can come in many forms. The antagonist may be external in the form of a separate person, place or thing, such as an enemy, a rival or a competitor. Or it may be internal— within the character of the protagonist, who may be trying to overcome some doubt, fear or flaw (such as alcoholism).

  In "Boy Meets Girl," her rejection of his marriage proposal sets up a reaction on his part. He can walk away from her (which would be the end of the story) or he can decide to do something to overcome her objection (an effect to the previous cause). The girl's refusal to walk down the aisle is a local tension, which means it is the result of a conflict of the moment. Local tension doesn't have much of an effect beyond the immediate circumstances that created the tension. It would take some consummate skill to write an entire novel based on the girl's initial rejection of the marriage proposal (although it might be enough for a short story). A novel or a screenplay is made up of local tensions, but it is also made up of tensions that are more fundamental to the plot itself. If the boy decides he really wants to marry the girl, and realizes he must overcome her objection, that may mean overcoming his alcoholism. The tension of being an alcoholic (wanting to drink as opposed to not wanting to drink) is long-lasting. The immediate tension of the girl's refusal leads us directly to the larger conflict, which is whatever is in the boy's character that drives him to drink. We assume he drinks because of some inner conflict, and we want to know what it is and how he'll deal with it. So, on the one hand, the boy wants to marry his girl, but to do that he must give up drinking, and to give up drinking, he must overcome what is perhaps the real conflict of this story. . . .