Plotting: The Tangled Web We Weave
by FromTheBar

The principles I am about to summarize here are universal.  They have been relied on and articulated famously - by Aristotle, Maugham, Harold Bloom ... Sure, you might decide to be an innovator, and throw it all away, but at least, before you do, be certain that you know what you are dispensing with. 

To illustrate, I also give a few examples of books and movies with the relevant plot structure.  So, here you go.

1) The Basics: Links in a Chain

Start by determining your end-point.  What's it going to be?

* They get married.

* Everybody dies.

* The new dawn of a brave new world.

That's where you have to get to - your end.  If you want your readers to stay with you on the journey from start to finish, every single thing that happens in the story HAS TO MOVE THE STORY FORWARD.  This is the plainest approach to plotting, and there are certainly variations on the theme, but these are the basics.

Examples:

* Little Red Riding Hood

* Sex and the City (the first movie)

* Star Wars

* Anna Karenina

When you sit down to write a story in this linear fashion, all you have to do is mark the pit stops.  The simplest, by far, is Romance.  At the start, they hook up.  At the end, they get married.  In between, they shag, and have two break-ups: one minor, to give them something to do and foreshadow the biggie, and the Hiroshima-type blow-up, that they have to painstakingly put behind them in time for the wedding.

For a quest story, it's only one point that you have to be truly creative about: the initial catastrophe.  That's what sets your whole plot in motion.  Now, until the very end, you just have to sort through the debris and find a way to put it all back together (hopefully, even better than it was before).

Examples

* Lord of the Rings

* The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

* Harry Potter

Caveat

Read a lot.  The more you read, the more apparent will it become to you that, "Wait, awesome idea: how about he suddenly discovers that she is his long-lost sister," or "I've got it: suddenly, this God shows up and saves the day," are

i) fairly unoriginal, as plotting goes;

ii) kind of dumb.

Linear is nice and simple.  If you are happy with it, great.  But you might decide that "simple" is for sissies and want to change it up a bit.  So.

2) The Wrinkles in Time

Write down your progression of events on a long strip of paper.  Now try folding it.  Or cut out pieces and rearrange them.  You can always create dramatic effects by leaving out a chunk.   And then referring to what happened in the portion of the story you haven't told.  You can make the reader work for it - piece together the mystery of what happened during the time you have chosen to leave out of the story.  Some of the best books have used this technique to great effect

Examples

* Hamlet (the entire murder of Hamlet's father happens outside the play; the play is structured around Hamlet trying to figure out what happened).

* 1984 (we are presented with a dystopia.  The catastrophe has already happened.  The hero has to work his way out, and we learn only gradually and incompletely how this world came to be).

* Shakespeare's sonnets (generally speaking, Shakespeare is the absolute king of plotting.  Read him, seriously).  There are three main characters in there - The Author, His Friend, and The Dark Lady, and quite a lot happens from sonnet to sonnet, but you only get the author's reaction to events, so you painfully wonder about the missing bits.

Personally, I am a big fan of this approach, because it allows you to add that extra layer to your story.  You, the author, control both the time and the flow of information to the reader, so you can make it a far more exciting ride (I mean, which rollercoaster would you rather be on - or rather not be on, if you want to keep your lunch - the straight line, or the crazy double-loop?)

Caveat:

Do not attempt this one, unless you've got your linear plot progression figured out.  Otherwise, you will get yourself confused.  Always, always work out the straightforward underpinnings first.  That way, you would also know if something is missing straightaway, rather than be stuck fixing it after the fact and running back and forth through your story leaving edit scars.

3a) Omission: the Mystery and the Reveal

This is a variation on the previous one, except you shuffle not the events, but information (again, after you got your straight-up sequence hammered out).  Most commonly you see this in detective fiction, when the relevant pieces of information are discovered out of order and then put back together, but a few non-detective stories also have the reveal.   The more crucial the information you withhold, the more dramatic will be the final reveal.

Caveat: I hate it when the author withholds the information available to the hero.  If, for example, your hero will not get at a crucial clue until he travels to the Empire of the Moon, it is absolutely fine that the reader does not have the clue either.  Nobody does.  However, "I walked into the room and was horrified by what I saw," and then the reader is not told what the hero saw until the very end, when it ends up being a solution ... come on, that's just a cheap shot.  If you want to withhold information, play fair: if the reader doesn't get it, neither does the hero.

Examples

* The Lady in the car with glasses and a gun by Sébastien Japrisot [New York : Penguin Books, 1980, 253 p. ISBN 0-14-005361-1] - a famous French detective novel (I am giving the English translation) and arguably one of the best-plotted crime stories of all time.

* The Flanders Panel, Arturo Perez Reverte

* Oedipus Rex (true, the information in this one is withheld from the hero, rather than from the audience, but it's so dramatic, I've got to mention it).

4) Multiple Plot Lines

Go sparingly on that one, ok?  Shakespeare usually stuck with three or below.  Or, rather, let me put it that way, if George R.R. Martin couldn't handle it, probably neither can you (it's been how many years now that he can't finish "Song"?)  I will not expand on this one much, because I, frankly, consider it beyond my ken, but a few examples are,

Examples

* Song of Ice and Fire;

* The Iliad (the Odyssey, on the other hand, is a linear quest);

* Gone with the Wind (especially, if you consider the social commentary and the war a separate plotline).

5) Story within a Story / Mise en Abyme

Can be great fun.  Exactly what you think it is - you are telling your overall linear story, but it contains episodes that are other stories, complete in themselves.  If you manage to explore common themes in the overall story and in the subplots, and it all ties together, you could produce an extremely entertaining piece.

Caveat: make sure your sub-stories fit in well with your main story and also that they are clearly demarcated, so your readers do not get confused.

Examples

* One Thousand and One Nights

* The Saragossa Manuscript

* Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream (the play within a play) or Cole Porter's "Kiss Me Kate" (same thing).  

* Red Violin (film)

6) Putting it All Together

As I've already said, always start out with figuring things out in a straightforward way.  You'll layer the complexity later.  But when you do, consider your story overall.  Don't overdo it.  Stick with the plain start to finish, if you've already got,

* Spectacular settings (Dante's Inferno);

* Complex character development (Dostoyevsky's The Idiot)

* Social commentary / scintillating wit (Jane Austen).

If you have these things going, plot complexity will distract.

On the other hand, consider making your plot more complex if your book is in one of the commercial entertainment genres, especially:

* Romance - definitely.  It's one thing if they get into each other's pants over three months.  But slip in a ten-year gap, and you've got drama.

* Quests - everybody knows the good guy is coming back.  But at least try to make the reader wonder?

* Detective fiction - "Murder of Roger Ackroyd" is a classic, because it rides it out on plot complexity alone.

Finally, a few writers who are considered the absolute masters of plotting:

* Shakespeare.  There is a reason this guy is the king of dramatists.

* Bradbury / Poe / Ryūnosuke Akutagawa - they use it to build the sense of dread and create gripping mysteries, and sometimes, in their stories, there isn't much else.  So the plot devices are really showcased.

* Chekhov, especially in his plays.  He develops characters wonderfully, sometimes by minutely examining a trivial episode, and then squashing ten years of tragedy together into a brief conversation.

I hope this helps somewhat.  You are the author.  Time, space and information are the toys you play with.  Those twenty-six little letters are magic.  Have fun!

What is your ideal plot to read or write?