20 Master Plots (35 page)

Othello's descent into madness horrifies us, yet we feel the depth of his tragedy, especially when the truth is revealed and he must confront the horror of his actions. It is a horror he can't overcome, so he kills himself. It's his only way out.

VICTIMS AND VILLAINS

We also feel deeply for Desdemona. She is the real victim of Iago's plot. Othello is only the tool. True, it's Othello that Iago's after, but we see the effect of Othello's jealousy on poor Desdemona, whom we know all along is innocent.

Shakespeare was clever enough not to play the game of "did she do it or not?" That's a common game today. Maybe she's fooling around and maybe she isn't. We must wait until the end to find out. The problem with playing that game is that the audience gets no chance to feel sympathy for the character. If we
know
she's innocent and is being falsely accused, we can
feel
for her. But if we're not sure, we hold off making any kind of commitment and avoid any emotional connection to the character. Shakespeare wants us to feel for Desdemona. It's one of the strongest emotions in all of literature: an innocent character unjustly accused.
Othello
works because the playwright allows us to feel for both Othello and Desdemona. We feel for his loss of control and the horrible consequences of it, and we feel for her because of the undeserved treatment she gets from all the men around her.

There's a good lesson in this that you should keep in mind while writing: Don't be coy about your characters by hiding sympathetic information about them until the end of the story. You give up too much that way. The name of the game of this plot (like many others) is sympathy—making us feel for your characters. But if you withhold too much sympathetic information so we can't make a judgment about them (whether they're victims or villains), then neither can we.

BASIC STRUCTURE OF THE PLOT

This plot is about character driven to extremes and the effects of those extremes. As you conceptualize your story, consider moving your character from a stable state to an unstable state. That means your reader will see the main character in what we might describe (or what might appear) to be "normal." She's living her everyday life without major complications. The reason to give us a picture of your major character in normal circumstances is so that we can see her as if she were like one of us. That's the implied horror of excess: that it isn't just the realm of totally crazy people, but that it happens to ordinary people, and the implication is that it might even happen to you, the reader. We try to dismiss people who have gone off the deep end by separating them from the mainstream of society. They're not any of us. But the truth is, in most cases, they
are
part of us. By showing your character living a normal life in normal circumstances, you allow the reader to understand that this character is an ordinary person under extraordinary circumstances.

Of course, you don't want to dwell on this aspect because in terms of the plot, little may happen. Tension, you may remember, is the result of the conflict of opposites, and if you're busy showing a normal person enjoying a normal life, your story probably lacks sufficient tension.

Ask yourself, how would you tell the story of the temptation in the Garden of Eden? At what point would you begin the story? Would you spend a lot of time talking about the idyllic life sitting around eating fruit and watching the animals play? It may sound great, but in terms of literature, it's boring. Why? Because the situation is static.

Introduce the serpent. Now you have the tension of opposites, and the story gets interesting. The best place to begin the story might be a day or two before the serpent tries to seduce Eve. We get a good picture of what life is like
before
the serpent, but we're also immediately introduced to the conflict.

As you develop the plot of wretched excess, keep the same thought in mind. In the first movement, give the reader an understanding of what life was like before things started to change. But don't dwell on them.

Then introduce the serpent.

The serpent is the catalyst—an event that forces change in the life of the main character. Ultimately, the change will result in a total loss of control. The change may be gradual—maybe hardly noticeable at first—but we watch in horror and fascination as the character begins the decline toward whatever his obsession is.

The second movement of the plot develops this gradual loss of control. How does it affect the character? How does it affect those who are near him? Each successive complication takes him deeper into a well that seems to have no escape.

The point at which the character loses control—when he can no longer contain himself—is the start of the third movement. It is the turning point of the plot. Clearly things cannot get worse. In Othello's case it ends with the murder of his wife and his own suicide. (As I said before, once Othello kills his wife, there's no other way out for him.)

Of course, your story doesn't have to be a tragedy. Your character may find a more constructive way out and start back on the road to healing. But something important must happen to resolve the excess. That "something" either leads to a destructive end (because a person cannot live long with such emotional excess) or it leads to a turnaround and the beginning of reconstruction. An alcoholic, for instance, after destroying herself and her family, reaches rock bottom and desperately realizes that unless she gets help she will die.

Think of your plot in terms of tracing the stages of a disease. (Wretched excess is in fact an emotional disease.) Symptoms: The character's behavior indicates that she isn't normal. Diagnosis: realizing there is a problem and correctly identifying it. Prognosis: the prospect of recovery. Your patient may or may not be cured. But in either case the disease is resolved—either happily with a cure, or unhappily, as the disease overcomes the patient.

CHECKLIST

As you write, keep in mind the following points:

1. Wretched excess is generally about the psychological decline of a character.

2. Base the decline of your character on a character flaw.

3. Present the decline of your character in three phases: how he is before events start to change
him; how he is as he successively deteriorates; and what happens after events reach a crisis point, forcing him either to give in completely to his flaw (tragedy) or to recover from it.

4. Develop your character so that his decline evokes sympathy. Don't present him as a raving lunatic.

5. Take particular care in the development of your character, because the plot depends on your ability to convince the audience that he is both real and worthy of their feelings for him.

6. Avoid melodrama. Don't try to force emotion beyond what the scene can carry.

7. Be straightforward with information that allows the reader to understand your main character. Don't hide anything that will keep your reader from being empathetic.

8. Most writers want the audience to feel for the main character, so don't make your character commit crimes out of proportion of our understanding of who and what he is. It's hard to be sympathetic with a person who's a rapist or a serial murderer.

9. At the crisis point of your story, move your character either toward complete destruction or redemption. Don't leave him swinging in the wind, because your reader will definitely not be satisfied.

10. Action in your plot should always relate to character. Things happen
because
your main character does (or does not) do certain things. The cause and effects of your plot should always relate either directly or indirectly to your main character.

11. Don't lose your character in his madness. Nothing beats personal experience when it comes to this plot. If you don't understand the nature of the excess yourself (having experienced it), be careful about having your character do things that aren't realistic for the circumstances. Do your homework. Understand the nature of the excess you want to write about.

R
eal
drama, they've been telling us, is a story about a person who falls from a high place because of a tragic flaw in character. Something on the order of greed, pride or lust. The classic Greek plays have plenty of examples, from
Agamemnon
to
Oedipus.
These days there aren't a lot of kings and queens to choose from, but still we have a fascination for stories about people who fall from high places.

We have an equal fascination with people who rise from humble beginnings to great prominence, the so-called rags-to-riches scenario made famous by Horatio Alger in stories like
The Ragged Dick Series
and the
Luck and Pluck Series.
In these stories, the hero is either a shoeshine or newsboy whose virtue was always rewarded with riches and success.

These two plots—ascension and descension—occupy different positions in the same cycle of success and failure. One plot deals with the rise of the protagonist, and the other deals with her fall. Some stories capture the complete cycle, as in "The Rise and Fall of..." stories. Usually the personality traits that allowed the character to reach prominence (ambition, aggressiveness, etc.) are the same traits that cause her downfall.

These are stories about people, first, last and foremost. Without a centerpiece character, you have no plot. The main character is the focus of the story. One way of thinking of the main character (who can be an antagonist or a protagonist) is to think of her as

the sun in the solar system of characters; all of the other characters revolve around her.

That means you must develop a main character that is compelling and strong enough to carry the entire story, from beginning to end. If you fail to create a character that can carry the story, your plot will collapse.

Such a main character is usually larger than life. She will dominate the other characters. In fact, all your other characters may pale in comparison. The main character is magnetic: Everyone and everything relates to her.

The main character also tends to suffer from an over-blown ego, which may be her ultimate downfall. Too big for her shoes. Cocky. Joseph Conrad's
Heart of Darkness
(later adapted into Frances Ford Coppola's
Apocalypse Now
) is about a man's journey into the blackness that is central to the heart and soul. In any of these cases, the story has at its core what we might call a "moral dilemma." The main character is involved in a struggle that creates a vortex that sucks everyone else in the story into it.

That moral dilemma may be short and bittersweet, as in the case of Flannery O'Connor's story, "Parker's Back," in which a profane and shiftless man finds the meaning of grace when he has a picture of Jesus Christ tattooed onto his back. Or the moral dilemma may take up the span of a life, as in Jake La Motta's biography (later made into a film by Martin Scorsese)
Raging Bull.
It may even take place over the course of generations, as in the case of the film trilogy,
The Godfather
or Gabriel Garcia Marquez'
A Hundred Years of Solitude.

Compare the rise and fall of Willie Stark in Robert Penn Warren's
All the King's Men
to the fall and rise of John Merrick in Sir Frederick Treves's book
The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences
(made into a film by David Lynch). Willie Stark starts out the champion of the underdog, willing to fight political injustice at every turn, but he turns into that which he despises most: a drunk and a demagogue. What character flaws lay the foundation for his failure? We watch him shape events, and we watch the events shape him. That is the core of this plot, perhaps more so than in any other: the intimate connection between character and events. You can't take the main character out of the stream of action because everything the main character does is the mainstream of action.

This means understanding who your main character is, what he thinks and why he thinks that way. It means working out intent and motivation. Willie Stark wants to be a man of the people. Why? What drives him? And why does he crack?
All the King's Men
is a powerful story about political and personal corruption, but more than that it is the story of a man who is consumed by himself.