Authors: Ronald B Tobias
I
n 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 where 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. . . .
LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR THREE: MAKE TENSION GROW AS OPPOSITION INCREASES
In our simple story you've seen how the chain of cause and effect builds and how it relates to conflict, which produces the tension you need to keep the story going. But a story requires constant tension. You must increase the tension as you build toward a climax. That means you can't rely on local tension alone; you need a larger conflict that can support the story. Back to our story:
The boy decides to give up drinking. But it's not that easy. (If it were, the story wouldn't be very interesting.) Now we're getting down to fundamental questions of character. Who is this person? What causes him to drink? Will he overcome his dependency? These are the questions the reader will ask and your job as writer is to address them in an interesting and creative way. Notice we've focused on the boy as the main character. His intention is clear: Give up drinking and get the girl. The girl's refusal created local tension and set up the story. The important conflict lies within the boy and whether he can deal with his own demons.
We want to keep our readers engaged in the action—another way of saying that we don't want the story to get stale — so we have the main character encounter along the way a series of barriers, which deepen the opposition. Each conflict gains intensity. Readers feel themselves being thrust toward the cataclysm, the climax, when all hell will break loose and the story will get resolved (for better or for worse). Local tension can't do this by itself, because local tension doesn't build intensity. All local tension does is create a series of equal roadblocks along the way that, after a while, can get boring. The serious conflicts, the ones that are the foundation of plot, are the ones that deal with the characters in fundamental ways.
Our story won't have made much progress if we revise it just to include local tension:
Boy meets girl.
Boy asks girl to marry him.
Girl refuses so long as he's an alcoholic.
Boy goes to Alcoholics Anonymous and gets cured.
Girl agrees to marry boy.
Well, there's a
germ
of something here. We have a story, but we still don't have a plot. The main character has an intention and it is denied, and he must do something to fulfill his intention— but his task doesn't seem all that tough the way it's presented here. He goes to A.A. and boom, he's cured. Anyone who's gone through anything like A.A. knows that isn't true. But at least you can now see the structure of beginning, middle and end:
Beginning: Boy meets girl and he asks her to marry him. Girl turns him down because he's an alcoholic.
Middle: Boy goes to A.A. and is cured.
End: The boy and girl get married and live happily ever after.
So what's the problem? How do you go about fleshing out this story so that you can deepen the opposition?
The conflict in the beginning is local: The girl turns down the boy. But where is the tension in the middle? Where is the tension in the end? There is none. The boy simply solves the problem. The crisis doesn't deepen.
To write a plot that will work here, you must develop the tension not just locally but at the deeper level as you investigate the character of the hero in crisis. It's not enough to have motivating action that gets the story going; you must continually test the character through each phase of dramatic action.
A simple example to study is the film
Fatal Attraction,
directed by Adrian Lyne and starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close. It's a boy-meets-girl story with a twist. The story is simple enough: Michael Douglas's character has an extramarital one-night stand with a woman who is abnormally fixated on their relationship, and although he does everything he can to distance himself from this unbalanced woman, she reaches into his family with catastrophic effect.
Act I (Setup)
Boy meets girl. Boy is already married (local tension). Boy and girl go to bed together over a weekend while wife is out of town. When boy tries to go home, girl cuts her wrists.
Act II (Complications)
What is interesting about this film in terms of its complications is that they represent a series of escalations. The Glenn Close character begins to interfere with Michael Douglas's life in small ways, such as telephone calls and surprise visits. As Michael Douglas continues to push her away, her actions become increasingly more hostile and desperate. The Michael Douglas character realizes the threat to his marriage and begins to do what he can to cover up. But as the escalation increases and the woman's actions become more and more violent—climaxing in the grotesque killing of the family rabbit—he realizes the threat isn't just to his marriage, but to his family. The color and shape of survival have changed dramatically. The deranged woman then kidnaps their child, and the wife, in a panic, has a bad car accident. Watch the film analytically and notice that every time something happens, the stakes grow larger. The effect of action is to snowball, increasing tension and conflict from the mundane story of a man who's cheated on his wife to one who's battling a psychotic woman who's willing to kill to get her man.
Act III (Resolution)
In the last act the psychotic woman invades their house and tries to kill the wife. They battle it out in a terrifying sequence that includes all the members in this character triangle: wife, husband, mistress. What's interesting is that this film has three different endings, depending on which version you see. The standard ending shows the psychotic woman getting killed, but in the so-called "Director's Edit," which is available for rental, the ending is quite different. In it, the mistress kills herself in such a way that it looks like the husband is guilty of murder. (Reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock's
Rebecca,
in which the wife does the same thing to her husband.) The husband is then arrested for murder. There is a third ending in which the wife finds evidence to show that the mistress was indeed suicidal, which she takes to the police who are holding her husband.
If we were to look at the structure in the third act, we would find a progression of events in each of the endings shown here:
Step I:
The death of the mistress.
Step
II:
The arrest of the husband for her "murder."
Step
III:
The wife finds evidence to free her husband from the charge of murder.
Cause and effect. The ending released in theaters, however, only includes the first step. That might have been the best decision, or it might not. My only point here is to show how tension and conflict are carried through the entire story, regenerating in each act and constantly increasing the stakes.
LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR FOUR: MAKE CHANGE THE POINT OF YOUR STORY
We expect events to affect the main character in such a way that they force a change in his personality. Your main character should be a different person at the end of the book than at the beginning. If not, your character is static. Meaningful events change people in meaningful ways.
In
Fatal Attraction
the change is minimal: We suppose Michael Douglas has learned his lesson and will never cheat on his wife again. The character is flat and static. The story could've been better if we could see the effects of the action as it changes his character. Instead, we must rely on the roller-coaster effect of events to keep us interested. The producers of the movie were more interested in cheap thrills than in exploring how such events affect a family, for the short and the long term.
Let's go back to the basic "Boy Meets Girl." Where are the meaningful events in the story?
There are none. We're supposed to believe that the boy's simple motivation to marry the girl is enough for him to overcome a deep-seated emotional problem. Well, you say, don't you know that love can conquer all? Of course it can, but there's no hint here that the girl does anything to help him through his crisis. We believe in the power of love, but we also know how the real world works, and we want to see opposition—love stacked
against, say, his self-destructiveness. That would be a good source of conflict. But our story doesn't give us a clue.
As a result of events in the story, the character should somehow change. The hero of "Boy Meets Girl" may become a better person (provided he can overcome his obstacles), or he may find out that he's a slave to alcoholism and doesn't have the strength or motivation to overcome his affliction. With either ending, the character learns something about himself. He is different at the end than he was at the beginning of the story. This is the true test of events in your story. Ask yourself not only what should happen next, but how it will affect your hero's character.
LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR FIVE: WHEN SOMETHING HAPPENS, MAKE SURE IT'S IMPORTANT
On the surface this probably seems obvious. But a lot of writers either forget what it means or they don't really understand it.
As we write, we get swept up in the world we've created. The characters speak. They go places and do things. Part of being a convincing writer has to do with our ability to convince ourselves that the characters we write about are real. As a result of our vicarious participation in this fictional world, we often let the characters "go their own way" and say and do what they please. In a first draft I have no problem with giving characters their head. But unless you're a very disciplined writer, they'll end up going in every which direction. Once characters take on lives of their own, they become difficult to control. They may not share your sense of plot. They may have their own agenda and leave you astounded by their impudence. They defy you. They taunt you. You intended for them to be at a board meeting in New York and suddenly they're at a pig farm in Green Sleeve, Mississippi. They go off on tangents and become involved in situations that have nothing to do with your plot. You're tickled that your characters have such energy and that they drag you along with them, but at the same time you're appalled that they seem bent on ignoring you. Finally you realize you must stop everything and ask yourself, "Who's in charge here?"