20 Master Plots (8 page)

Start with a premise, not a conclusion. Start with a
situation.

Let's go back to our married couple. She was the saint and he was Satan. Not very interesting. Why not? Too one-sided. The story can't go anywhere. We'll side with the saint because we have no sympathy for or understanding of Satan. Our emotional response is just as stock as the characters: "Poor dear, why does she put up with it? C'mon, honey,
fight back!"
And to him we say, "You dumb, cruel S.O.B. Boy, are you going to get it!" That story is on autopilot; it doesn't need a writer or a reader.

The fatal flaw in the story is its blatant one-sidedness. She's too good, and he's too bad. Life doesn't work that way. As human beings, we all contain a light and a dark side, and real characterizations capture that without prejudice. What is the dark side of the wife? In what way is she responsible for this horrible state of affairs? And what about him? Yes, he's cruel and abusive, but how did he get that way? In his own way, he's as much a victim as she is. When you stop taking sides and start thinking about these two as
people,
you begin to understand why they act as they do. The difference is that the author is interested in writing about the
situation
and writing about it fairly. Let the characters duke it out if they want, but you're the referee, and you must make sure that the situation is the prime concern. Don't let a character take control of the situation to the extent that it becomes one-sided. Make sure they stay in the ring together, and give them equal time. John Cheever made the point: "The legend that characters run away from their authors—taking up drugs, having sex operations and becoming president—implies that the writer is a fool with no knowledge or mastery of his craft. The idea of authors running around helplessly behind their cretinous inventions is contemptible." The referee, not the characters, controls the situation,

A good example to study of the husband-wife story that shows two real people struggling to put their lives in order is Robert Benton's film,
Kramer vs. Kramer
(1979), with Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep. It's a moving story because there is no villain. Both characters are caught between a rock and a hard place. There are no clear and "right" decisions. Joanna Kramer "abandons" her son and her marriage, but we understand what drove her to that extreme, and when she comes back later to fight for

her son, we understand why she's come back. We feel for both parties and we feel their mutual agony. Nothing is easy here. There's no one to root for, no villain we can point our finger at and say,
"You!"

What we get in
Kramer vs. Kramer
are opposing views: the wife's point of view
and
the husband's point of view. The two points of view clash. The clash gives us conflict. Opposing views means you're responsible for giving not just one argument, but two separate arguments, each of which opposes the other. This is the essence of being between a rock and a hard place.

Tolstoy captured this idea perfectly: "The best stories don't come from 'good vs. bad' but from 'good vs. good.' "

Kramer vs. Kramer
is a story of "good vs. good." And the trick to capturing "good versus good" is in the quality of the opposing arguments.

HOW TO CREATE OPPOSING ARGUMENTS

Opposing arguments are the result of irreconcilability.

They grow when there is no definitive answer to a problem; there are only temporary, operational solutions that may work in a certain place on a certain day but not in all places on all days. Most of the great issues of our day are irreconcilable: abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, divorce, custody, homosexuality, revenge, temptation—to name a few. The hottest irreconcilable argument today in the United States is that of abortion. There are two arguments, one for each side of the issue. Either abortion is wrong because it is murder of an unborn child, or it's not wrong because an unviable fetus cannot be considered a living thing. This is a simple rendition of the arguments, which are much more complex, of course, but the point is that the issue is seen from completely different points of view, from opposite sides of the fence. There is no absolute solution, only temporary ones, which come in the form of Supreme Court decisions such as
Roe vs. Wade,
and even then, those decisions are subject to review and reversal. Sure, we have our own personal belief: Abortion is wrong or not, and we subscribe to one or the other argument. We take sides. But is it the author's role to take sides when writing fiction? If you think it is, you're writing propaganda: Your characters are in

service to the idea
you
want to get across. If you think it's the author's responsibility to tell the best story possible and not preach, you have little choice but to present a situation that includes
both
sides of the argument sympathetically. Only then is your character between a rock and a hard place.

Both arguments should be logical.
If you're serious about presenting both sides of an issue and capturing your character in the middle, it's important that both sides of the issue be valid. Don't put all your energy into the solution you prefer and then create a weak argument that represents the opposite view in a token way. That's cheating. For every point you make on one side of the argument, show an equally powerful point on the other side of the argument. If you don't, the reader will see through you, and you'll lose the source of your conflict.

Both arguments should be valid.
By
valid
I
mean well-founded. We should recognize the arguments as being truly possible arguments in our world. Let's return to the irreconcilability of the topic of abortion and create a woman who is caught unmer-cilessly between both arguments. Her name is Sandy and she's a deeply religious woman. A Catholic. Her religion has told her all her life that abortion is a mortal sin. She believes what her church has taught her and in her soul she believes abortion is wrong.

Then Sandy's raped. The violence shakes her emotionally.

Then she finds out she's pregnant.

The law says she's entitled to an abortion on demand. Sandy hates the fetus growing inside her; every day she is reminded of the awful crime against her. The thought of having her rapist's child is more than she can take. The child would always be a reminder. But her religion says she will be damned if she has the abortion.

Damned in this life if she doesn't have an abortion and damned in the next life if she does. Classic irreconcilability. Both arguments are logical, and they're both valid. How can she save herself? Or should she sacrifice herself to bear the child? She could give the child up for adoption—but then, the child is half
hers
too. The more she seeks a solution, the less chance there seems to be in finding one. This is the true source of conflict.

Both arguments should be compelling.
Logical
and
valid
are not enough in and of themselves. They are intellectual aspects. For an argument to be compelling, it should appeal to us emotionally as well. As a writer, you aren't concerned with teaching your reader the "right" thing to do under these circumstances. You're concerned with putting the reader in the shoes of your protagonist, making the reader "feel" for Sandy and understand the complexity of her dilemma, so the reader understands that there are no easy solutions and that someone, anyone, who has the misfortune to have this happen would suffer terribly.

That is the essence of a compelling argument.

There you have it. To develop deep structure, you must develop an irreconcilable argument that has two mutually exclusive sides, both of which are equally logical, valid and compelling.

SOMETIMES DOING THE RIGHT THING IS WRONG AND SOMETIMES DOING THE WRONG THING IS RIGHT

Let's take a closer look at the whole question of good and evil.

There are two worlds. One is the "oughta be" world and the other is the "as is, where is" world. The "oughta be" world is the one we'd like to live in. In this world, good is good and evil is evil and the division between the two is as large as the part in the Red Sea. When situations occur, the decisions are obvious, the results clear. However ...

The world we live in has few clear decisions and probably even fewer clear results. The water is rarely, if ever, clear. The black-and-white world of "oughta be" gives way to a hundred shades of gray in the "as is, where is" world. We know how we should act in different situations, but when those situations come up in our lives,
it's never that clear or easy.

Sometimes situations force us to reexamine what is right and what is wrong. We've all been in situations where doing the right thing was obviously the wrong thing to do, and in situations where doing the wrong thing was obviously right. It may start with something simple, such as telling a little white lie to spare someone's feelings. Or it may end up with a decision to do something of catastrophic proportions. That's when the phrases
the end justifies the means
and
rules are made to be broken
come in handy.

If the morality in your work deals with traditional concepts of right and wrong and the basic moral dilemmas that we are all faced with at some point in our lives, take a closer look at those dilemmas. Forget easy solutions. They don't help and they rarely work. Worse, they're of little comfort for the character who must suffer through a complicated moral issue when all he has are a bunch of cliches at hand. We live in the "as is, where is" world, and the issues that plague us (and our characters) most are the ones that defy simple solutions.

Gray areas allow irreconcilability, where action is neither wrong nor right. In the absence of absolute solutions ("this is
always
the right thing to do"), there must be artificial or operational ones, ones that work for your character in those specific circumstances. What is "right" in our society is often decided arbitrarily by artificial means (by the courts or by social consensus, for instance), but life constantly throws situations at us in which abiding by the law is wrong. Effect? Moral dilemma. Do you obey the law? Or do you break the law for what you consider a greater good? Where do you draw the line?
How
do you draw the line?

These are the real issues that confront us every day.

Whatever approach you take to your story, and whatever kind of moral system is at work, try to develop your idea so that you create the dynamic tension of irreconcilability. Be consistent and be fair to both sides of the issue.

T
his chapter is about the relationship between character and plot. It's strange, in a way, to separate the discussion of character from the other elements—it's like talking about each part of a car engine individually and not how the parts all work together—but some considerations of character as they relate to plot bear discussion. The previous chapters included discussion about characters to some degree because I wanted you to see how the primary elements relate and depend on each other. You don't separate these elements when you write. Everything comes to bear all at once. I don't know of any writer who sits down at the word processor and says, "Okay, this morning I'm going to write character." And yet that's how most books treat the subject: "Okay, now we're going to talk about character." Henry James is right: When a character
does
something, he becomes that character, and it's the character's act of doing that becomes your plot. The two depend on each other.

First let's look at the dynamics of character in plot.

People relate to each other. When Alfred (A) walks into a room and sees Beatrice (B) for the first time, he falls in love. Alfred asks Beatrice out but she tells him to get lost. The story is under way.

The character dynamic here is two. That doesn't mean it's two because there are two people, but because there are a maximum

of two character and emotional interactions possible: A's relationship to B, and B's relationship to A.