My Thoughts on Plot (Everything Wrong with the Hero’s Journey) the article?
That’s an interesting digression from my novel. 🙂 And I have lots of thoughts about plot, but maybe not enough for an article. The main thought is that it’s a literary “Sacred Cow.” I was always told plotting was hard, that it wasn’t just a list of events, that it was difficult to break down . . . I think that is “gatekeeper” talk. Like Hemingway giving bad advice because those asking should know better, or to cut down on the competition.
The problem with plotting is threefold:
1. Pantsers or Gardeners, or whatever you choice term for that type of writer is, think if they do any planning, it will ruin the story for them. I don’t think having an idea of where you’re going is going to hurt your imagination.
2. Architects or Plotters, or whatever you want to call them, think of plot as a recipe which they have to stick to. Plot can p=be as tight or loose as you’ve comfortable with. You can leave room to explore sidetracks if you want.
3. The Hero’s Journey. Because people think that this is THE recipe. It’s not. What most people miss about Campbell’s theory is that it’s comprised of a LOT of stories. It’s true you can pull four different stories which have the same elements when compared side-by-side, but you can also pull out four which don’t start with a farm boy, don’t have a call to arms, don’t have a mentor, and don’t lose that mentor. Campbell pointed out the commonalities, but whatever didn’t fit the mold, he either ignored, or found a way to jam it into one of his subsections. Well, yeah, if you create a vague enough subsection headings, you’re obviously going to be able to fit a vast arrays of events under it—but they’re *different* events, if you actually examine them.
I believe there are a few simple plots, like the notes on a guitar, but thousands of possible *shapes* and *modes* you can play them in. take the M.I.C.E. Quotient I mentioned in my first comment: They are the natural beginnings and endings for those story types (the core notes, if you will) the type of plot (Romance, Quest/Adventure, Suspense/Thriller, Revenge, Mystery or Horror) are the modes with which you compose, and the lens through which you focus (Point of View characters with their experiences and ways of thinking built on their milieus) are the shapes from which the story grows.
I know that’s a lot to think about, but, in essence a story is about a person (human or not, we need to attach a personality/persona to follow them) with an objective, and their success or failure in getting it. So, when you come up with an interesting character with an interesting problem/objective/heart’s desire and decide whether or not they will solve/achieve/get it, THAT’s the true skeleton of your story. Simple, right?
Their goal/objective/heart’s desire determines the type of story it is (M.I.C.E. Quotient) and the genre, because that objective must revolve around a speculative element for it to be speculative fiction. And it’s true for most of the plot shapes, because the objective will make clear if it’s Romance, Quest/Adventure, Suspense/Thriller, Revenge, Mystery, or Horror. Then you come up with a list of events—yes, there is an actual list of events for for outlining a plot—in keeping with the genre. The list doesn’t have to be extensive, but it can be, your choice. It is the roadmap you’ll follow to from the beginning of the story type until its natural end.
You can complicate plots, but that usually involves subplots for other characters—and each of those can conform to a different type—but you still have to have one overarching story plot to know where to begin and where to end. All in all, building a plot is simple, building a complicated plot is just playing with multiple plots within the perimeters of the main.
And that’s my brain seepage on plot. 🙂
