Plotting the plot
July 29, 2002 | 12:00am
For one of their first exercises, I asked my graduate fiction workshop to write plots based on a set of characters they themselves chose: a waiter, a librarian, a city fiscal, and a "mermaid" or a swimmer in a hotel novelty act. The idea was to see how my students would think through characters and situations, what possibilities they would explore, what risks they would take to bring their stories to full and satisfying conclusions. (By "satisfying conclusions" I don’t necessarily mean happy or crystal-clear endings, like I wrote about two weeks ago, but rather well-thought-out, well-wrought, well-earned endings. More on this later.)
The presumption, of course, was that we were operating in the realist mode, pretending that the events they described really took place somewhere, sometime. This is more difficult than it seems, because conjuring or manufacturing "reality" takes more imagination and more effort than simply copying or reflecting it, as a documentary might (and the best documentaries always do more with reality than its mere transmission). Also, even creative writers can forget that realism, as an artistic way of seeing and representing life, is in itself a shared illusion, a "willing suspension of disbelief," as the poets put it, by which author and reader agree to assume, for the time being, that the characters in the story really existed, and that the events outlined really happened as the writer says they did.
The plot is the realist writer’s road map of the story’s universe, the writer’s and reader’s sense of the story’s beginning, middle, and end – an obvious and logical progression we have long taken for granted and which we are forever indebted to Aristotle for its first systematic articulation. (The obviousness and the logic of a beginning, middle, and end are now fair game for a new generation of postmodern writers who have toyed with our traditional notions of time and space with gay abandon.) Events make up a plot, in what we ultimately see to be a causal relationship, with some seemingly minor decision now bearing tremendous consequences in the future. (And plots, by the way, are told in the present tense: "Tony meets a girl named Maria and falls in love with her, despite the fact that she belongs to a family seen by his own people as enemies…")
Conventionally, plot in the short story has followed a kind of lopsided triangle pattern, along a linear chronological timeline where A leads to B and B leads to C, and so on. The "triangle" starts from the gentle slope of the exposition – where we get introduced to the setting, the main characters, and the main problem – rising steeply as dramatic complications set in, culminating in a climax where the protagonist or the main character has to make a momentous decision, then falling off as events and their consequences unwind in the resolution and its aftermath. There are, of course, other plot structures – ones that keep returning to the past in flashbacks, ones that go round in circles, ones that keep repeating the same scene or image with some incremental change, and ones that leap boldly into the future in flash-forwards.
Whatever specific form or structure it may take, a plot is ultimately just a means of character revelation – a way of showing us what people will do in certain situations, and why. All plots – whether they employ talking monkeys or angst-ridden vampires – are really about people in trouble, and readers have a natural interest in knowing how other people deal with their problems as a way of dealing with their own. That is fiction’s noblest task – not simply to thrill or to entertain us (although that’s awfully important, as well, and something we don’t do enough of in our stories), but to explain ourselves to ourselves, using imaginary lives to deflect the pain of confronting reality.
I have this impression – gained from reading hundreds of mainly student stories – that our fiction has become much too introspective and unexciting, long on thought and gab but short on passion and physical action. The contemporary penchant for the "plotless" story (as if that were truly possible) has left us with weak soda rather than intoxicating liquor of the kind that gives you a buzz for days.
I’ve often remarked that young writers these days don’t seem to know how to deal with strong and uncommon emotion, driving their stories to the brink of a dramatic abyss, and then inexplicably pulling back. I urge them to take a blind leap, and then to follow the story wherever the downdrafts and updrafts of dramatic necessity and possibility might take it. We’re very good at setups, scenarios, and vignettes or little scenes – but we rarely manifest the kind of adventurousness, the imaginative sweep, the dedicated labor, that can turn a cute but unachieved five-pager into a full-bodied classic like W. Somerset Maugham’s "Rain." Surely length isn’t everything, but you’d be surprised what marvels your imagination can come up with if you put your mind to writing 20 instead of seven pages.
Having said that, let me add that knowing when and how to end a story can be as hard as knowing when and how to begin one. I’ll deal with story endings in greater detail another time, but let me just put in the observation that new, young, or inexperienced writers often choose death over other possible outcomes for their characters.
Plots that end in death or wholesale annihilation may sound dramatic, but they’re often more simply theatrical than truly moving or insightful. It’s always easier to kill off a character than to make that character live and deal with the consequences of his or her actions.
One of the extra-literary problems we have to deal with in this respect is the fact that – thanks to the mass media and to Hollywood gore – the contemporary reader (or viewer) has become so inured to death and to mass tragedy that the loss of human life no longer carries with it the kind of dramatic impact or moral gravity that it may have had in more innocent or kinder times. The news now brings us death daily on the scale of thousands: another tidal wave washing over Bangladesh, another killer quake in Turkey or China.
If death has to come in fiction, it must be with a sense of inevitability, or even be foreshadowed and foretold, so that it doesn’t overpower the story with its suddenness or its pathos. Take a look at Willa Cather’s "Paul’s Case" or at Shirley Jackson’s "The Lottery" or even Kate Chopin’s "The Story of an Hour," all of which have a death at the end. The death in Chopin’s story comes as a surprise, but it fulfills a supremely ironic function. (If you don’t know what these excellent stories contain, well, I’m not going to tell you. Do yourself a favor and run over to the library to find and read them.)
In a sense, plotting the story beforehand is counter-intuitive if not counterproductive. Knowing where and how the story will go can rob it of its mystery, and rob the writer of his or her enthusiasm. This is why I studiously avoid talking about stories or works in progress, or yet to be written: I want to save my gana and my gigil for the real writing, for that solitary stretch in front of the word processor, instead of wasting them in frothy banter over beer and sisig.
Meanwhile, there are worse ways than a plotting exercise of flexing the mind on Friday afternoons, with the weekend stretching out ahead like a blank sheet of paper.
Reader Rita Alcuna wrote in to ask me to provide some specifics to back up my claim, made a couple of weeks or so ago, that literary titles hardly sell in this country.
Well, Rita, consider this: in a nation of 80 million people, literary authors like me (regardless of whatever awards or titles we may bring home to show our mothers) can look forward to first print runs of 1,000 copies for any new book of fiction or poetry we might come up with. If you’re very lucky, very popular, or (just maybe) very good, then those copies might sell out in a year’s time (and don’t count all the free copies you’ll be giving away to friends and family; Pinoys are notoriously touchy about forking over real money for anything produced by someone they know). Excepting textbooks, very few Filipino titles enjoy second lives in terms of second printings or editions.
A major bookstore chain, last I heard, was taking in literary titles at the rate of two copies per outlet; these copies have to sell within the month, or be forever banished from the shelves. The policy may seem draconian from the writer’s or publisher’s point of view, but is more than reasonable, no doubt, from the bookseller’s. Either way, I think it proves the point.
Send e-mail to Butch Dalisay at penmanila@yahoo.com.
The presumption, of course, was that we were operating in the realist mode, pretending that the events they described really took place somewhere, sometime. This is more difficult than it seems, because conjuring or manufacturing "reality" takes more imagination and more effort than simply copying or reflecting it, as a documentary might (and the best documentaries always do more with reality than its mere transmission). Also, even creative writers can forget that realism, as an artistic way of seeing and representing life, is in itself a shared illusion, a "willing suspension of disbelief," as the poets put it, by which author and reader agree to assume, for the time being, that the characters in the story really existed, and that the events outlined really happened as the writer says they did.
The plot is the realist writer’s road map of the story’s universe, the writer’s and reader’s sense of the story’s beginning, middle, and end – an obvious and logical progression we have long taken for granted and which we are forever indebted to Aristotle for its first systematic articulation. (The obviousness and the logic of a beginning, middle, and end are now fair game for a new generation of postmodern writers who have toyed with our traditional notions of time and space with gay abandon.) Events make up a plot, in what we ultimately see to be a causal relationship, with some seemingly minor decision now bearing tremendous consequences in the future. (And plots, by the way, are told in the present tense: "Tony meets a girl named Maria and falls in love with her, despite the fact that she belongs to a family seen by his own people as enemies…")
Conventionally, plot in the short story has followed a kind of lopsided triangle pattern, along a linear chronological timeline where A leads to B and B leads to C, and so on. The "triangle" starts from the gentle slope of the exposition – where we get introduced to the setting, the main characters, and the main problem – rising steeply as dramatic complications set in, culminating in a climax where the protagonist or the main character has to make a momentous decision, then falling off as events and their consequences unwind in the resolution and its aftermath. There are, of course, other plot structures – ones that keep returning to the past in flashbacks, ones that go round in circles, ones that keep repeating the same scene or image with some incremental change, and ones that leap boldly into the future in flash-forwards.
Whatever specific form or structure it may take, a plot is ultimately just a means of character revelation – a way of showing us what people will do in certain situations, and why. All plots – whether they employ talking monkeys or angst-ridden vampires – are really about people in trouble, and readers have a natural interest in knowing how other people deal with their problems as a way of dealing with their own. That is fiction’s noblest task – not simply to thrill or to entertain us (although that’s awfully important, as well, and something we don’t do enough of in our stories), but to explain ourselves to ourselves, using imaginary lives to deflect the pain of confronting reality.
I have this impression – gained from reading hundreds of mainly student stories – that our fiction has become much too introspective and unexciting, long on thought and gab but short on passion and physical action. The contemporary penchant for the "plotless" story (as if that were truly possible) has left us with weak soda rather than intoxicating liquor of the kind that gives you a buzz for days.
I’ve often remarked that young writers these days don’t seem to know how to deal with strong and uncommon emotion, driving their stories to the brink of a dramatic abyss, and then inexplicably pulling back. I urge them to take a blind leap, and then to follow the story wherever the downdrafts and updrafts of dramatic necessity and possibility might take it. We’re very good at setups, scenarios, and vignettes or little scenes – but we rarely manifest the kind of adventurousness, the imaginative sweep, the dedicated labor, that can turn a cute but unachieved five-pager into a full-bodied classic like W. Somerset Maugham’s "Rain." Surely length isn’t everything, but you’d be surprised what marvels your imagination can come up with if you put your mind to writing 20 instead of seven pages.
Having said that, let me add that knowing when and how to end a story can be as hard as knowing when and how to begin one. I’ll deal with story endings in greater detail another time, but let me just put in the observation that new, young, or inexperienced writers often choose death over other possible outcomes for their characters.
Plots that end in death or wholesale annihilation may sound dramatic, but they’re often more simply theatrical than truly moving or insightful. It’s always easier to kill off a character than to make that character live and deal with the consequences of his or her actions.
One of the extra-literary problems we have to deal with in this respect is the fact that – thanks to the mass media and to Hollywood gore – the contemporary reader (or viewer) has become so inured to death and to mass tragedy that the loss of human life no longer carries with it the kind of dramatic impact or moral gravity that it may have had in more innocent or kinder times. The news now brings us death daily on the scale of thousands: another tidal wave washing over Bangladesh, another killer quake in Turkey or China.
If death has to come in fiction, it must be with a sense of inevitability, or even be foreshadowed and foretold, so that it doesn’t overpower the story with its suddenness or its pathos. Take a look at Willa Cather’s "Paul’s Case" or at Shirley Jackson’s "The Lottery" or even Kate Chopin’s "The Story of an Hour," all of which have a death at the end. The death in Chopin’s story comes as a surprise, but it fulfills a supremely ironic function. (If you don’t know what these excellent stories contain, well, I’m not going to tell you. Do yourself a favor and run over to the library to find and read them.)
In a sense, plotting the story beforehand is counter-intuitive if not counterproductive. Knowing where and how the story will go can rob it of its mystery, and rob the writer of his or her enthusiasm. This is why I studiously avoid talking about stories or works in progress, or yet to be written: I want to save my gana and my gigil for the real writing, for that solitary stretch in front of the word processor, instead of wasting them in frothy banter over beer and sisig.
Meanwhile, there are worse ways than a plotting exercise of flexing the mind on Friday afternoons, with the weekend stretching out ahead like a blank sheet of paper.
Well, Rita, consider this: in a nation of 80 million people, literary authors like me (regardless of whatever awards or titles we may bring home to show our mothers) can look forward to first print runs of 1,000 copies for any new book of fiction or poetry we might come up with. If you’re very lucky, very popular, or (just maybe) very good, then those copies might sell out in a year’s time (and don’t count all the free copies you’ll be giving away to friends and family; Pinoys are notoriously touchy about forking over real money for anything produced by someone they know). Excepting textbooks, very few Filipino titles enjoy second lives in terms of second printings or editions.
A major bookstore chain, last I heard, was taking in literary titles at the rate of two copies per outlet; these copies have to sell within the month, or be forever banished from the shelves. The policy may seem draconian from the writer’s or publisher’s point of view, but is more than reasonable, no doubt, from the bookseller’s. Either way, I think it proves the point.
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