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Perceptions
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THE PLOT ALSO RISESMankind began to weave tales as soon as human speech evolved. Wonderful stories of mythical beings, adventurous hunts, and affairs of the heart evolved. Legends blossomed on long treks through primeval forests, around campfires, and in bedouin tents set down in desert regions, and all who heard them, believed without question. Later, Plato wrote journals and letters immortalizing the fabled city of Atlantis. Fairy stories spun out by Hans Christian Anderson fired the imaginations and hearts of children in Copenhagen. Shakespeare wrote plays to portray stories that captured men's minds. In England, two sisters Charlotte and Emily Bronte, dared to write romantic novels that became classics from their time in the 19th Century to the present day. In our own century, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, James Michener, Eudora Welty, Maya Angelou, and Toni Morrison carried forward the torch of memorable storytelling. All of these tellers of tales, from the dawn of creativity to this moment in real time, have something in common with you who strive to learn the craft of writing. All used, or use, PLOTS to reveal their stories. Writers talk of plots, and storylines, in hushed tones. Some writers fear the word "Plot." They fear it because they know Plot is structure. Structure is hard, structure means discipline. Ronald B. Tobias in his book "20 Master Plots," gives two metaphors for a plot. "Let's take the metaphor of the skeleton, since it's one of the more common ones writing instructors use," Tobias says. "Plot is a skeleton that holds together your story. All your details hang on the bones of the plot. You can even debone a plot by reducing it to a description of the story. We read these summaries all the time in reviews and critical analyses of fiction. Screenwriters must be able to pitch their plot in about two minutes if they have any hope of selling it. It's the simplistic answer to the simplistic question, 'What's your story about?'" Tobias goes on to debunk his own metaphor. He says that the problem with the skeleton metaphor for plot is that it misrepresents what plot is and how it works. "Plot isn't a wire hanger that you hang the clothes of a story on. Plot is diffusive; it permeates all the atoms of fiction. It can't be deboned. It isn't a series of I-beams that keeps everything from collapsing. It is a force that saturates every page, paragraph and word." Then, Tobias uses the magical equation. He says that plot is better described by using the metaphor, "Electromagnetism - the force that draws the atoms of the story together. It correlates images, events and people." Once writers realize that plot does reach down into the atomic level of their writing, and that every choice made ultimately affects plot, they will begin to see their story's dynamic quality. After the writer determines what kind of story to relate, a story that will give his characters voice, motive, and intent, the plot is used as a guide to draw into itself all the necessary elements to entertain and inform his readers. Aristotle wrote that there were only two basic plots a writer can use. He gave that answer, because these two plots are so basic that all other stories stem from them. Willa Cather tended to agree with Aristotle when she said, "There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before." I found both Aristotle and Cather's opinions valuable. The two basic types of plot are, Plots of the Mind, and Plots of the Body. Think about it. Good versus evil, Love versus hate, Dante understood this idea. In Dante's Inferno we see only two basic sins in all the levels of Hell. Crimes of violence and force and Crimes of the mind. Interesting, don't you think? If you are serious students, and I believe you are, may I recommend that you seek out Ronald B. Tobias' book on "20 Master Plots," published by Writers Digest Books 1993. This book inspired the opening paragraphs of this article, and provided much of the information related. Hemingway said, "The Sun Also Rises," ------- I say, "The Plot Also Rises." Jones is a published writer & a book critic for The Tulsa World newspaper COPYRIGHT 2006 Patricia A. Jones All Rights Reserved |
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