Creative Writing GE2405 EN 2322 WEEK 3: Plot, Dialogue

PLOT

What is considered the plot of a story?

Events that occur in the narrative.

The CONFLICT in the story.

CONFLICT in life is a negative thing, but in fiction, it is drama, comedy, tragedy.

CONFLICT is your characters getting into some kind of trouble.

PLOT/CONFLICT“Only trouble is interesting” – Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction

In life, nice things can happen, without conflict, without problems, without trouble. But there would be no story to it.

A shopping excursion can be uneventful – take the MTR, go to a favourite mall, get a good discount, come home and show your purchases to friends and family. A nice day – BUT NO STORY.

PLOT/CONFLICT

But if you go shopping, and realise at the counter your credit card has expired, and while you don’t know what to do, your old boss from a previous job you hate is standing behind you and recognises you, and pays for your expensive dress with a fake smile, and by the time you get to dinner with some friends visiting elsewhere, the old boss has mentioned the incident on Facebook and all your friends know about it, and you think they are secretly making fun of you, and the cute guy who is invited to the party is there and you’re hoping he hasn’t heard about this, and he says hi and introduces himself, and you discover he is your old boss’s cousin now temporarily staying with her.

PLOT/CONFLICT

THAT IS A STORY.

PLOT/CONFLICT

You could bring up that day of shopping to your friends five years from now, with all these details, and they will go – “oh my goodness what a thing to happen”.

Charles Baxter, Burning Down the House:

“Say what you will about it, Hell is story-friendly. If you want a compelling story, put your protagonist among the damned. The mechanisms of hell are nicely attuned to the mechanisms of narrative. Not so the pleasures of Paradise. Paradise is not a story. It’s about what happens when the stories are over.”

PLOT/CONFLICT

Where does Plot come from?

Good stories have:Character that desires something

Dangers that prevent the desire from being fulfilled

Drama = desire + danger

Desire as basis of Plot

“Fiction is the art form of human yearning. That is absolutely essential to any work of fictional narrative art – a character who yearns. And that is not the same as a character who simply has problems…The yearning is also the thing that generates what we call plot, because the elements of the plot come from thwarted or blocked or challenged attempts to fulfill that yearning.” – ROBERT OLEN BUTLER

Desire as basis of Plot

Writing exercise – pick a character you like, out of the ones you have in your journal, or from class exercises.

Jot down in your journalWhat would they want most?

How difficult will it be for them to get it?

What if they get it, and realise it’s not actually what they wanted?

Desire in Plot

*WARNING* - the great dangers in literature are not necessarily spectacular.

Good drama doesn’t have to be: murders, chase scenes, crashes, vampires – things that are very Hollywood, a bit extreme.

The interesting obstacles to human desires are gentler, subtler, closer than we think: our bodies, our personalities, friends, lovers, families.

“More passion is destroyed at the breakfast table than in a time warp” – Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction.

PLOT – HOWWe have earlier established that Character performing Action can give rise to Plot – ie what a particularcharacter does can show us what’s happening.

But what is the Order in which these things occur? What comes after what? How, and why?

John L’Heureux says – “a story is about a single moment in a character’s life that culminates in a defining choice after which nothing will be the same again.”

In other words, the plot of the story is about the character’s journey, the arc a character undergoes, whereby a transformation occurs. The character in the beginning of the story is slightly different to the character at the end of the story.

PLOT: Story ArcSo HOW does one plot? – by finding the decision points that lead to the character’s choices, leading to the final choice, and choosing the best scenes through which to dramatise them.

The plot is the territory on which the war of the story is being fought. It involves a set-up, rising action, climax, and denoument.

Mel McKee – 4 imperatives for writing plot, similar to negotiating territory:

i. Get your fighters fighting

Ii. Have something at stake – that is worth fighting over.

Iii. Have the fight dive into a series of battles (or scenes) with the last one being the biggest and most dangerous of them all.

Iv. Have a walking away from the fight.

PLOT: Story Arc

Example: William Carlos Williams’s The Use of Force

‘Territory’ – the girl’s mouth.

What’s the set-up? (getting the fight up)

What’s the rising action? (stakes – what’s worth fighting over)

What’s the climax? (the battle/biggest scene)

What’s the denoument? (the walk away)

PLOT: Story Arc

Note: Good stories are complex stories.

Complex stories don’t have clear cut outcomes – even if the character achieves everything they desire in the story, there might be something else that’s still lacking.

Hamlet: has to kill Claudius, his father’s murderer. He achieves it in the end, but at the cost of the lives of almost everyone in the play, including his own life.

A complex story: The character achieves his desire by losing something else.

PLOT: Story ArcThe Chessmen – why such a title? It’s not about people actually sitting around playing chess.

What happens? Does a character achieve his desire?

Is it worth achieving by the end of it?

In gaining, there is loss. Vice versa.

The contradictive effect – that a desire is never cleanly achieved, without repercussions – is what makes the story beautiful.

Makes story RESONANT

The ChessmenHow is the ending of the story foreshadowed?

Is George Mural to blame for Nakagawa’s plight?

How does author elicit sympathy for Nakagawa? (who is main character vs who is narrator?)

Trace the sequence of cause and effect incidents in the story. Identify the climax. What starts the chain of events?

Introduction of George? The season? Hatayama’s prediction of laying off someone?

PLOT: Story Arc

Story complexity: John L’Heureux – What does my character win by losing his struggle, or lose by winning?

CAUSALITY – chain of events where certain occurrences in one part of the story have consequences in another part of the story.

CONCLUSION

Plot is character’s action, where character desires and desire is thwarted

The events in plot are not random – causality, foreshadowing.

Character changes from beginning of story to its end.