One of the things that seems to confuse a lot of people about plot, especially at the start of a story, is that they’re misidentifying what they have to hand, what they want to do, and how to get from one to another. What they have is an idea, a story-seed, not a complete story (much less a complete plot).
“Andromeda is tied to a rock and a sea monster is coming to eat her!”
This is not a plot. It’s a situation. It’s a dramatic situation with lots of possibilities, but it’s still just a situation.
“I want to write a book about making really bad choices because your family is encouraging/pushing you to do something you don’t want.”
Pretty obviously, this is a thematic idea rather than a plot. At least, it’s obvious to me.
“Andromeda is a smart-mouthed girl from the wrong side of the tracks, with lots of street-smarts but not as much confidence as she sounds like.”
This is a character. Few people mistake this for a plot, unless it’s combined with something else:
“Andromeda is a smart-mouthed girl who was adopted by the King and Queen.”
This is character plus backstory. Still not a plot, though desperate writers often latch onto “adopted by the King and Queen” and try to make that into a plot instead of backstory. Sometimes, this works very well; other times, there’s not enough meat there yet.
“Andromeda is a smart-mouthed girl, adopted by the King, who is tied to a rock with a sea monster coming to eat her.”
Nope, not a plot. Character plus backstory plus situation.
“Andromeda is tied to a rock and Perseus rescues her from being eaten by a sea monster!”
Once again, not a plot. It’s an event or an incident. This is one of the hardest for many people to recognize as not-a-plot, because something is happening — something dramatic and with lots of action. But action alone is not plot. Not even if you make Perseus the main character instead of Andromeda.
Let me repeat that: action alone is not plot. This is hard for some people to remember, because so many movies and TV shows have action-oriented plots, and there are so many action-adventure novels around, that “action” has gotten strongly identified with “plot” in the minds of many people (readers and writers alike).
The thing that makes all of these starting places confusing is that each of these elements could be used in a plot – as the start of a scene, as a set-piece, as a dramatic opening or climax, as background. How they get used will depend on the writer and the kind of story the writer wants to write…and to a lesser extent on which idea-cum-story-seed the writer is starting out with.
Starting with theme or character or a general idea like “I want to retell a famous myth” or “I want to write a particular type of story (e.g., action/adventure or character-centered or murder mystery or family saga) can be a lot more work than starting from a situation or an incident, because you have less to go on to begin with. You have your choice of millions of stories about bad choices or streetwise smartmouths or murders; you have thousands of folk and fairy tales you can pick from. On the other hand, if you have a theme, character, or story type in mind, it can be a lot easier to throw out possibilities and alternatives that don’t work, because you have more to judge by than “that doesn’t feel right.” It can also be easier to take a possibility that looks as if it won’t work, but that really is appealing, and figure out what it needs to make it work.
Starting with a situation or an incident seems to be really common for plot-centered writers, but developing the situation/incident into an actual plot is often not nearly as easy as one might assume. This is especially true when the writer assumes that because they started with the idea “Andromeda is about to be eaten by a sea monster,” that event is perforce the opening of the story. It might be, but usually the super-dramatic rescue scene makes a better climax or mid-story turning point than it does an opening. The rescue will have a lot more emotional impact if the readers have had a chance to get to know Andromeda (or possibly the sea monster) and start to sympathize with her/its situation.
Whether the incident belongs at the beginning of the story, in the middle, or at the end will also depend on the kind of story the writer wants to write. Ideas do not always match up perfectly with a writer’s preferences. When the action-adventure writer’s backbrain presents him/her with a theme or character, or the character-centered writer’s produces an action situation, the writer generally has two choices: either assume that the backbrain has a reason for wanting them to write this type of story, grit their teeth, and write it the way it has presented itself, or else work out a way to develop the intriguing but uncongenial idea into something more like the kind of thing the writer likes writing.
For instance, a writer starts with Andromeda tied to the rock, about to be eaten. That writer wants to write happy-ending action stories with Andromeda as the main character, but Andromeda has no agency in this situation; all she can do is wait to be rescued by Perseus. This makes a terrible match-up if the rescue is the end of the story…but if the writer opens this way, they can make Andromeda’s helplessness in this situation into her motivation for learning swordcraft or magic or Houdini-esque escape techniques (so that she will never, ever be in that situation again), which in turn develops her into the kind of character who, over the rest of the story, can have all sorts of adventures, culminating perhaps in rescuing somebody else from a sea monster.
I think next time I’m going to talk more specifically about the process I go through when developing possible plots from one or more of the kinds of story-seeds.
Oh, and Points of Departure, the collection of Liavek stories that Pamela and I are doing as an ebook, is now available for PRE-ORDER. It’s supposed to go live in May; I’ll post a specific date when I have it.
So, is “Having been rescued from being eaten by a sea monster, Andromeda learns swordcraft and studies sea monster psychology, and ultimately rescues the crown prince from a sea monster” a plot, then? (I clearly recognized all those not-a-plot things as not plots (and many of them very much the way I get ideas), but I found myself flailing a bit at just what would qualify as a plot.)
Yes, I too would like to see a synopsis involving Andromeda that is a plot, in order to compare and contrast it to all the not-a-plot examples.
I’m looking forward to more details on Ms. Wrede’s plot development process!
Meanwhile…clicking over to Amazon to hit that pre-order button!
Thirded. I very much would like to see a “this is a plot” example to compare and contrast.
“Andromeda is tied to a rock and Perseus rescues her from the sea monster” feels to me like almost-a-plot, or half-a-plot (with a piece missing). OTOH, I also have a feeling that I’m missing something here about what “plot” means.
I ought to dig out the story that starts with the heroine being rescued from the sea serpent. . . it does go on from there. . . .
I’ll admit, I had a hard time not calling it a plot when you had the action one with Perseus in the mix. At the same time, I can see something is still missing. Like a character arc and growth.
With what I’m working on currently, I started with a situation (someone receives a letter meant for someone else) and then came up with a theme from there (let’s make it a retelling of X), in order to eventually come up with a plot. Even with a plot all worked out though, it’s hard to think of each situation that will move the plot along. I know what has to happen to each character, but not HOW to make it happen. (Character A has to change Character B, but how? etc.)
The more books I write, the more I realize how tricky it all is. With my first book, I just dove in. Now, with my fifth, I’m grasping all these threads wondering how on earth I’m going to make it all work.
Writing prompt: Rewrite the Perseus/Andromeda story from the POV of the sea monster.
I might try that. It sounds like fun.
It does sound like fun.
I’m really attracted to the story in which we start with Andromeda tied to the rock and dependent on others and then follow her as she learns how to cope with marriage to Perseus – who is NOT a good husband – and eventually realizes that she doesn’t owe him the rest of her life just because he saved her. The book ends with her leaving Perseus and excited that SHE will make the choices for herself as her future unfolds – that never again will she allow others so much power over her.
I like that one, too, but then I am frequently drawn to “Man (or Woman) Learns Lesson” plots.
I have the perhaps idiosyncratic habit of viewing plot as how you got the reader over the terrain of the story, in the sense of route or track.
A given story-terrain has flat bits, and steep bits, and craggy awful don’t-go-there bits, and the places with the good views and the places where the seep from the steep rocks drips cold on your head and you can’t see a thing. But your version of the story doesn’t, can’t, visit all of those places, and there isn’t an inherently fixed order. Those choices location and order are all plot.
(How you present the view is character. 🙂
So in an Andromeda story, if we start with the chained-to-the-rock part, the plot is the route from the rock to wherever Andromeda winds up, in much the same way Cinderella can be seen as an illicit journey to the palace being repeated as a licit journey.
You can do that as two end points and nothing much in between, or you can provide heaps and stacks of detail about how the individual stages of the journey take place, but it’s still all the same basic plot.
Graydon! It is so good to see you.
You think in metaphor. I like this one a lot, but it does leave out one of the things I think is essential to plot, and that’s the why, from the character’s viewpoint. The author has reasons for visiting various places, but for a plot to hang together, the character has to have some logic behind the route they take from where they start to where they end up. There also has to be a place where Andromeda or Cinderella end up, which is inherent in the metaphor but still worth mentioning, I think.
Hi! Good to see you, too!
I agree that why from the character perspective is absolutely essential, but I have trouble considering it plot. (Which is not to say I think I know for sure what it it is.)
There are (for example) all those operas made out of Shakespeare plays where the plot is widely alleged to be the same, and yet “No one but a barbarian or a Frenchman would have dared to make such a lamentable burlesque of so tragic a theme as Hamlet.”
Jim Butcher wrote:
The story skeleton is a description of the main plot of your book, broken down into its simplest elements. It’s two sentences long. Neither sentence is particularly long. Your plot needs to fit into that framework, or it’s going to be too complicated for the average newbie writer to handle well.
WHEN SOMETHING HAPPENS, YOUR PROTAGONIST PURSUES A GOAL. But will he succeed when ANTAGONIST PROVIDES OPPOSITION?
So, having a go (and making some assumptions) the Andromeda story skeleton might be written like this:
When she awakens to find herself tied to a rock, Andromeda must escape her bonds and find the answers as to why she was offered as a sacrifice to the sea monster. But will she succeed when the gods seek to prevent her learning the truth about her heritage?
Now I’m a complete nepophyte about this, but I think I could hang a story on that skeleton. I’m curious as to what people think about Jim’s advice; would you count that as a valid plot description? Note, he is stating this is an aid for newbie writers, not experienced professionals like our esteemed host. 🙂
That’s a great recipe for a back-blurb, and it’s a perfectly reasonable writing prompt. It will probably work very well for the particular subset of writers who want to answer this sort of question. I don’t think it’s a plot, though, and I especially don’t think it is THE plot (which of course neither you nor Jim claimed) that will work for all new writers. I don’t think it would ever have worked for me, not without twisting either my plot or the question completely out of shape.