Plot (intrigue)

“ Murders, death in all its guises, the reduction and sacking of cities, all must be to us just such a spectacle as the changing scenes of a play; all is but the varied incident of a plot, costume on and off, acted grief and lament. ”

“ When circumstances cross the ruling passion, when rocks lie in the way and winds are contrary, then things happen, characters emerge, slight events are significant, mere adventures are transformed into a real plot. ”

“ In the first place, we must find something to write about; some condition, experience or deed that is worthy of a plot, a story or a play. As we consider this or that item of plot material, in our search for a plot germ, we pause and ask of it: To what end? To what good? The moment we discern the culmination of a big moment, or the performance of a decisive action, or the accomplishment of a great deed, we have found our plot germ. This is not the beginning of our play, but its culmination, or climax. ”

“ A bad plot, on the other hand, is simply a row of stakes, with a character impaled on each—characters who would have liked to live, but came to untimely grief; who started bravely, but fell on these stakes, placed beforehand in a row, and were transfixed one by one, while their ghosts stride on, squeaking and gibbering, through the play. ”

“ But mere plot is the very least merit of this marvellously effective play. The incidents and developments are those of a supreme master, so that the whole forms one of the most important contributions of the present age not only to drama, but to literature in general. ”

“ At this point becomes apparent how much that grossly abused word "plot" stands for. Broadly, a plot is a dramatic problem, and a dramatic problem results from the opposition of man and man, the opposition of man and nature, or conflict within a single man. ”

“ Technically, the plot is the underlying plan “of which no part can be removed without ruin to the whole”; it is the development of the struggle or conflict which every “short-story” possesses in common with the drama.
What in “The Excursion” is the struggle? What part does the dialogue between the two sisters play in the revelation of the struggle? If the struggle were made dominant, what lamentable result would follow for the “situation” value of the whole narrative? Is there a hint near the conclusion that the struggle may have an outcome? ”

“ The plot, as a rule, is so arranged that at a certain point an unforeseen change takes place; a surprise which, when the reader looks back, always proves to have had a firm and carefully prepared foundation in what went before. ”

“ One Chance in a Hundred.
Plot material is the stuff that souls are made of; it is the composition from which careers are moulded; it is sparks from the forge of nobility and salt distilled from the tears of humanity. ”

“ Life is the drama here to-day
⁠And Death the villain of the plot.
It is a realistic play.
⁠Shall it end well or shall it not?
The hero? Oh, the hero's part
⁠Is vacant—to be played by you.
Then act it well! An orphan's heart
⁠May beat the lighter if you do. ”

“ Starting from the notion of pattern as a fundamental idea we have seen how Plot presents trains of events in human life taking form and shape as a crime and its nemesis, an oracle and its fulfilment, the rise and fall of an individual, or even as simply a story. The main plot exhibits the Problem form of dramatic action.The particular form of action underlying the main plot of King Lear is different from any we have yet noticed. ”

“ You know how, in the old novel, only what is obviously essential to the plot or the development of character is selected. But a man, crossing a street to commit a murder, does not continuously think of the murder. ”

“ The plot, although not an involved one, hides enough mystery to lend the spice of the unknown to the reader's zest, and the simple and natural dénouement emphasizes the high moral ethics of the story, and throws into strong relief the deep human sentiments that dominate the tale. ”

“ The essential point of fictional narration is plot, which may be defined as a sequence of incidents designed to awaken the reader's interest and curiosity as to the result. Plots may be simple or complex; but suspense, and climactic progress from one incident to another, are essential. ”

“ And now it may be worth while once more to sum up what I have said about the elements of plot—of which the skeleton of every playlet must be made up:
A mere sequence of events is not a plot; to become a plot there must develop a crisis or entanglement due to a conflict of the characters' wills; the entanglement must be of such importance that when it is untangled the characters will be in a different relation to each other—changed in themselves by the crisis. A plot is divided into three parts: a Beginning, a Middle and an Ending. ”

“ Pageantry and the unrelated event became stale, in comparison with the spectacle of life itself, and then plot was found, a method of isolating a single one of life's strands, and, by showing it in high relief, lending it an added dignity and appeal. ”

“ It is accorded, and of necessity, by the people in a drama: how necessary is it in a novel?
Let us define a plot. We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. "The king died and then the queen died," is a story. "The king died, and then the queen died of grief" is a plot. The time-sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it. ”

“ It appears to be the case because it is usual to regard the plot of a story as the entire mechanical arrangement of the fiction, including the nature and order of the situations, which is a false view of plot. ”

“ Having discovered the germ of a plot, how are we going to develop it into a full grown, vigorous, structure? What is the prime necessity? What magic touch infuses life and strength into the bare idea we possess and makes of it something that will hold the interest of others, that will entertain them?
Speaking generally, and leaving to later discussion the narrower by-ways and paths of plot development, we may set down as the primary essential of a plot the basic element—struggle. ”

“ If you are so bold as to venture a blowing-up, look closely to it! for the plot lies deadly deep, and 'twill be between your legs before you be aware of it.—But of all things have a care of putting it in your pocket, for fear it takes fire, or runs away with your breeches. ”

“ Again, Tragedy is the imitation of an action; and an action implies personal agents, who necessarily possess certain distinctive qualities both of character and thought; for it is by these that we qualify actions themselves, and these—thought and character—are the two natural causes from which actions spring, and on actions again all success or failure depends. Hence, the Plot is the imitation of the action—for by plot I here mean the arrangement of the incidents. ”

“ And again: the most powerful elements of attraction in Tragedy, the Peripeties and Discoveries, are parts of the Plot. A further proof is in the fact that beginners succeed earlier with the Diction and Characters than with the construction of a story; and the same may be said of nearly all the early dramatists. We maintain, therefore, that the first essential, the life and soul, so to speak, of Tragedy is the Plot ”

“ Their adventures, their illusions, their violence, their despair, their achievements, seem upon a hundred occasions to centre round particular men or certain conspicuous actions, in such a fashion that those men and these actions fit themselves into a story, the plot and interest of which absorb the reader. ”

“ Their merit, such as it is, consists principally in their structure as stories—a merit, I am disposed to think, which, when even at the best, is of no high order. I have observed that there is more of plot and counter-plot in our commonest novels and lowest kind of plays, than in the tales and dramas of our best writers ”

“ To develop a tale, a fiction, long or short, without a plot, only direct narrative and descriptive writing is requisite; it is the plot-element of a fiction, with all its implications as to personality, that forces the writer of a story—a fiction with a plot—to weave together cunningly each strand of his matter, narrative, exposition, dialogue, description, that the whole pattern may show fictionally real people doing in a fictionally real world what one might naturally expect from their natures and the circumstances of their lives. ”

“ There is, indeed, an astonishing vitality and movement throughout the work, and, elaborate though the plot is, with all varieties and all contrasts of people and conditions, with constant shiftings of the scene, the story yet moves, and moves the interest of the reader too, along the rapid current of events towards the powerful culmination. ”

“ Plot, incident, and description are being sacrificed more and more to the dissection of peculiar and abnormal types of character, and the story is too often lost in physiological details or psychological studies. ”

“ It is the plot that furnishes excitement, and for perhaps the majority of readers constitutes the chief interest. In some stories the plot lies upon the surface all the time, and everything is made subservient to the purpose of holding interest, keeping up excitement and mystifying the reader until the climax is reached. Thrilling detective stories of the poorer class, exciting love stories and the cheap juvenile tales of Indian fighting, with heroines in dire distress and heroes struggling to rescue them, are illustrations of this type. ”

“ As has been said—and emphasis is not out of place—a plot is a problem. Problem, in this connection, means conflict between opposing forces, which gives the various events and situations of a story any dramatic value they may possess. It follows that there are three basic plot-themes, conflict between man and his environment or Nature, conflict between man and man, and conflict between opposed traits in the same man. It will be profitable for the writer to bear this in mind when combing the world for his story. ”

“ We now come to that largest and most various class of plays, which I have called dramas of situation, and which consist in successions of scenes, brought together with less connection than that of a proper plot, for the purpose of producing affecting pictures of human sorrow or awful pictures of the tyranny of fate. ”

“ The demand for a good plot, not unfrequently heard, commonly signifies: “Tickle my sensations by stuffing the play with arbitrary adventures, so that I need not be troubled to take the characters seriously. ”

“ Anything like a regular plot—the absence of which has often been deplored or excused—would have been for this end not merely a superfluity but a mistake, as likely to divert the attention and perhaps even enlist some sympathy for the heroes. ”

“ Having grasped the plot, the essence of the story, and all its implications, and having realized the individual people who alone can present it convincingly, scrutinize closely the events of the story, as they first were conceived, to discover whether their rearrangement or entire change may not result in a combination presenting the plot more adequately and more forcefully than the combination that first suggested the plot. ”

“ The first cause was what seems to me a mistaken theory about plots in fiction, which she had adopted since writing the Illustrations. She now fancied that a perfect plot must be taken from life, forgetting that we none of us know the whole plot of the existence of any other creature than ourselves, and that the psychological insight of the gifted novelist is displayed in arguing from what is known to what is unknown, and in combining the primary elements of human character into their necessary consequences in act and feeling. ”

“ Little tragedies, romances and dramas are constantly happening in the circles of people with whom we come in daily contact—therein lies danger, however. More than a mere change of scene or character is necessary. The actual, intimate happening must form, if employed in any degree, but a suggestive plot germ, or only an episode in an entirely new story. The best way to avoid disaster in this relation is to see to it that the development and elaboration of your resultant plot is not the same as that of the incident upon which it was based. ”

“ It is based upon a plot that awakens curiosity and keeps it alive throughout. The hero and heroine are marked with individuality, the love-passages are finely drawn, and the story developed with judgment.”—The Civil Service Gazette. ”

“ This is the plot; but to make a character speak, act, rave, love, live, die, through a whole lifetime of events, even as the readers feel convinced he must have acted, must have lived and died, this demands at least so much experience of a somewhat similar nature as may serve for a base to one's imagination, a reserve of certainty and reassurance on which to draw in times of perplexity and doubt. ”

“ The novel, despite enormous length, a highly artificial plot bolstered up by opportune coincidences, and an atmosphere of homiletic pseudo-science designed to please the matter-of-fact and purposeful Victorian reader, is exceedingly effective as a narrative; evoking instantaneous and unflagging interest, and furnishing many potent—if somewhat melodramatic—tableaux and climaxes. ”

“ The plot, without outraging probability by its extravagance, is constructed with a good deal of ingenuity, and sustains the interest of the most hardened novel-reader through its spirited details to the final happy denouement. ”

“ The main plot is often stifled by the abundance of incidents, and there is an appearance of mechanism in the sudden alternations of hope and fear, success and failure, which chase each other in rapid succession through the pages. ”

“ When however this mutual relation of all the parts is looked at by itself, as an abstract interest of design, the human life being no more than the material to which this design is applied, then we get the interest of Plot. So defined, I hope Plot is sufficiently removed from the vulgar conception of it as sensational mystery, which has done so much to lower this element of dramatic effect in the eyes of literary students. ”