Plot (narrative)

“ The plot, the characters, the setting of a story which is to live, must have the vividness of real experience. This does not mean that the creator of the story must have actually experienced the plot, the people, and the pictures which together make up his tale—they may be the product of actual experience or of imagination—but it does mean that while he is putting these elements together and creating his narrative he must realize as though it were actual experience the incident of his plot with the characters and in the atmosphere of his creation. ”

“ 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? ”

“ As to that poetic imitation which is narrative in form and employs a single meter, the plot manifestly ought, as in a tragedy, to be constructed on dramatic principles. It should have for its subject a single action, whole and complete, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It will thus resemble a living organism in all its unity, and produce the pleasure proper to it. ”

“ Character seen in action is always his prepossession; plot is naught save as it exhibits this. The souls of men and women are his quarry, and the test of a civilization the degree in which it has developed the mind for an enlightened control over the emotions and the bodily appetites. Neither does this mean, as with Henry James, the disappearance of plot: a healthy objectivity of narrative framework is preserved ”

“ A plot implies action—that is, something must [46] happen; at the conclusion of the story the characters must be differently situated, and usually differently related one to another, from what they were at the beginning. The event need not be tragic, or even serious; but it must be of sufficient importance, novelty and interest to justify its relation in narrative form. In general the plot of a short story involves an incident or a minor crisis in a human life, rather than the supreme crisis which makes or mars a man for good. ”

“ The main plot, as a rule deceptively simple, is complicated from first to last by enormous and intricate ramifications of secondary actions; a characteristic due to the fact that every fresh individual introduced, whether in the central narrative, or in some excrescence from it, persists in recounting his own adventures at tremendous length. Thus we have story within story, wheel within wheel, 136till the reader completely loses his hold upon the tangled threads of intrigue, and collapses into a condition of dazed despair. ”

“ This central situation or episode or incident constitutes, in its working out, the plot; for the plot must not only have a crisis growing out of a tie-up or crossroads or complication, but the very essence of the plot will consist in the resolution or untying or denouement of the complication.
Naturally, the word plot will suggest to many a high degree of complexity; but this is by no means necessary in order to establish the claims of a fictitious narrative to being a short-story. Indeed, some of the best short-stories [Pg xxvi] are based upon a very slender complication ”

“ 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. ”

“ Write out the story—rapidly, fluently, and not too critically—following the second or narrative-order synopsis. Change incidents and plot whenever the developing process seems to suggest such change, never being bound by any previous design. If the development suddenly reveals new opportunities for dramatic effect or vivid story telling, add whatever is thought advantageous—going back and reconciling the early parts to the new plan. ”

“ Taking these themes in turn students should be required to introduce plot incidents that complicate the simple happenings and divert the straightforward trend of the narrative. Now that the stories are well developed in their descriptions, expositions, and plot interests they should be tested for their emotional effects. Students should go through their themes, and by making the proper changes give in some cases a humorous and in others a pathetic or tragic effect. ”

“ The narrative may take on a high degree of complexity, involving many well-differentiated characters and a well-developed art of conversation, and in some instances, especially in revenge, trickster, or recognition motives, approaching plot tales in our sense of the word. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. ”

“ 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 Succession of Incidents Required.—A series of unconnected happenings may be interesting merely from the unexpectedness—or the hurry and movement of the events, but ordinarily a story gains greatly in its appeal to the reader through having its separate incidents developed in some sort of organic unity. The handling of incidents for a definite effect gives what we call plot. A plot should work steadily forward to the end or dénouement, and should yet conceal that end in order that interest may be maintained to the close. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To recapitulate, a plot is a problem of human life brought to a fitting and convincing solution, and consists of a series of events which displays the fact and result of a conflict between opposing forces, spiritual and material, actuating and affecting men and women. Therefore the chief characteristic of a plot is its dramatic value. The definition may be turned to use not so much in the discovery of plots as in appraising their fictional value, their power to arouse and hold a reader's interest, after they have been found or invented. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The true method for the making of a plot is the development of what may be called a plot-germ. Take two or three characters, strongly individualized morally and mentally, place them in a strong situation and let them develop.... There are hundreds of these plot-germs in our every-day life, conversation and newspaper reading, and the slightest change in the character at starting will give a wide difference in ending.... ”

“ And a plot is pronounced good in proportion as, without violating truth to nature, it brings the leading characters into situations of extreme danger or distress, from which there seems no possible exit, and in which the characters themselves may have fullest opportunity to display and ripen their individual excellences. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The average plot builder makes the mistake of looking upon plot material as ready-made plots. He thus confuses plot germ (or material) with complete plot. Plot germs lie about us by the score; complete plots are hidden in the most evasive creases of our imaginative genius. The plot germ is merely an item of suggestive plot material, which may be lost sight of entirely in the search for the logical incidents to complete the plot that is eventually led up to. ”

“ The manner in which a good story grows under the hand is so remarkable, that no tropic vegetation can show the like of it. For, consider, when you have got your germ—the mere idea, not half a dozen lines perhaps—which is to form your plot, how small a thing it is compared with, say, the thousand pages which it has to occupy in the three-volume novel! Yet to the story-teller the germ is everything. ”

“ The plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy; Character holds the second place. ”

“ Hence, the Plot is the imitation of the action—for by plot I here mean the arrangement of the incidents. By Character I mean that in virtue of which we ascribe certain qualities to the agents. Thought is required wherever a statement is proved, or, it may be, a general truth enunciated. Every Tragedy, therefore, must have six parts, which parts determine its quality—namely, Plot, Character, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, Song. Two of the parts constitute the medium of imitation, one the manner, and three the objects of imitation. ”

“ From this collection of 104 tales he concludes that: "In the tales of a people those incidents of the everyday life that are of importance to them will appear either incidentally or as the basis of a plot. Most of the reference to the mode of life of the people will be an accurate reflection of their habits. The development of the plot of the story, further-more, will on the whole exhibit clearly what is considered right and what wrong." ”

“ It is so in all the plays, or in all but all, and very commonly the sub-plot is the main plot working itself out in more ordinary men and women, and so doubly calling up before us the image of multitude. ”

“ A plot is a chain of events influencing and influenced by character, and by character is meant not persons but traits. In some story, let us say, the avarice of one man brings him into conflict with another, also impelled by avarice. The conflict, of course, is not between two disembodied attributes, but between two persons, and the writer of such a story must individualize them. He should endeavor to give a reader an idea of how they look, by describing them, and of how they talk, by individualizing their speech. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The task is infinitely more difficult and delicate than to take a Sinbad the Sailor or a Cinderella through a course of happenings without essential relation to the nature of either person, who is, in each case, a mere human focal point for the events to be precipitated upon. Accordingly, this book concentrates upon the fiction of plot, or story, rather than the fiction without plot, or tale. The technique of the fiction of plot comprehends and includes the technique of the tale, which could be ignored here without loss. ”