20 Master Plots (10 page)

A final note: Later in this book I divide plots into action-based and character-based plots. You might ask yourself how I can make those distinctions when I've just said that character and action can't be divided. Well, obviously they can be. The division is based on your focus. If you as a writer are more interested in writing a story about events (action) and create your characters to make the action happen, you're writing an action-based plot. Your focus isn't on people but on events. If, on the other hand, you write a story in which characters are the most important element, you have a character-based plot.

T
he rest of this book is dedicated to twenty master plots and how they are constructed. That may sound odd after my telling you there are only two master plots, as if they had somehow mutated and increased their power by ten. The truth still holds about plots of the mind and plots of the body, and in these twenty are examples of both categories. Beyond the basic two plots, it doesn't matter which number you come up with, whether it's Gozzi's thirty-six plots or Kipling's sixty-nine, or whatever. As I said before, it's only a matter of packaging. I present these twenty basic plots as a way of showing the different types of patterns that emerge from
forda
(stories of the mind) and
forza
(stories of action).

The key word is
pattern
: patterns of action (plot) and patterns of behavior (character), which integrate to make a whole. The master plots that follow are general categories such as revenge, temptation, maturation and love; and from these categories an infinite number of stories can flow. But my primary concern in presenting these plots is to give you a sense of the pattern, not to give you a template so you can trace the design (although you could if you wanted to). As contemporary writers, we are all under a terrific strain to be original, to make the big breakthrough, though no one has any idea what that means. These plot patterns are as old as the hills and in some cases older. But that doesn't

mean they've lost their effectiveness; rather, time proves their worthiness, their importance to us. We use the same plots today that were used in the world's oldest literature. Plot is one of the few aspects in all of art that isn't subject to fashion. We may favor certain types of plots over others during a particular historical period, but the plots themselves don't change.

THE QUEST BEGINS

So what does this quest for originality mean? Find a new plot that no one has used before? Obviously not, because plots are based on common human experience. If you found a plot that had never been used before, you're into an area that is outside the realm of shared human behavior. Originality doesn't apply to the plots themselves but to how we present those plots.

Each plot seems to have its own character, its own flavor. If you're serious about becoming a writer, you must learn from what others have done before you. That's why I give a lot of examples in each of these chapters about master plots. The more you read, the more you'll understand the nature of the pattern. You'll understand where you can bend and shape the plot and where you can't. You'll understand what the reader expects and what the reader rejects. You'll learn the "rules" for each plot, and then learn how to break those rules to put a new spin on the plot. I've never come across a writer, no matter how great (that is, "original"), who didn't admit to getting his ideas from others. Lionel Trilling made it clear: "Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal." (That's odd, because T.S. Eliot said, "The immature poet steals; the mature poet plagiarizes." Who stole from the other?)

Everyone steals to some degree. If Shakespeare, Chaucer and Milton were alive today, they'd spend half their time in court trying to explain where they got their stories. (In those days it was okay to steal another person's story, as long as you made it
better.)
We all have our sources, and we rely heavily on them.

Proceed, then, with confidence. Plots are in the public domain. Use and abuse them at will. Find the plot that most closely fits your story. Don't be afraid to tailor a plot to your specific idea. Don't hold rigid to the ideas. Mold, shape, form. Don't lose sight of the general rhythm that these plots have created over time, however. What are the basic movements in the plot? If you start to cut out movements, you may do more damage than good. These plots have taken centuries to evolve.

The trick in learning how to use plot is not copying but adapting it to the needs of your story. As you read over the master plots, try to match your idea with the basic concepts that these plots employ. It might very well be that your idea fits two, three or even more of these plots.

That means you need to shape your idea more than you already have. This is the first major decision you must make, and it will affect everything else that you do. So ask yourself as you read the outline of each of these major plots, "Does this plot offer me what I need in terms of story and character? How well does my idea fit with the plot?" If it doesn't fit exactly, don't let that bother you; the plots as I've described them are more or less "middle of the road," and they are very flexible. But each plot does have a basic thrust to it, which is the force that will guide your story-telling. Make sure you're comfortable with it. If not, read the others and then decide which fits your idea the best.

Shaping ideas is a constant process for most writers. They don't have everything mapped out absolutely before they begin writing. A writer's blueprint doesn't have to look like an architect's blueprint. You should have an idea and a sense of what you want to do with that idea (plot). But that sense may change one time, a dozen times or a thousand times during the course of the writing. Don't let that unnerve you. If you feel you need a guide to follow, use the master plot outlines in this book to give you a sense of what you need to accomplish in each of the plot's major movements. Say to yourself, "All right, in the first movement, some event should happen that forces my protagonist to start her life over. What should that event be? How can I be convincing?" This book will give you the guidelines; use them and adapt them, but don't get boxed in by them.

Don't feel bad about adapting the plot to your needs. What these plots will show you are their basic patterns. As you write, you'll embellish the pattern—that's a natural part of the process.

T
he quest plot, as the name implies, is the protagonist's search for a person, place or thing, tangible or intangible. It may be the Holy Grail, Valhalla, immortality, Atlantis or The Middle Kingdom. The main character is specifically (as opposed to incidentally) looking for something that she hopes or expects to find that will significantly change her life.

The historical range of this plot is enormous, starting from
Gilgamesh,
the great Babylonian epic, written about four thousand years ago, on to
Don Quixote
and then to
The Grapes of Wrath.
This plot is one of the world's most enduring.

You might be tempted to say that
Raiders of the Lost Ark
and
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
are also quest plots because Indiana Jones is searching for the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail (or whatever the artifact of the day is). Wrong.

Alfred Hitchcock used to talk about the MacGuffin in his films. The MacGuffin is an object that seems to be important to the characters but is of little importance to the director (and consequently of no importance to the viewer). In
North by Northwest
the MacGuffin was the pre-Columbian statue with the microfilm hidden in it; in
Psycho
the MacGuffin was the stolen money; in
Notorious
it was the uranium in the wine bottles. The MacGuffin in
Raiders of the Lost Ark
is the Ark itself, and in
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
it is the Holy Grail. In the quest plot, the

object of the search is everything to the protagonist, not simply an excuse for the action. The character is shaped by his quest and his success or failure at obtaining the object of the search. In Spielberg's film, Indiana Jones is neither better nor worse for wear after his trials and tribulations. His quest has no effect on him as a human being (as much as it can be said he is one). Therefore,
Indiana Jones
isn't a true quest plot.

The quest plot, while very physical, relies heavily on its protagonist. You must have a fleshed-out figure as your main character. Indiana Jones, however enjoyable he is to watch as he gets out of scrape after scrape, lacks any real depth as a human being.

The object of the protagonist's search reflects heavily on his character and usually alters it in some way, thus affecting the character change, which is important by the end. Gilgamesh sets out to find immortality, and what he discovers along the way changes him in fundamental ways; Don Quixote sets out as a madman knight errant to redress the wrongs of the entire world and to find his lady Dulcinea tel Toboso; Dorothy's quest in
The Wizard of Oz
is simpler: she wants to find home; the Joads in
The Grapes of Wrath
are looking for a new life in California; the title character in
Lord Jim
seeks his lost honor; Conway searches for his Shangri-La in
Lost Horizon
; and Jason, of course, wants the Golden Fleece. Take out the object of their quest, and the story falls apart. In every case the hero is much different at the end of the story than at the beginning.

In
Treasure of the Sierra Madre,
Fred C. Dobbs, the character played by Humphrey Bogart, seeks gold in the remote hills of Mexico. Here the quest is obvious: gold. What's not obvious is how his quest changes his character because of his greed.

A hallmark of quest plots is that the action moves around a lot; the protagonists are always on the move, seeking, searching. Gilgamesh not only roams the cedar forests of Babylon but ends up in the underworld; Don Quixote travels all over Spain; Dorothy starts out in Kansas but ends up in Oz; the Joads travel from Oklahoma to the Promised Land of California; Jim of
Lord Jim
goes to sea and wanders from Bombay to Calcutta; and no one knows exactly where Jason went.

In this kind of plot, the protagonist starts at home and often ends at home. Gilgamesh, Don Quixote, Dorothy and Jason all find their way home; the Joads and Jim do not, probably because they don't have a home to which they can return.

The object of this journey, other than the quest, is wisdom. All the characters in these stories learn something about the world and about themselves. Sometimes they return heroes, wiser for their journey; sometimes they return disillusioned and sick. Jason gets the Golden Fleece
and
the girl, and Dorothy and Toto get back to Kansas. But Don Quixote, abused for all his troubles, gives up and goes home, repudiating everything. Gilgamesh learns to his dismay that death is a bummer after all. The reality of California doesn't exactly please the Joads, either. But in each case there is a lesson to be learned, a lesson that shapes the protagonist.

These stories, by nature, are episodic. The protagonist may start at home, but she'll go from place to place in search of the object of her desire, encountering a variety of events along the way. These events should relate in some way to accomplishing the final goal. The protagonist must ask directions, find and solve clues and pay dues before getting the price of admission.