20 Master Plots (25 page)

The antagonist is often a victim. It's easy to see how she would be a victim for a vampire or a wolfman, but it's harder to understand in other cases. The princess in "Frog King," for instance, resists the frog every step of the way. Her father forces her to comply with the frog's wishes. Beauty isn't a volunteer, either. She goes to the Beast's castle because she is honor-bound to do so by her father. Given a choice, both protagonists would rather be somewhere else.

But fate has cast them together. The first dramatic phase begins the process toward release, but as much as the protagonist wishes to be released, he can do nothing to explain or hurry the process. That's an implicit law of the curse. The frog can't explain and say, "If you sleep with me for three nights, I'll turn into a hunk." Likewise, the Beast can't say, "I'm really rich and handsome and if you would give me a kiss, I'll prove it."

Usually the antagonist is repulsed by the metamorph. She wants out. But she remains a prisoner, either bound physically (by walls of thorns or wild beasts) or mentally (by her promise to remain). And almost always the antagonist at least in some small way falls under the spell of the metamorph. The vampire has immense sexual appeal. The wolfman, one of the few who can explain his curse (always to people who don't believe him), always gains sympathy from his victims, who see him as a deeply troubled man. The princess despises the frog, period. She sees no redeeming value in his green self at all. The Beauty, however, is immediately attracted to certain human (and inhuman) attributes in the Beast.

By the end of the first dramatic phase, however, the curse is evident, and the antagonist has felt the effects of it. It may be gruesome (the vampire sucking her blood), it may be comic (the frog arrives for dinner at the castle), or it may be eerie (Beauty arrives in the kingdom of the Beast, but he is nowhere present). There is a sense, however, that the antagonist is either directly or indirectly a captive of the metamorph.

The second dramatic phase concentrates on the nature of the evolving relationship between the metamorph and the antagonist. The antagonist continues to resist but her will softens, either out of pity, fear or control by the metamorph. At the same time, the antagonist starts to establish control over the metamorph, by virtue of her beauty, kindness or knowledge. The motion of the two characters is toward each other; it is the beginning of love, if it is possible within the terms of the curse. The victim may still be horrified (as in the case of the vampire's victim and the princess in "Frog King"), but the metamorph is infatuated.

The second dramatic phase may have the usual number of complications, but they all center around things such as escape (the antagonist may have the chance to leave and either takes it and is recaptured or doesn't take it at all). The metamorph, who may have what the antagonist considers a vile (animal) side, exhibits the full range of his animalness. He may also exhibit unanimal behavior, such as tenderness, affection and a concern for her well-being. The couple are moving toward fulfilling the terms of the release, although the reader is rarely aware of that. But the initial revulsion of the antagonist gives way slowly toward a variety of feelings, from pity to the beginnings of love.

By the third dramatic phase, the terms of the release reach a critical stage. The time has come for the partners to achieve what fate has intended. This usually requires an incident that acts as the final catalyst for the metamorph's physical change—the culmination of all the other action: what it has been leading toward.

In the case of "Frog King," the princess is so fed up with the insistent frog (who keeps asking her to kiss him) that she picks it up and throws it full force against the wall. When he hits the wall, presto, a beautiful prince appears. (You
must
read Bruno Bettelheim's explanation of this act in
The Uses of Enchantment,
it's almost as entertaining as the story itself. He insists this act of violence is in fact an act of love.) In "Beauty and the Beast," the Beast lies dying, and it's only Beauty's declaration of love that brings him back from death and changes him into a prince.

In the cases where death is the release, the terms are also fulfilled. Since love cannot remedy the curse, the antagonist or the antagonist's agent must perform the proper ritual to ensure release for the metamorph. The metamorph may die, but it's still a relief to be free from the curse.

The third phase usually gives us the explanations for the curse and its causes.

This plot combines the grotesque with the curative power of love, and its appeal is as old as literature itself.

CHECKLIST

As you write, keep in mind these points:

1. The metamorphosis is usually the result of a curse.

2. The cure for the curse is generally love.

3. The forms of love include love of parent for a child, a woman

for a man (or vice versa), people for each other, or for the love of God.

4. The metamorph is usually cast as the protagonist.

5. The point of the plot is to show the process of transformation back to humanity.

6. Metamorphosis is a character plot; consequently, we care more about the nature of the metamorph than his actions.

7. The metamorph is an innately sad character.

8. The metamorph's life is usually bound by rituals and prohibitions.

9. The metamorph usually wants to find a way out of his predicament.

10. There is usually a way out of that predicament, which is called release.

11. The terms of the release are almost always carried out by the antagonist.

12. If the curse can be reversed by the antagonist performing certain acts, the protagonist cannot either hurry or explain the events.

13. In the first dramatic phase, the metamorph usually can't explain the reasons for his curse. We see him in the state of his curse.

14. Your story should begin at the point prior to the resolution of the curse (release).

15. The antagonist should act as the catalyst that propels the protagonist toward release.

16. The antagonist often starts out as the intended victim but ends up as the "chosen one."

17. The second dramatic phase should concentrate on the nature of evolving relationships between the antagonist and the metamorph.

18. The characters will generally move toward each other emotionally.

19. In the third dramatic phase, the terms of release should be fulfilled and your protagonist should be freed from the curse. The metamorph may either revert to his original state or die.

20. The reader should learn the reasons for the curse and its root causes.

A
nother character plot, closely related to metamorphosis, is transformation. If you read the chapter on metamorphosis, you know that I take the term literally: A character literally changes shape. That shape reflects the inner psychological identity of the metamorph. In the work-a-day world, people constantly change, too. We are always in the process of becoming who we are. From day to day and week to week we may not be able to detect change within ourselves (unless we're undergoing some momentous revolution in our life that forces us to change at a faster pace).

The study of humanity is the study of change. We change our perceptions of our universe and that, in turn, colors how we think, feel and react to it. The twentieth-century citizen is much different from the nineteenth- or the twenty-first-century citizen. Time, however, hasn't altered certain aspects of humanity, and we share much with a Greek citizen in Athens three thousand years ago or an Egyptian trader in Memphis five thousand years ago. The denominators of basic human psychology have remained the same. We're born, we grow up and mature and we die.

This shared common experience is the basis for fiction. The plot of transformation deals with the process of change in the protagonist as she journeys through one of the many stages of life. The plot isolates a portion of the protagonist's life that repre-

sents the period of change, moving from one significant character state to another.

The key word is
significant.
One of the tests of character plots in general is the change the main character makes in her personality as a result of the action. The protagonist is usually a different person at the end of the story than she was at the start of it. The transformation plot goes one step further by concentrating its attention on the nature of the change and how it affects the character from the start to the end of her experience. This plot examines the process of life and its effect on people. Given a situation, how will this person react? Different people react to the same stimulus in different ways; similarly, people are affected by the same stimulus in different ways. This is the core of interest.

PLOTTING A PLOT

As we near adulthood, we must learn the lessons of the adult world, a new and oftentimes awkward experience for those who have been comfortable in childhood. These issues are addressed in Larry McMurtry's
The Last Picture Show
and John Jay Osborn's
The Paper Chase.
Nick Adams in Ernest Hemingway's "Indian Camp" and Sherwood Anderson's unnamed narrator in "I'm a Fool" are such characters.

War teaches lessons as well. Anyone who's gone into combat cannot help but be changed by the experience. The story may be about learning the true nature of courage, as in Stephen Crane's
The Red Badge of Courage,
Joseph Heller's
Catch-22
or Philip Ca-puto's
A Rumor of War.

The search for identity can take a character into the darkest recesses of the human psyche. We always try to understand who we are and what is the essence of human nature, and sometimes we make discoveries about ourselves that horrify us. Such is the case in Robert Louis Stevenson's
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Dr. Jekyll discovers the dark side of himself and that change can lead to self-destruction. The same is true for other stories, such as H.G. Wells'
The Invisible Man.

People are also changed by the dramatic moments of transition. Judith Guest's
Ordinary People
explores the troubled Jarrett family. On the outside, the family looks like any upper-middle-class family, comfortable in its affluence. But behind closed doors lurk secrets and an ugliness that has begun to surface. Once the family members are forced to deal with it, it changes them forever. The Kramers in Avery Corman's
Kramer vs. Kramer
are transformed by the trauma of divorce as they seek to reidentify themselves. And in
Siege at Trencher's Farm,
(better known by its movie title,
Straw Dogs),
a timid professor of astrophysics learns there are times when violence is unavoidable. In the process, he discovers a brutal part of himself he never thought possible.

Francis Macomber in "The Short Happy Life of Francis Ma-comber" is transformed by an incident in the bush after he wounds a lion and is terrified to track it down to kill it. He later finds his courage, during a buffalo hunt. A few minutes later Macomber is murdered by a wife who doesn't like her new husband. Such transformations often do not come without cost.

George Bernard Shaw's play
Pygmalion
is a wonderful example of transformation. In the play (which is very different from the film, titled
My Fair Lady),
Henry Higgins, a teacher of English speech, transforms Eliza Doolittle, a cockney flower girl, into a seeming English lady by teaching her to speak cultivated English.

He doesn't transform her simply by teaching her to speak correctly. To speak like a lady doesn't necessarily
make
her a lady. Higgins tampers with her as a human being by raising her out of her lower class and dressing her up as if she were a member of the upper class. Once Higgins is finished with her, she can't go back to being a cockney flower girl, and she can't go forward as the duchess she's been primed to be. Higgins refuses to accept his responsibility for changing her.

The irony of the story is that Higgins isn't a gentleman, even though he talks like one. Aloof and unapproachable, he refuses to admit that Eliza has made a difference in his own life. He believes he's a self-sufficient man—until Eliza leaves him.