The Anatomy of Story (43 page)

Like King Arthur's Excalibur, Anduril, which means "flame of the west," is the sword of right action and must only be wielded by the rightful heir to the throne. Where Excalibur was stuck in stone, Anduril was broken and must be reforged so that Aragorn can defeat the forces of evil and regain his throne. Aragorn is a unique warrior-king in his use of the plant Athelas, which has the power to heal. Like Achilles, he is a fighter of great skill, but he is also in communion with nature and is an agent of life.

Of course, these are just a few of the symbols that Tolkien uses in the epic
The Lord of the Rings.
Study it carefully to master many of the techniques of symbol-making.

PLOT IS the most underestimated of all the major storytelling skills. Most writers know the importance of character and dialogue, though they may not know how to write them well. But when it comes to plot, they think they'll just figure it out when the time comes—which of course never happens.

Because plot involves the intricate weaving of characters and actions over the course of the entire story, it is inherently complex. It must be extremely detailed yet also hang together as a whole. Often the failure of a single plot event can bring the entire story down.

Not surprisingly, plot techniques such as "three-act structure" that do not account for both the whole story and the detailed plot threads fail miserably. Writers who use the old three-act structure techniques are always complaining about second-act problems. That's because the techniques they use to create plot are fundamentally flawed. The mechanical and simplistic techniques of three-act structure don't give you a precise map showing how to weave a great plot throughout the difficult middle section of the story.

One reason writers underestimate plot is that they have many misconceptions about what it is. They often think that plot is the same as story. Or that plot simply tracks the actions of a hero going after his goal. Or that plot is the way the story is told.

Story is much larger than plot. Story is all of the subsystems of the story body working together: premise, character, moral argument, world, symbol, plot, scene, and dialogue. Story is a "many-faceted complex of form and meaning in which the line of narrative [plot] is only one amongst many aspects."
¹

Plot is the under-the-surface weaving of various lines of action or sets ol events so that the story builds steadily from the beginning through the middle to the end. More particularly, plot tracks the intricate dance between the hero and
all of his opponents
as they fight for the same goal. It is a combination of what happens and how those events are revealed to the audience.

KEY POINT:
Your
plot
depends
on
how
you
withhold
and
reveal
informa
tion
.
Plotting
involves
"
the
masterful
management
of
suspense
and
mys
tery
,
artfully
leading
the
reader
through
an
elaborate
. . .
space
that
is
always
full
of
signs
to
be
read
,
but
always
menaced
with
misreading
until the
very
end
. "
²

Plot is any description of a sequence of events: this happened, then this happened, and then this happened. But a simple sequence of events is not a good plot. It has no purpose, no designing principle that tells you which events to tell and in which order. A good plot is always organic, and this means many things:

■ An organic plot shows the actions that lead to the hero's character change or explain why that change is impossible, ■ Each of the events is causally connected.

Each event is essential, ■ Each action is proportionate in its length and pacing. ■ The amount of plotting seems to come naturally from the main character rather than being imposed by the author on the characters. Imposed plot feels mechanical, with the wheels and gears of the story machine clearly evident. This drains the characters of their fullness

and humanity, making them feel like puppets or pawns. Plot that comes naturally from the hero is not simply one the hero concocts. It is plot that is appropriate to the character's desire and ability to plan and act.

■ The sequence of events has a unity and totality of effect. As Edgar Allan Poe said, in a good plot, "no part can be displaced without ruin to the whole."
³

Organic plot is very difficult to grasp, much less create. That's partly because plotting always involves a contradiction. Plot is something you design, pulling actions and events out of thin air and then connecting them in some order. And yet the plot events must seem like necessary stages that develop of their own accord.

Generally, the history of plot evolves from an emphasis on taking action to learning information, which are the two "legs" by means of which every story moves. Early plot, using the myth form, shows a main character taking a series of heroic actions, which the audience is inspired to mimic. Later plot, using a broad version of the detective form, shows a hero and an audience ignorant or confused about what is happening, and their task is to determine the truth about these events and characters.

Let's look at some of the major plot types to see the different ways storytellers design the sequence of events and create an organic plot.

The Journey Plot

The first major strategy of plot came from the myth storytellers, and its main technique was the journey. In this plot form, the hero goes on a journey where he encounters a number of opponents in succession. He defeats each one and returns home. The journey is supposed to be organic (1) because one person is creating the single line and (2) because the journey provides a physical manifestation of the hero's character change. Every time the hero defeats an opponent, he
may
experience a small character change. He experiences his biggest change (his self-revelation) when

he returns home to discover what was already deep within him; he discovers his deepest capabilities.

The problem with the journey plot is that it usually fails to achieve its organic potential. First, the hero almost never undergoes even slight character change when defeating each of his opponents. He simply beats the character and moves on. So each fight with a strange opponent becomes a repeat of the same plot beat and feels episodic, not organic, to the audience.

A second reason the journey plot rarely becomes organic is that the hero covers so much space and time on the trip. In such a sprawling, meandering story, the storyteller has great difficulty bringing back characters the hero encounters in the early part of the story and doing so in a natural, believable way.

Over the years, writers have been painfully aware of the problems inherent in the journey plot, and they have tried various techniques to solve them. For example, in
Tom Jones,
which uses a comic journey, the author, Henry Fielding, relies on two major structural fixes. First, he hides the true identity of the hero and that of some of the other characters at the beginning of the story. This allows him to return to some familiar characters and see them in a deeper way. Fielding is applying the revelation technique, also known as the "reveal," to the journey plot.

Second, he brings back many of the early characters over the course of Tom's journey by sending these characters on journeys of their own, all with the same destination as Tom. This creates a funnel effect and lets Tom bounce off one character and then another again and again over the course of the story.

The difficulty of creating an organic plot using the journey is clearly seen in Mark Twain's
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Twain comes up with the brilliant idea of the raft, a miniature floating island, on which he can place Huck and a second character, Jim. But the vehicle is too small, so Huck and Jim have no ongoing opponents and encounter a succession of strangers "on the road." Also, with his main character stranded down the Mississippi, Twain has no idea how to bring the plot to a natural end. So he arbitrarily stops the journey and uses
deus ex machina
to save the day. There is no reason for Tom Sawyer to reappear, other than to return the plot to its comical roots, put on a spiffy polish, and say, "The End." Even Mark Twain can't get away with that.

The Three Unities Plot

The second major strategy for creating an organic plot was provided by ancient Greek dramatists like Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Their central technique was what Aristotle referred to as the unities of time, place, and action. In this technique, the story must take place in twenty-four hours, in one location, and must follow one action or story line. The plot is organic because all actions come from the hero in a very short time of development. Notice that this technique solves the big problem of the journey plot by having opponents the hero knows and who are present throughout the story.

The problem with the three unities plot is that although the plot is organic, there isn't enough of it. Having such a short time period greatly limits the number and power of the revelations. Revelations are the learning part of plot (as opposed to taking action), and they are the keys to how complex the plot is. The short time period in these stories means that the hero knows the opponents too well. They may have hatched a plot before the start of the story, but once the story begins, they are limited in how much of themselves they can hide.