Don't Be So Dramatic or You'll Have Trouble Climaxing

Plot is a term that movie reviewers, mathematicians, and English teachers throw around a lot. When I was in English class, I often thought plot was some ploy teachers put on tests to freak us out and revere their intellectual prowess. However, as I became a writer, I realized the importance of plot in a story. It’s the meat. Without a good plot, you just have really interesting people, sitting in a room, fighting over who is the greatest. (Kind of like an episode of the Real World).



            The simplest definition of plot I have ever heard comes from my college theater teacher, Thom Talbott. He described plot as “X happened to Y because of Z”. If you cannot summarize what the story with this formula, perhaps you should rethink your storyline. While not all stories have an ordered “the princess was captured, the hero beat up the villain with cunning brilliance, and now they live happily ever after”, eventually the story must come around to having one or multiple “X happened to Y because of Z”s.

            That being said, this can happen many ways. The most traditional is known as the dramatic slope.

            All events are in chronological order and build in tension. The most tense and turning point of the story happens at the top with the climax. With traditional plot, if you can bait readers in the beginning, you have a captive audience. Good stories have you emotionally invested in characters quickly, so when trouble happens with them, the audience experiences dissonance. Their discomfort will ensure they read to the end.



            A classic (and not too disturbing) example of this would be Cinderella. In Cinderella, the main character experiences the injustices of being a disfavored stepchild. Because of her circumstances beyond her control at her birth, we see her being made a slave and working harder than her stepsisters (who are, at the nicest, a couple of jerks).

           However, have you ever been watching a movie/reading a book and say, “Look, they are going to get in a bind”, and behold, the main character is now in a pickle. While traditional plot is effective, it can be very predictable.


            We have been trained since we were little to see a story’s tension to happen in a rising and falling action. Sometimes plot needs to be shaken up, events can be taken out of order, and leave your brain wondering “What the heck just happened?”

            We call this non-linear plot. Events not in chronological order make us wonder why things are happening. When done effectively, this style can not only keep your readers interested, but it can also bring foreshadowing of future events. However, go too far out of order, and your readers can lose track of what happened, when, happened to whom. A delicate balance of cause and effect needs to be used in order to keep your readers understanding what your story means. Otherwise, it could just turn into a giant word story of Robot Chicken (if you haven’t seen it, it’s a very twisted show that I wouldn’t recommend for children).

           

A great classic example of non-linear plot is Sonny’s Blues (which can be read here). In it, the narrator is Sonny’s brother. It begins with him reading of the arrest of his brother in the paper and talking with his brother's drug buddy. Much has happened before this, and the author goes into unfolding how Sonny ended up where he is now.

Sonny, in his much later, yellow years.



            When no matter how much we roll our eyes, plot is essential for telling any story. It keeps people from thinking “why should I care?”. If done effectively, it can hit a message home harder than any slogan, propaganda, or beer commercial. However, we must make sure to pity the readers and manage plot well; Otherwise, they may be plotting our demise.