Creating Plots

"He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I know."--Abraham Lincoln

Caveat Lector: This is by no means the first or last word on the subject, merely my attempt to summarize some processes through which I "generate plot." There are other excellent resources on the subject, including Forward Motion for Writers and the SFWA's pages, which cover related topics in more detail. (Yeah, I know this is turning into a standard disclaimer.)

Much of this essay could apply to any kind of fiction, but I'm taking my examples from science fiction and fantasy (sf/f) as those are the genres with which I'm most familiar.

Thanks to the RicePaper Society, and Nancy Sauer in particular, for triggering this.

Introduction

What is a plot?

No, no, you don't need to throw your English classes at me.

So you have a cool new idea for a technological gewgaw, or a compelling character, and you're trying to figure out what to do--what happens in the story. What then?

I will start by saying that devising plots isn't what gives me trouble, it's making them sensible. (Maybe that's just semantics.) That being said, there are some principles, rules-of-thumb, and guidelines that I have found helpful. Perhaps you'll find them helpful, too.

Writers Are Sadists

Lois McMaster Bujold, among others, noted that the key is to figure out what hurts your protagonist(s) the most, and do it. (I wish I could find the quote, but I think it appears in the notes to Cordelia's Honor, and I don't have a copy on me.) I have occasionally applied this principle, and I've long opined that writers are among the most sadistic creatures on Earth. Perhaps I'm projecting.

This is probably easiest if you're a character-oriented writer/reader, which I am not. It reminds me of sticking pins into an unmoving target, as I revise and edit characters to come in line with some Greater Plan. True character-oriented writers will counter that their characters are moving targets, unlike mine, which probably makes their task easier and harder.

If characters are not your strong suit, your sadism may take different forms. Your story may function as a Gedankenexperiment on social change, in which case you're sticking pins into a society or culture more than individuals, or a philosophy, or an ethos.

Conflict and Movement

The other approach I take to plot qua plot is through conflict. Stories are often (some would say always) generated through dissonance between what-is and what-ought-to-be (whether what-ought-to-be turns out to be desirable is another issue in itself, as addressed in "The Monkey's Paw") from someone's perspective. This is often elaborated by conflicting visions of what-ought-to-be, most commonly of characters, sometimes of a subtext or narrator's voice or implicit cosmology. Something Wrong with the land being paralleled by Something Wrong with its king is a venerable example; one use appears in Guy Gavriel Kay's The Summer Tree.

Plot is either movement or a chronicling of failure toward movement (think of Walter Mitty for the latter), from what-is to what-will-be; and conflict gives the what-will-be a sense of being earned. I find many stories where the protagonist sits around philosophizing, then comes to some enlightenment without any real difficulty to be tedious; there are, of course, exceptions, some of a satirical bent. Conflict also generates tension, suspense and, if well-handled, a genuine sense of uncertainty, which generates the reader's sense of stake in the outcome (i.e. if a happy outcome is all but assured, the "reward" is commensurately smaller).

If people wrote by formulas, one might be:

Identify the protagonist's desires and weaknesses.
Throw in logical obstacles to those desires that draw upon those weaknesses.
The story, at this point, quite possibly writes itself.

I'm being facetious. Subgoals and subconflicts, especially in longer works, are practically de rigueur. And such cookbook recipes are more useful, I find, in hindsight analysis than foresight planning (though if you find this useful, by all means, go ahead).

Reverse-engineering: Obstacles First

You can go in the opposite direction: start with obstacles and create a corresponding protagonist. My sf short story "The Black Abacus" took this approach. The focal point (though not the "protagonist") of the story is Rachel Kilterhawk, a ruthless captain who believes that the best way to handle war is to get it over with as quickly as possible, using any means necessary. The obstacle was the ethical dilemma: at what price war? at what price peace? Ergo, I needed a protagonist who cared about the ethics of the situation, but lacked Rachel's clarity of purpose. Furthermore, the protagonist had to be sufficiently entangled with Rachel to interact with her over a long, quantum-wargame of ethical chess. Ergo, the protagonist became Rachel's classmate, officer, and lover. (We'll ignore for the moment that the story's initial genesis was the idea of quantum war, itself triggered by reading in Scientific American on quantum computation.)

(You could argue that Rachel is in fact the protagonist, and Edgar the antagonist, or anti-protagonist, or what-have-you, but the example stands.)

I suspect this approach may be less common, despite the lack of supporting data, but you may want to give it a whirl.

Plot Analysis

You can approach plotting from the point of view of analysis of plots that you admire (generalizable to any aspect of writing, of course). Some of the plots I find most compelling feature, in no particular order:

Real Things at Stake

...as opposed to "toy" stakes that are never in doubt. George R.R. Martin's SONG OF ICE AND FIRE series achieves this by establishing, early in the series (in Game of Thrones, the first book), that major, sympathetic characters will die, which puts the survival of the others in doubt. Even now, I'm not sure he wouldn't do away with Tyrion, reportedly his favourite character, if the plot demanded it.

This is not to suggest that "toy" stakes are all bad, if used judiciously. They can provide comic relief, give the reader a breather after a harrowing scene, or add dramatic irony. But if all the stakes are "toy" stakes, you'd better be writing humor or one of its allies.

Real Reasons for Real Stakes

Why is the kingdom in danger? "Because the Dark Lord rises every 350 years" doesn't, by itself, cut it anymore. And "because he's evil" doesn't, by itself, cut it as a reason for him to be a Dark Lord. (Diana Wynne Jones notes the dearth of Dark Ladies in fantasy, despite the Lady in Glen Cook's The Black Company and other lonely examples.)

Motivations may be explicit or implicit; they may be possessed by things that aren't characters, such as nations, ideals, or philosophies. For example, an entrenched social order can be assumed to have an inherent self-preservation motive. Few things in fiction have no reason for being the way they are, and as readers we expect a fictional world to be more orderly, more explicable, than the real world.

In fantasy, villains are the most likely victims of lack-of-motivation syndrome. In sf, I've found scientist wish-fulfillment stories wherein a stupid or incompetent management treads on the well-meaning but ultimately triumphant scientist(s) for no apparent reason; the better examples of these stories take care to explain some of the apparently-stupid management's operational constraints.

Uncertainty Yet Inevitability

Ideally, the author makes my jaw drop when s/he reveals a plot twist--yet, when I think about it, the twist turns out to make perfect sense in light of information I already had. In practice, I don't think I've ever met this ideal. But there should be genuine suspense (see Real Things at Stake, above) and nothing should come out of nowhere (contrary to Real Reasons for Real Stakes, above).

Isaac Asimov's Foundation contains some great examples of logical plot twists, and the dénouement of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game has one as well. (Forgive me for being cagey for fear of giving out spoilers.) Otherwise, mysteries are probably best-known, as a genre, for inculcating this quality.

Organic Plot

The best plots have a quality I have hesitantly labeled "organic," in the sense that events flow from the nature of the characters, setting, themes, and so on. Aspects of Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana approach this, in that Tigana's symbolic and real "destruction" grow out of the political fracturing of the Peninsula of the Palm, the pride of Tigana's people, and Brandin of Ygrath's love for his dead son; Dianora's tortured trajectory grows from her love of her brother, and finally love of the conqueror she meant to assassinate. (On the other hand, I find one love-match at the end contrived, though it seems to symbolize "healing" of the land through the continuation of its dynasties.)

Closing Thoughts

I have rarely met a nascent story that doesn't have a plot lurking in it somewhere. The hard part, as they say, is finding it. I hope some of the scattered thoughts above are of use and/or interest to you in your own writing/reading endeavors.

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