Home

What I Know About Plotting

This piece is written by Book Shed writer Nick Poole. The opening chapters of his work 'A Monster in the Mirror' were judged a Best Seller by users of the English Arts Council YouWriteOn website in November 2007.

What do I know about plotting? Not much is the answer.  So let's try to find out how little that is.

Okay. What do I mean by plot? And what is the difference between plot and story? Is there a difference?

Well a plot (as defined by Chambers) is “the story or scheme of connected events running through a play, novel etc.”  When you plot a course, you are planning a route for a journey. I would say (just a thought) that the plot is the route, and the story is the journey itself. You can take a lot of different routes to make the same journey and, similarly, you can tell the same story in many different ways.

I find it useful to think of a story as a journey, by the way.  The interest will be the obstacles upon the metaphorical road, and the obstacles will get progressively more difficult to get over, under or around.  Or through.

But a story is more than just a list of events or scenes. It is also meaning. It is what the storyteller wants to tell the story for. It is (or should be) the emotion that the storyteller wants to evoke. It is the wisdom he or she wants to share. His or her vision of the world, or of that particular world.

What about the plot then? Or have we lost that already?

A plot is a plan. A route map. But it is a map of both the outer world (what physically happens) and the internal one (where emotion lives).

There are a lot of very good books about the underlying pattern of stories: Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Vogler's The Hero's Journey, Robert McKee's Story . One of my favourites (although nobody else I know much likes it) is The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker.  What they are all saying is that stories have underlying archetypes ... which is another way of saying that they are bout the experience of being human. The Human Condition, in fact. Yes, even if the story is about elves, it's really about us.

The question is, does being able to find archetypes in a successful story allow us to do it in reverse? In other words, can you build a story around the basic building blocks? And a follow up question is, can there be a story without any of those building blocks?

Let's have a look at some building blocks.  I've roughly aligned the Hero's Journey with the Eight Point Arc and the Christopher Booker's plot “phases”:

Hero's Journey

Eight Point Arc

The phases of the 7 basic plots

Ordinary World

STASIS - once upon a time

 Initial Phase: constriction

The Call to Adventure
The adventure begins with the hero receiving a call to action, such as a threat to the peace of the community, or the hero simply falls into or blunders into it. The call is often announced to the hero by another character who acts as a "herald". The herald, often represented as dark or terrifying and judged evil by the world, may call the character to adventure simply by the crisis of his appearance.

TRIGGER - something out of the ordinary happens

 

Refusal of the Call
In some stories, the hero initially refuses the call to adventure. When this happens, the hero may suffer somehow, and may eventually choose to answer, or may continue to decline the call.

QUEST causing protagonist to seek something

 

Meeting the Mentors: Supernatural Aid
After the hero has accepted the call, he encounters a protective figure (often elderly) who provides special tools and advice for the adventure ahead, such as an amulet or a weapon.

 

 

Crossing First Threshold
The hero must cross the threshold between the world he is familiar with and that which he is not. Often this involves facing a "threshold guardian", an entity that works to keep all within the protective confines of the world but must be encountered in order to enter the new zone of experience.

 

Opening Out: journey begins, horizons expand

The Belly of the Whale
The hero, rather than passing a threshold, passes into the new zone by means of rebirth. Appearing to have died by being swallowed or having their flesh scattered, the hero is transformed and becomes ready for the adventure ahead.

 

 

Tests Allies and Enemies: The Road of Trials
Once past the threshold, the hero encounters a dream landscape of ambiguous and fluid forms. The hero is challenged to survive a succession of obstacles and, in so doing, amplifies his consciousness. The hero is helped covertly by the supernatural helper or may discover a benign power supporting him in his passage.

SURPRISE things do not go as expected

Severe Constriction: forces of reaction move into action

Approach to inmost cave: The Meeting with the Goddess
The ultimate trial is often represented as a marriage between the hero and a queenlike, or mother-like figure. This represents the hero's mastery of life (represented by the feminine) as well as the totality of what can be known. When the hero is female, this becomes a male figure.

CRITICAL CHOICE forcing protag to make difficult decision

Nightmare moving towards climax

Woman as the Temptress
His awareness expanded, the hero may fixate on the disunity between truth and his subjective outlook, inherently tainted by the flesh. This is often represented with revulsion or rejection of a female figure.

CLIMAX which has consequences

 

Atonement with the Father
The hero reconciles the tyrant and merciful aspects of the father-like authority figure to understand himself as well as this figure.

 

 

Ordeal: Apotheosis
The hero's ego is disintegrated in a breakthrough expansion of consciousness. Quite frequently the hero's idea of reality is changed; the hero may find an ability to do new things or to see a larger point of view, allowing the hero to sacrifice himself.

 

 

Reward: The Ultimate Boon
The hero is now ready to obtain that which he has set out, an item or new awareness that, once he returns, will benefit the society that he has left.

 

 

The Road Back: Refusal of the Return
Having found bliss and enlightenment in the other world, the hero may not want to return to the ordinary world to bestow the boon onto his fellow man.

REVERSAL the result of which is a change in status

 

Rescue from Without
The hero may need to be rescued by forces from the ordinary world. This may be because the hero has refused to return or because he is successfully blocked from returning with the boon. The hero loses his ego.

 

 

The Magic Flight
When the boon's acquirement (or the hero's return to the world) comes against opposition, a chase or pursuit may ensue before the hero returns.
(N.B.I have swapped the order of Flight & Rescue)

 

 

Resurrection: The Crossing of the Return Threshold
The hero returns to the world of common day and must accept it as real.

 

Reversal & liberation: resolution

Master of the Two Worlds
Because of the boon or due to his experience, the hero may now perceive both the divine and human worlds.

RESOLUTION and they all live (un) happily ever after

 

Return with Elixir: Freedom to Live
The hero bestows the boon to his fellow man.

 

 

Now I defy anybody (or at least any storyteller) to read through the Hero's Journey without (a) starting to form stories in his or her head and/or (b) relating one or more of the steps to parts of whatever he or she is working on presently. It's powerful stuff.

Let's say you've written a scene. I dunno, two people arguing and one storms out. And you know the genre. Let's say it's horror.  The question is, what function is the scene performing for the story?

Don't know? Well, you must know why you wrote it, surely? What about the scene or the characters captured your interest. What is the argument about? Is the surface argument the real subject or is there, lurking as so often, something hidden. An unspoken problem. Maybe different things for each of the arguers.

Well...the theory goes that both need to acquire wisdom to overcome a character flaw. And the way to acquire wisdom is through the steps above. The Hero's Journey. So you've got the marks on the map and you now need to relate them to the characters you've created.

Makes you wonder how Shakespeare and Dickens and Melville did it without the map, doesn't it?