Copyright 2001 by Kathleen King

 Chapter
Five
 In Trouble and Out Again
www.isu.edu/~kingkath/ch5.html

Life does not have a plot.  Events succeed one another in no particular order, and although we humans attempt to
understand the reasons behind good or bad fortune, most often no reason can be found.  Writing is one way in
which humans try to explain the events of life.  The writer concocts a plan, an arrangement of events to organize the
parts of the writing.  Unity is a word which describes this arrangement of parts into a whole.

Story, defined for our purposes as actions arranged in time sequence, is only one element of plot.  What happened
when is story, a sequence of events which British novelist E. M. Forster claimed requires only curiosity on the part
of the reader.  The Greek philosopher Aristotle laid down guidelines which writers still use today.  He explained
story as post hoc, or "after this", emphasizing the arrangement of events in time.  Gloria died and after this Henry
left his job is an arrangement of events in time; first one thing occurred and then something else happened.

Plot contains the time sequence aspect of story, but stresses the arrangement of events in cause and effect sequence,
what Aristotle called propter hoc, or "on account of this."  A cause and effect sequence of events might look like
this:  Because Gloria was unfaithful, her husband Henry shot her, and because he could not bear the guilt, Henry
then killed himself.  Aristotle's explanation of plot as a cause and effect sequence of events is valid even now, 2300
years later.

Types of Plot
Aristotle recognized two types of plot, simple and complex.  The simple plot leads to change, but does not use
reversal, in which the action veers in an opposing direction, or recognition, a growth from ignorance to knowledge. 
The complex plot utilizes reversal, recognition, or preferably both.   Recognition occurs in both characters and
readers, and happens in five ways:  through signs, a turn of incident, memory, reasoning, or insight.  Example 5.1
lists these types of recognition and provides an example of each.

Example 5.1:  Five Types of Recognition

1.  through signs

     Jeannette sat stiffly in the passenger seat.  Her neck hurt from not giving in.  Marvin would have to be the first
to apologize.  She'd been right; there was nothing wrong with the car.  But there he sat, a lump, not even bothered
by their fight.
     Suddenly, Marvin held out his right hand between them, in midair.  Should she grasp it?  He reached a little
farther and then her small cold hand was engulfed in his large warm one.
(Marvin's holding out his hand is a sign that he wants to make up.)
2. a turn of incident

     The Honda began to buck and jerk.  Smoke puffed out from under the hood, and the metallic stink of burning
electricity filled the car.  Marvin pulled off the interstate.
   "I'm sorry, honey.  You were right about taking the car in for a checkup,"  Jeannette said as she hopped out of
the car.

(Jeannette recognizes her error when, through a turn of incident, the car malfunctions.)
3. memory

     "This happened once before," Marvin said.  He waved his hand at the small cloud of steam dissipating in the
breeze.  "Only not as bad."

(Marvin remembers a previous occurrence of the phenomenon.)

4. reasoning

     "Is it going to catch on fire?"  Jeannette hopped from foot to foot.  The wind was cold, and she had left her
jacket in the car.
     "I don't think so."  Marvin shook his head back and forth.  "It's not smoking any more."

(Marvin reasons that the car will not burst into flames because it is no longer smoking.)
5. insight

     The tow truck wheezed into the gas station.  The sign above the pumps read "Last Chance."  Jeannette looked
around.  The flat landscape stretched in all directions, treeless and uninhabited.
     But the tall mechanic seemed to know what he was doing.   He bent over and peered under the hood, wiggled a
few wires, listened to their description of the malfunction. 
     When they finished, he pushed his Ford cap back on his head with one greasy hand.  "Some kind of vapor
lock," he said.
     He turned and picked a yellow bottle out of a display next to the wall.  "This'll fix her."

(The mechanic has insight into the problem based on the description of the smoking and his examination of the
engine.) 

 Believability

Aristotle stresses the use of probability in plotting. Although a plot is an artificial ordering of events, the writer must
acknowledge the audience's understanding of the laws of probability.  Suspension of disbelief is a literary term
which describes the audience's willingness to temporarily accept the writer's make-believe.  In turn, the writer has a
responsibility to stay within the bounds of probability.  Sometimes even true-life incidents strain the reader's
credulity.  A writer who defends his work by saying "But it really happened that way" acknowledges the difference
between story (events arranged in time sequence) and plot (events arranged in cause and effect sequence).  Readers
want plot.

Pay close attention to how much your audience is willing to accept.  For instance, audiences don't want virtue to
result in dreadful adversity, nor do they like evil to lead to prosperity; instead, the plot should focus on a good
person with a defect of character, a flaw which causes trouble.  Aim at what is logically probable, given the
characters and situations from which the plot is built.  Your audience will not believe an improbable plot.
 Conflict Motivates Plot

In plotting, the writer changes events related by time into events ordered by cause and effect.  Aristotle compared
the progression of plot to the tying and untying of a knot:  the yarn tangles, turns, and then untangles.  Other writers
have compared plot to a game of chess or a war.  However you choose to think of plot, conflict is the motivating
force behind plot movement.  Conflicts can be divided into four basic types of struggle:  against nature, against
another person, against society, and between two elements within a person.

Example 5.2:  Four Types of Conflict

1.  struggle against nature

     "The storm's getting worse," Glenda said, peering out the window.
     "Do you think this whole island will flood, Mom?" Jennifer asked.  Her eyes were big and dark with fear.
      Glenda smoothed the silky hair back off her daughter's forehead. "We'll be okay, honey."  But a shiver ran
through Glenda's body.  How much wind and high water could this flimsy beach house take?

 (hurricane vs. Glenda and Jennifer)

2.  struggle against another person

        "Eat your vegetables, Freddie."

        "No."
    "But they're good for you.  How do you expect to grow up big and strong?  Now eat your vegetables."  She
pushed the plate a little closer to him.
        "No."

 (Mother vs. Freddie)

3.  struggle against society

     Ben sat on his park bench watching as the sun set between the tall buildings.  Then the air cooled off and a
chilly wind blew in from the bay.  He pulled his stocking cap down around his neck and curled up on the bench to
sleep.
     Something poked him.  "Get up," said a loud rough voice.
     Ben cracked open his eyes.  A cop in a blue uniform stood next to the bench.  He poked Ben with his nightstick
once more.
     "You can't sleep here.  Law says no vagrants."

 (legal system vs. a homeless man)

4.  struggle of two elements within a person

      Leslie kept her hands behind her back.  She sure wanted that Milky Way bar, but Mom said it was wrong to
take things without paying for them.  Leslie kept thinking about the sweet chocolate.  She could just snatch the
candy and run, but the cashier would see her for sure, and then Mom would find out and feel bad.

 (Leslie's desire for candy vs. her desire to please Mom)

Some writers and literary critics include in a fifth type of conflict, the struggle against fate or destiny, but on close
inspection, such plots almost always fit into one of the four categories above.
The amount of tension generated by the conflict determines the length and form of the writing.  A little bit of
conflict will motivate a poem, but a great deal of trouble requires a longer form.  For instance, conflict which leads
to murder implies a great deal of tension, more than can be effectively handled in a short story, so a novel may be
about the right length for such a plot.  On the other hand, a short-term disagreement between a married couple
carries a much lower level of tension.

Example 5.3:  A Little Bit of Conflict

    The Spat:  A Love Poem

The mood comes on for days

a cloud growing in darkness
milk souring in the refrigerator
lumps in the oatmeal bigger.
We walk the dog up on the ridge
toward the color of night and cedars
a flash of deer rump red in brush.
A nighthawk stripes the sky.
Our dog stops to look
back and forth between us.
White lifeless branches, burned cedars
like Patagonia, end of the earth.
Coyotes bark in empty canyons
mountains ridge up, desert blues out.

Protagonist and Antagonist

 

Protagonist is a literary term which describes the chief character of the story, the person with whom the audience's
sympathy rests.  Most often, a protagonist is a good person with a personality flaw which arouses interest. 
Remember that perfection quickly bores readers.  What convincing trouble could a perfect character get into?  An
antihero is a protagonist with a great many flaws, who nevertheless possesses a basic goodness which the audience
recognizes.  The character directly opposed to the protagonist, the person who attempts to defeat the protagonist, is
called the antagonist.  These two characters are usually well developed.  A longer piece with sub-plots may have a
number of protagonist-antagonist pairs.

Freytag's Pyramid shows the structure of a five-act tragedy, and is commonly used to illustrate plot movement in
narrative writing, whether the form is poetry, prose, or drama.
 Example 5.4:  Freytag's Pyramid

A piece of writing may begin with a section of exposition, in which setting and characters are introduced along with
facts the reader must know to follow the plot.  Events which occurred before the beginning of the story may be
sketched in.  Then trouble starts, and ensuing complications cause the audience to become involved in and excited
about the movement of the plot.

When the excitement becomes too great, a climax occurs.  This event turns the plot to falling action, usually shorter
than rising action, and leads logically to the end of the plot.  Near the end, an event may offer a last moment of
suspense before the final catastrophe in tragedy, or denouement in other types of narrative.  Denouement is a French
word which means untying, and in literature this term refers to the final clarification or unraveling of a plot.

The Too-tight Knot

A plot should move naturally, with incidents which grow logically from the initial situation and the given
characters.  A believable struggle allows the audience to follow the plot without skepticism.  Sometimes writers tie
the knot so tight that they can't think of a way to unravel the threads.  At this point, the device called deus ex
machina offers a tempting way out of a difficult situation.  An improbable event which suddenly makes things turn
out right, deus ex machina is evidence of a lazy writer's willingness to disregard probability in favor of a quick and
easy fix.  The audience feels cheated when asked to accept an illogical resolution.  The term deus ex machina,
which means "god from machine", comes from Greek theater, when an impossibly knotted plot was sometimes
unraveled by lowering a god to the stage on a pulley.

Deus ex machina is often used in melodrama, and two forms commonly appear in the work of beginning writers: 
the gun in the drawer trick and waking from a dream.  The gun in the drawer happens when, at a moment of extreme
tension, one character turns away, opens a drawer, pulls out a gun, and shoots the other.  If readers don't know the
gun is hidden in the drawer, they will not accept the shooting as a probable event.  The solution is to somehow, in
passing, put the gun in the drawer or have a character see it there before it is needed.
Waking from a dream generally happens when the protagonist lacks skill or resources to get out of danger.  In
Example 5.5, just as the protagonist is about go down the dragon's gullet -- man against nature -- she wakes up from
a dream.   The writer avoids tackling the problem of getting Jenny out of trouble, and the audience feels cheated of
half the story.  Don't give up when your knots snarl.  Take your time, smooth the yarn, and you'll captivate your
audience.

Example 5.5:  Waking From a Dream

     She could hear the dragon's footfalls behind her and feel the hot breath on her shoulders.  The great beast
smelled like rotting fish.
     Jenny sat up in bed, sweating, her heart pounding.  Where was she?  Where was the dragon?  Then she heard
the soft breathing of her husband sleeping next to her.  She was safe in her own bed.  There was no dragon.  It had
all been only a dream.

Plot Devices

The writer has at his or her disposal a number of plotting devices, including theme, time movement, suspense,
subplots in longer writings, foreshadowing, flashback, frameworks, leitmotifs, parallelism, and formulas.  Each of
these devices provides particular benefits and drawbacks which writers can learn through reading and practice.

Theme refers to the central idea of a work of art, the abstraction or generalization which the art makes concrete. 
Theme can be viewed as theory, of which the art itself is practice, similar to the relationship between science and
technology.  Science makes the theories and technology figures out how to use them; in literature, theme is the
theory and plot is the practical use.  A statement of theme requires both a subject and a predicate.  "Love" does not
contain enough information to be a theme, but "love leads inevitably to loss" describes the dominant idea
underlying a plot about a young woman marrying an older man although she knows that her act may cause her to be
a widow one day.   In general, write first and look for theme later.  Starting with a theme in mind leads to preachy
tales with stereotyped characters, as well as rapidly decreasing reader interest.

Alternate Between Scene and Summary

Time and plot are closely linked in narrative structure.  Writers alternate scene and summary to trace the cause and
effect relationship between events.  Scene is an expansion, slowing, and opening out of time used to develop a
particular incident or event in a plot.  Summary is a contraction, speeding up, and closing in of time which spans the
gaps between scenes.  If you drew a graph of scene and summary, it would look like a train, big cars linked by small
hitches.

Figure 5.6:  Scene and Summary

Important plot events should be written as scenes, not merely brushed over in summary.  Use sensory images to
develop each scene so that the reader can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell the moment.  Dialogue in scenes allows
characters to speak for themselves.  A poem or very short story may use only one scene, but longer pieces require
the writer to move smoothly back and forth between scene and summary many times.

 Example 5.7:  Moving Between Scene and Summary

     Six weeks after Melanie left, James woke to the shrill of his alarm.  He cleaned up, dressed, and drove toward
work through a rainstorm.  On the way, he stopped at McDonald's for breakfast.
     The restaurant seemed dazzlingly bright after the dim light of the overcast day.  Blinded for a moment by so
much light, James squinted and saw a figure coming toward him, a girl carrying several white bags in her arms.
     "Oops!"  The girl bumped into him.  "I should watch where I'm going," she said, tossing the long bangs back
off her forehead.  "Sorry."  She moved toward the door.
     "Wait a minute," James called out.  "Let me help you with that."
She nodded.  "Okay.  My truck's just over there."
     "My name is James," he said as he grabbed a few of the heavy white bags full of good-smelling food.
     As they walked across the parking lot, she told him that her name was Wanda and she was bringing in
breakfast for a sales meeting at the company where she worked as a secretary.

In the example above, "six weeks after Melanie left" is a very condensed summary, and the rest of that paragraph is
also a summary, but expanded slightly.  Notice the slowed movement of time during the scene between James and
the girl in the restaurant, and the way the progress of time picks up speed as the last paragraph returns to summary. 
In the natural evolution of this plot, these two characters might act out another scene as they talk beside the girl's
truck, followed
by a summary to set up a third scene and so on.

Keep Secrets From the Reader

Suspense keeps the audience guessing about the outcome of the plot and divides into two categories:  an uncertain
outcome in which causes the audience to wonder who, what, and how, and an inevitable outcome which excites
audience interest in when.  We can redraw Freytag's Pyramid a bit to illustrate how scenes create suspense.
 Example 5.8:  Revised Freytag's Pyramid

A small plot may have only one course of rising action, followed by a single peak of climax which leads quickly to
the denouement.  A larger and more complex plot contains a series of ups and downs in tension which attract and
then relax the reader, allowing the hook of the plot to set itself into the reader's interest.

Each complication adds to the tension and then eases off a bit, so that the general trend is uphill, with small rest
stops of summary to move the reader from one scene to the next.  An individual scene pushes the plot along, yet
leaves the reader unsatisfied because the events are not complete.

Narratives which use a series of complications tend to be longer, some so long that the writer has the opportunity to
develop subplots.  Although the main plot provides the dominant motivation for the events, subplots related to the
main plot contribute to the complications, attracting and holding the reader with a complex series of love and hate
relationships involving major and subordinate characters.  Some tragedies use comic subplots to add zest and
emphasize the sadness of the main narrative line.

 Foreshadow Outcomes

Foreshadowing allows the writer to set up events so that the reader is both surprised and pleased by the playing out
of the cause and effect logic of events.  The gun in the drawer trick becomes believable when foreshadowed so that
the audience responds with "I should have known!" when confronted by the fatal shot.

Example 5.9:  Gun in Drawer

1) Foreshadowing early in plot

     Jenny slid her hand beneath Jesse's pillow to smooth the sheet.  Her hand brushed something cold, something
hard and metallic, a gun.  She flipped open the chamber and saw the gleam of bullets.  Horrified, she put the gun
out of sight, in the drawer of Jesse's nightstand.

2) Fulfillment later in plot

     The burglar was coming closer, baseball bat raised to club her.  Jenny backed up and bumped into Jesse's
nightstand.  The gun!  Quickly, she slid open the drawer and grabbed the pistol.  She pulled it out, aimed, and
pulled the trigger.  In a flash of light and stink of gunpowder, the burglar went down with a scream.

Writers foreshadow in many ways, including arrangement of physical objects and events as in the example above. 
The writer may also set a particular tone or mood, such as the cloudy weather, spoiled milk, and lumpy oatmeal in
the poem "The Spat."  Often foreshadowing is inserted as drafts are rewritten and polished, since most writers find it
difficult to accurately foreshadow events which they have not yet invented.

Flashback Technique

Foreshadowing hints at events which will happen in the future, but a flashback is an actual jump back to a time
before the opening of the work.  When overused, flashback becomes trite and makes the reader work too hard, but
skillfully constructed and frugally used flashbacks allow the plot to begin with an interesting action scene.  Later in
the narrative, the writer moves back to develop an earlier event into a scene which advances the plot.  Begin by
telling the entire story in straight time, then cut out and interweave the flashbacks for the desired result.

Flashbacks may use memories of characters, narration by characters, dream sequences and reveries.  Some writings
use a framework, a story within a story, which is actually a long flashback sandwiched between a beginning and
ending set in a later time.  Transitions into and out of flashbacks should be smooth and clear to the reader.

A direct use of memory occurs when a character experiences something which reminds him of a previous event. 
The character takes the reader into the event, which seems as though it is occurring now.

 Example 5.10:  Direct Memory

     Franklin walked along Chestnut Street, looking at all the old houses, the Grumberg's house, Kowalski's,
Thompson's.  Then he saw it, their house, the best one they'd ever had, right across the street from the park, and
with plenty of kids in the neighborhood.
     "Hey, Frankie, let's play baseball," Tommy Thompson yelled.

(proceed through childhood memory)

     Franklin shook his head.  The memory had been so real, as though he'd been twelve years old again, smelling
the dusty summer odor of the ballpark, hearing the cries of his teammates.

In Example 5.10, the time change is signaled by a change in name from Franklin to Frankie.  An indirect method of
presenting a memory is through narration by the character.  For instance, Franklin might reminisce to his
grandchildren about when he was a boy, telling them of his baseball games in the park.  The difference is one of
showing and telling:  The direct memory shows, and the indirect memory tells.

The Unconscious Revealed

Dream and reverie are closely related, and both may be used to foreshadow events or to reveal hidden aspects of a
character.  Dream sequences should be constructed in a convincing fashion, disjointed and symbolic like real
dreams.  Reverie refers to daydreaming, and stream-of-consciousness narration often makes use of reverie.  Writers
may also weave fantasies into third person.

Example 5.11:  Dream and Reverie

1. Dream

Square house, Jack and Margo and Bob, music in the next room, the sixties incense burning somewhere in the crazy
rooms put together from this city and that one, different homes, where has the party gone in here floor slanting
slipping down to crawl out window.

2. Reverie

On the water, boat just drifting, upstream, water full of liquid reflections, bulrushes and herons, arching tree
branches, wake pushing out in a vee, water warm, crocodiles, death roll, stuffed under snag, sky, clouds building
over the mountains, in the hut, companions from days past, waiting, talking.  Where we will go tomorrow,
upstream.

As with all devices of plot construction, overuse of memories or dreams bores the reader.  Save these vivid and
useful methods of plot complication for the plots which absolutely require them.

Leitmotif

Leitmotif is a beautiful word which means the repetition of an idea, situation, phrase or word.  The leitmotif
provides structure in writing by repeatedly reminding the reader of earlier occurrences.  Often the leitmotif is drawn
from and points to the theme of the writing.  Leitmotif is related to the concept of motif in painting, sculpture,
dance, and music.  The artist returns again and again to one color, shape, movement, phrase.

In his novel Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow mentions five times a prophecy made to Nebuchadnezzar that
he would go out into the desert to eat insects and be purified.  Like Nebuchadnezzar, Henderson, the protagonist,
goes into the desert, eats bugs, and returns a pure and virtuous man.  The subtle repetition of the prophecy
throughout the novel forms a leitmotif which emphasizes both plot and theme.

When to Use Formula Plots

Sometimes writers use formula plots, particularly in constructing detective, western, romance, and gothic
narratives.  Dedicated readers of these types of tales have come to expect certain conventions to be fulfilled.  A
detective tale usually stars a hardbitten hero who likes to solve puzzles, and westerns feature cowboys, Indians,
horses, barrooms, and sometimes cows.  Romance novels need a damsel in distress, a stern but eventually loving
handsome fellow, virginity, and a final passionate kiss with which the miss and mister plight their troth.  Gothic
plots utilize medieval castles, terror, and romance.  Although such formulas are trite, many writers enjoy
experimenting, bending the rules of the formula to add freshness.  Before you write in one of these genres, become
familiar with the conventions of plot, character, and setting unique to the formula by reading a number of good
examples.

Believability and Logic

The best plots seem believable to readers.  Events follow naturally in a cause and effect sequence determined by the
interaction of characters and situations.  When the writer plots skillfully, the audience easily follows the
development of the narrative, and when the plotting is sloppy the audience reacts with disbelief.  Careful use of plot
devices and elimination of plotting flaws enables writers to capture and enthrall the audience.

Study Questions

1.  What is the difference between story and plot?

2.  How do simple and complex plots differ?

3.  What are the five types of recognition?

4.  Why is suspension of disbelief important?

5.  What are the four basic types of conflict?

6.  Sketch Freytag's Pyramid.  How does this simple triangle diagram plot movement?

7.  Define the term deus ex machina and give an example.

8.  Define theme and give an example.

9.  What is the relationship between scene and summary?

10.  Why should a writer use suspense?

11.  What is foreshadowing?  Give an example.

12.  What role do flashbacks play in a plot?

13.  How can a characters dreams and reveries contribute to plot development?

14.  Define leitmotif, and think of  way you might use this technique in a short story.

15.  When is a formula plot appropriate?

16.  Why should a plot be believable to readers?

Journal Entry:  Getting A Character Into Trouble

     As you have before, find a comfortable place to sit or lie down, take a deep breath, and relax.  Concentrate on
breathing deeply and slowly.
     When you feel ready, begin to imagine a character.  Let your mind move through this character's life, his or her
strengths and weaknesses, the problems which beset this person, and the solutions he or she characteristically
chooses.
     Center on one problem or time of change in this character's life.  What causes this trouble?  How do the plot
events evolve?
     When you have the beginning and perhaps even the middle of the story clearly in mind, take a deep breath and
return to the present.  Write down everything you remember in your journal.
     Based on the material in your journal, write a draft of a narrative, whether poetry, prose, or drama, in which you
utilize rich sensory images, a realistically flawed but basically good protagonist, and a plot with clear cause and
effect relationships between events.  Let the plot move as it will, and give your tale an end which is a natural and
probable outgrowth of the combination of characters and events.

Journal Entry:  Plotting

     One person wants an item belonging to another.  The second person does not want to give up his or her
possession.
     Name these characters, and then write a dialogue between the two.  Person 1 tries to convince Person 2 to give
up the object, but the owner is adamant:  he or she must keep it.  Make the conflict escalate to a climax (no guns
popping out of drawers unless you put them in first), followed by a denouement.