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How complex does plot really need to be?

Writer

Dreamer
Rather than focus on how complex I think its how intriguing it is since complexity does not always mean interesting it can often be a put off.
 

Firefly

Troubadour
Honestly, the more I try to think about this, the more I get confused about what the word "plot" even means. I mean, I have an idea of it in my mind, but when I try to break it down and define what it actually IS, I can't seem to do it. Looking around the interwebs, most explanations of how to "plot" don't even seem to be about plot at all, the they seem to be about structure-which I always thought was a completely different thing. It feels to me like plot is more a confusing web of entirely different concepts rather than one single thing. Is it pacing? Reveals and plot twists? Goal/conflict/stakes? Causation and consequences?

I get even more confused when people start talking about character driven plots versus plot driven ones. It seems to me like the construction of the plots themselves is pretty similar, and the only real difference is how much focus is on internal vs external conflict.

Or maybe all this is completely off track and I'm missing the obvious here. I'm beginning to recognize that plotting is not my strong suit...
 
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Yora

Maester
Action A leads to action B. Action B leads to action C. Action C leads to action D.
That's the plot.
 
Action A leads to action B. Action B leads to action C. Action C leads to action D.
That's the plot.

I love this.

I think there's more to it, at least in the way the word is often used, and can understand Firefly's consternation. Maybe a thread on plot would be in order? It seems to me that "plot" as discussed often includes the quality of those ABC's, and that more is meant than merely the standard progression of events. How do those events interrelate in the reader's experience of them?

Presumably, not to jump the gun in answering Skip's question to Firefly, a plot twist is no different than every other P following an O in a story, except that A-O in the story with a plot twist seemed to be leading to a different "P" than actually happened?

—so, quality in addition to the mere progression of events.

Edit: So when we discuss different types of plots, we may still have the same ABC-type of progression, broadly speaking, but....these are different plot types. Simple vs complex is an interesting question, also. It does seem to me that "plot" is difficult to discuss in a vacuum, because other things determine the plot, and these can be different from story to story.
 
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What's the difference between a great simple story and a mere string of scenes?

Not sure this will help, but...

I've been playing Horizon Zero Dawn, and I am much more engaged, and loving it, than I was with Skyrim.

Skyrim was a bit of letdown for me, perhaps due to the hype and the fact that I waited so long to play it.

But—and it's taken me a long time to understand this—I have a love/hate relationship with massive open-world games. Even those that eventually bore me were fun, to a point. But I'm a completionist by nature and can't let every little side quest, or collection opportunity, pass me by. I feel a nagging impulse to go collect or do the side quest. (I'm inserting the collection aspect even if Skyrim did not have a lot of that. Because, Assassin's Creed, sigh. Love those games also, to a point but...) Far too often in these games, the overall plot, the main quest throughline, can get lost.

Perhaps that's my fault. I could just stick to the main quest, work to finish "the story," in lightning speed like some players do it.

TL;dr: So far, Horizon Zero Dawn, even with a nice but limited number of side quests and collection opportunities, has a very strong main story throughline. These other diversions seem to add to the experience of completing that throughline. And I love it far more than so many other open world games I've tried that lose the throughline somewhere during the playing. I actively avoid open-world games now, most of the time, for this reason.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
I asked Firefly that question because in order to answer it, one would presumably have to say something about plot, in order to say anything about the twist. Peppermint or otherwise. I thought that might be an opening into further conversation.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
The plot twist would be an interesting topic. Generically, it is breaking an expectation. But this can take many forms. The murder mystery where everyone is guilty... or as in Angel Heart, the detective himself is the guy he's been hired to find (by the devil come to collect is his soul).

A classic "twist" combo is what I sometimes call the "twist, flip, and rebound" and it's very effective when done well. In a whodunnit formula this might be... You set reader's expectations that the butler did it, then some event absolutely convinces the reader it was the maid (twist) but then some major piece of evidence makes it appear that neither the maid nor butler could possibly have done it (flip) and then in the end we discover it was the butler after all (rebound), right back where we started. As a reader, this sort of scenario tends to be gratifying.
 

Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
A twist can also be a sort of reversal....

Say the plot starts out with an MC cop trying to stop a villainous drug lord... but half way through the "twist" is that the cop has to work for the very drug lord he was searching for in order to take down an even bigger foe.

Or, he discovers the drug lord is only small time, and the real problem is bad cops selling drugs from the evidence vault....
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
So, per both Heliotrope and Demesnedenoir, one of the things we can say about plot is that it sets expectations, else there would be nothing for the twist to, er, twist.

This immediately raises more questions. Just one expectation or many? How does one go about creating an expectation? Does the reader bring expectations to the story even before opening the book? (of course they do) The cover, the blurb, even the genre all play into this. Geez, there's baggage even before I've written Word 1.

Is there more to plot that merely creating expectations and then fulfilling them (even by way of twists)?
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Plot is a rabbit hole filled with Mad Hatters if you let it be, heh heh.

"If I had a plot of my own, the story would be nonsense. The story would be what it is, because the plot would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what the plot is, the story wouldn't be. And what the plot wouldn't be, the story would. You see?"

That's when I punched the Mad Hatter in the nose.
 
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Firefly

Troubadour
Hey Firefly, what's a plot twist? As you understand it.

I included plot twists in that list mostly because they include the word 'plot'. I don't really have a workable definition for plot twists yet, although I have been thinking about them a lot lately in order to try and figure out what makes them work. I hadn't looked up the definitions when I wrote that, but here are a few now, from Google and Wikipedia:

an unexpected development in a book, film, television program, etc.

A plot twist is a literary technique that introduces a radical change in the direction or expected outcome of the plot in a work of fiction. When it happens near the end of a story, it is known as a twist or surprise ending.

Emphasis mine.
It of course mentions the unexpected/surprise nature of twists, but I think that has more to do with guiding reader reactions than it does with plot. (Which is also an interesting subject and worthy of discourse, but not what we're looking for here.) If you take that away, you get stuff that's underlined. The effect or impact of the twist, the way it changes the development of the story from there on out... which kind of lines up with what Yora's explanation of plot as a causal chain of ABC. And the bit about changing the direction of the plot also pretty much defines turning points, which might explains the connection to structure as well. Lots to think on! Not quite sure yet how correct this is, but I feel like I'm really starting to understand this better now. Thanks guys. I have to go for now, but I feel like I'll probably be back later with more thoughts. And maybe a better answer to the original question that started this thread.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
Honestly, the more I try to think about this, the more I get confused about what the word "plot" even means. I mean, I have an idea of it in my mind, but when I try to break it down and define what it actually IS, I can't seem to do it. Looking around the interwebs, most explanations of how to "plot" don't even seem to be about plot at all, the they seem to be about structure-which I always thought was a completely different thing. It feels to me like plot is more a confusing web of entirely different concepts rather than one single thing. Is it pacing? Reveals and plot twists? Goal/conflict/stakes? Causation and consequences?

To me, plot is simply the collection of events that take you from the beginning to the end. Structure is simply a way to organize those events so they makes sense and build towards the ending. We all tend to do this naturally, but making it concrete makes it easier for the writer to recognize when they're missing something.

Plot is a winding road where you can generally predict what's coming up. A plot twist is like a sudden 90 degree turn in the road. It's abrupt, and it's difficult to see what lies beyond.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
>the collection of events that take you from the beginning to the end

If that's all there is, then there's no difference between plot and story. These words are vague and slippery, so I wouldn't lean too hard on the difference; I'm just going to use it to elaborate.

It was said above that plot is in part a matter of setting expectations with the reader. I agree. To that I would add another element: pacing. There is the pace of a narrative, even pace in dialog, but here I'm speaking of the pace of the story overall, which in a general way I would say that would be how quickly those events in the collection come at the reader.

I was aware of this sort of thing as I wrote my first novel, but it was all rather abstract, like learning a language in a classroom but never speaking it in real life. Now that I'm on my third novel, I'm very much aware of pace, and I take very seriously the matter of setting expectations. It's really difficult--for me, at least--because as I create scenes I'm the author, but when I think about the expectations, I'm thinking as a reader.

To give a rather ham-handed example, in my WIP I have five main characters. They travel as a group for much of the book. As a reader, I would expect to get updates on each of these. There's only one POV, character, but I would want to see each character change, each play a role from time to time, and would expect them to interact with one another, not merely with the POV character. As an author, I'm asking myself what various scenes do to create and satisfy these expectations. Those are standard expectations. There would also be expectations peculiar to this particular story.

Expectations and pacing. What else? Gee, maybe someone ought to write a book.... :)
 
After some quick online reading, I've found that a lot of people reference E.M.Forster on the difference between story and plot:

Let us define plot. We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died, and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time-sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it. Or again: “The queen died, no one knew why, until it was discovered that it was through grief at the death of the king.” This is a plot with a mystery in it, a form capable of high development. It suspends the time-sequence, it moves as far away from the story as its limitations will allow. Consider the death of the queen. If it is in a story we say “and then?” If it is in a plot we ask “why?” That is the fundamental difference between these two aspects of the novel. A plot cannot be told to a gaping audience of cave-men or to a tyrannical sultan or to their modern descendant the movie-public. They can only be kept awake by “and then—and then—” They can only supply curiosity. But a plot demands intelligence and memory also.

[from Aspects of the Novel]
I think this pretty much sums it up, doesn't it? Except for the swipe at moviegoers; this was written in 1927, heh.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality.

I find this to be a good working definition of plot. But the rest of the quote is not what I typically associate with "story" - I'm more familiar with the idea that a story is about the character's internal change over the course of the novel.
 
I find this to be a good working definition of plot. But the rest of the quote is not what I typically associate with "story" - I'm more familiar with the idea that a story is about the character's internal change over the course of the novel.

I think he was trying to delineate between two narrative structures—both of which will exist in a novel.

The dig at "tyrannical sultan" was apparently a reference to 1001 Arabian Nights. I've not read those stories, but I assume from the thrust of the quote that they were told as if telling a series of events. They do supply curiosity: What happens next? And this is a good thing for a novel to do, in addition to tweaking the question of Why? via plotting.

So now I'm thinking that a plot twist is this: When story-structure overtakes plot-structure for the reader. In other words, the twist is a chronological event, but does not (however momentarily, or not) follow the sense of causality that the reader has been experiencing during the experience of that plot structure.
 

Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
I like that example FifthView.... part of what was bugging me about this discussion was that we kept talking about "plot" in terms of novels... but what about Flash Fiction? I have been writing quite a bit of flash lately, and I find the people I query are very adamant that the piece MUST have a plot. It cannot simply be a character sketch, or a tableau. So how do you plot in 400 words? You certainly can't have a sequence of scenes in that short of a piece. There needs to be something else.

I was also reading, recently, that lack of plot is a major reason why manuscripts are turned away by traditional publishers (whether in short pieces, or novel length pieces):

While some stories have bad plots, others have no plot. "One I received was about a woman shopping for a hat. That was it," bemoans Paul Taylor of Cenotaph. Alejandro Gutierrez of Conversely complains of "stories that just begin and end with nothing important happening or being resolved by the main characters." Some plotless stories ramble from one event to another; others are a hodgepodge of action with no emotional content to involve the readers.

The solution? Ironically, most editors felt the way to resolve "plotless" or "hackneyed" stories was to focus on characters. If the characters are believable, with interesting goals and motivations, their interactions will drive the plot. "Most of the ideas for stories have already been used; it's up to the writer to put a new spin on it to make it fresh," says David Felts. "If the characters are real enough then a recycled plot can work, because if the character is new, the story is too."


Five Fiction Mistakes that Spell Rejection

So I like the idea that the "plot" is the "WHY" of the through line.... The story is the series of events, but the "Plot" is the big question that keeps reader's reading to find the answer at the end.
 
So I like the idea that the "plot" is the "WHY" of the through line.... The story is the series of events, but the "Plot" is the big question that keeps reader's reading to find the answer at the end.

I'm tempted to call it the Why-throughline, rather than the "why of the through line," although even there I think both exist.

In other words, it's not a single big question, but questions throughout about the causality of each thing that is happening in the series of events.

Edit: But I suspect I might have a tendency to overthink this, so grains, salts, heh.
 
Also, not to make this too complex, but....there is the distinction between what we call "plot points" and all those other events that happen between each plot point, re: causality as it applies to the working plot, heh.

In case anyone wants to take a stab at disentangling the web of these considerations...
 
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