posted
Here's a question from a recent exam in my creative writing class at Ohio State University:
What elements make up a satisfying plot?
I ask you, how in the world is one supposed to answer this question? Of the approximately 8 Billion possible answers, I'm supposed to find the ONE that my professor is looking for.
How would you folks answer that question?
(Don't worry, the exam is already done and turned in; you're not helping me cheat or anything.)
posted
There may be as many answers as there are readers. As for me, I'll borrow from Frank Herbert: Plans within plans.
Posts: 1275 | Registered: Mar 2004
| IP: Logged |
But even if the prof. didn't make the point clear as day it's an answerable question. Fiction is art and you can think about art in the abstract. It seems to me that the most fundamental element of a satisfying plot is that the key dramatic question is answered. This takes different forms in various genres. Will Jack and Jill get married? Will Jack discover the missing Jill? Will Jack and Jill come to a deeper understanding of one another and thus save their marriage? Will Jack exorcise the ghost of Jill that haunts his house? Etc. Etc.
In other words, what unifies the beginning, middle, and ending of a story?
Then there's the question of character. Except in the purest idea story -- i.e., old SF from the 1940s -- the main character must undergoe some interior change. If he or she doesn't then we're prone to ask what the point it.
Then there's the thematic element. Or if you don't like the word theme, then what's the story's meaning? And if you don't like the notion of the word meaning, then what are the human issues that for the moral backbone of the story: family, friendship, honor, prejudice, love, survival, etc?
Finally, do these three elements -- the dramatic question, character, and theme -- work together? In the best stories they do.
[This message has been edited by Garp (edited March 07, 2006).]
[This message has been edited by Garp (edited March 07, 2006).]
posted
I think that many English professor types would attempt to answer the question in various ways, throwing out words in combinations that are circular -- that is, they only have meaning within their own context and the context provides this meaning.
There isn't an answer to this question. In fact, I shudder to think that people try. This is a box:
-- || --
This is where I'd like to be in terms of my art....X
Don't get me wrong, I understand that general guidelines work for a reason and I've often touted the benefits of rules and warned against breaking them haphazardly. But what makes a satisfying plot? What a dull world this would be if there were any one answer to that question. I therefore refuse to answer.
In fact, I think that's precisely what I would have written on the paper. Not quite as good as the following answer to these questions:
Q: What is Brave? A: This is.
Q: Prove that the chair exists. A: What chair?
But still, it's the truth.
[This message has been edited by Christine (edited March 07, 2006).]
I think college education in this country is ready for a culture shift. We put so much stock in it but really, I don't see the value in a piece of paper that proves you have a certain amount of money and can regurgitate information. It becomes more and more valueless as more and more people get those degrees. What happened to trades? What happened to skills? What happened to apprenticeships?
Of coures, I say this but I have two B.S. degrees...or maybe that BS degrees.
posted
I didn't go to college on purpose, Christine, and so far I haven't regretted my decision.
I figured my version of the American dream involved me staying home with kids anyway, during which time I wouldn't need to use a degree. And if I want, I can go to school later on, when they are older. The degree would have more relevance anyway.
Also, I knew early on what my strengths and desires tended towards: writing, teaching, acting and public speaking. I maintain that a degree in any of those fields is not a requirement to succeed.
And who says you have to go to college to learn things? I teach myself new stuff every single day.
Right now I teach part time (Jr. and Sr. High level) and write my own curriculum. I spend 3-5 hours a day either writing or on writing-related learning, i.e. critiquing, reading writing books, talking to writers.
I'm lucky enough to now be a stay at home mom but every job I've ever gotten I worked side by side with college grads, who made the same wage as me. I've even gotten jobs that required a bachelor's degree on the strength of good interview and test taking skills.
So, looking back, I know I made the right choice. In the future, who knows?
posted
Plot and character are certainly important---but I'm often drawn to those works that, crudely put, take me to some place I've never been. Though I doubt if that would appeal to me much if the characters weren't there. (Scattered exceptions among what I've read---like, say, Stapledon's "Last and First Men" and "Star Maker," which, in all essentials, don't have characters.)
What makes a good plot? Setup, crisis, resolution. Problems solved. Characters learning something from the experiences they've gone through. Room for a sequel without any actual need to write one.
posted
I'm slightly surprised at some of the responses to this.
For a start, who says that the professor is looking for "one" answer? Perhaps the professor is looking for a well-argued and solidly reasoned response, not a by-rote list that someone looked up on a website.
"Thinking outside the box" certainly has its place - after all, it betokens originality, and that's surely something every writer needs. But do we "think outside the box" in terms of vocabulary (making up new words) or grammar (breaking the "laws" of syntax? The answer to both these questions may be "yes", ("Clockwork Orange" and "Ulysses" - the James Joyce version, not Homer - spring to mind), but there are limits even to those techniques. Similarly, there should be limits to how non-linear or incomprehensible or illogical your plot should be.
I'd suggest the important elements in plot would be logical consistency; dramatic tension and pacing; and a resolution (at least partial) that gives the reader some satisfaction that the story is over and done (many authors write utterly unresolved books, these days, but one can cogently argue that the plot is the arc of the whole story, not an individually published chunk - after all, there's no real "resolution" at the end of the specific volumes of Tolkein's supposed "trilogy", but then he never wrote it as a "trilogy" - it was the physical size of the complete work that dictated it being published in three volumes).
There will always be exceptions that people can point to - successful books that don't follow those patterns - but they will be just that; exceptions, rare instances in which some combination of genius and luck has allowed a particular author to have great success with a work that, at another time or in another context, might have been tossed in the trash be editor after editor after editor.
posted
Good thing you don't live in New Jersey, autumn...I heard recently that they're requiring home schooling moms to have the same qualifications as a teacher...the same ludicrous qualifications I should say. I've seen no evidence that a four year degree helps teachers teach in the first place, let alone all the continuing education...
Posts: 3567 | Registered: May 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Depends on where you go to school. My wife has a degree in elementary education from a small, conservative school that focuses on traditional models of education -- and I'm convinced that she's a far better teacher coming out than she was coming in (and not just from being four years older). Maybe she could have learned all the things she learned there on her own -- but not everyone can, and it's tough to get things like peer teaching/review on your own.
And yes, be glad you're not in NJ/NY (or any major metropolitan area, for that matter). I tried getting part-time teaching employment some time back on the highschool or junior high level. The range of requirements for even substitute teachers here is unbelievable, even in the private schools (I tried in public and private schools in both states, since I'm right on the border). And yes, they are trying hard to squash homeschooling -- it produces kids that don't fit the mold. In time to come, we may be very glad for my master's and my wife's education degree.
posted
Christine, can I point out that the very next sentence after the one you quote and refute reads:
quote: The answer to both these questions may be "yes", ("Clockwork Orange" and "Ulysses" - the James Joyce version, not Homer - spring to mind), but there are limits even to those techniques.
Limits such as inventing one new word, rather than a thousand? Limits such as using sentence fragments but a comprehensible word order and structure, perhaps?
Your novel has been accepted for published and that is wonderful; I can as yet only dream of the day that happens for me. But can I ask: Is your plot logically consistent? Does it have dramatic tension and pacing? Does it have a resolution? My guess is that you'll answer "yes" to those three questions, and my guess is that the vast majority of novelists, published and otherwise, would do the same. Hence my suggestion that those elements might be considered as being among those that "make up a satisfying plot". Arguably, they are not elements of a plot, but "meta-elements", so it's possible that wetwilly's professor would give me an F-. Such is the joy of opinion; they aren't right or wrong, they're just opinions.
posted
You're right -- I didn't read that carefully enough.
And in any case, I think that there are probably things that work most of the time and things that don't work most of the time. I just got through reading the most incredible laundry list of things to do and not to do in beginning a story (on another site) and I've been put off by it ever since...it and things like it that try to give me a formula for fiction.
But yes, my novel has a central conflict, steadily increasing tension, and a climactic conclusion.
I watched a movie called "Bounce" a couple years ago. It was fairly popular, maybe because of the popular actosr in it more than anything else, but it was the most interesting thing I'd ever seen because, IMHO, the climax came at the beginning and the story steadily spiralled downward to a valid but completely unexciting ending. Completely backwards. And not at all satisfying, but *someone* must have liked it.
[This message has been edited by Christine (edited March 08, 2006).]
[This message has been edited by Christine (edited March 08, 2006).]
posted
Oh, absolutely; I hate formulas and checklists - give me a list of dos and don'ts and, like as not, I'll spend my time finding examples that contradict it.
"Bounce" rings a bell, but I haven't seen it. What about "Donnie Darko"? That kind of does the same thing, in that the beginning is the moment of drama, but then at the end, the end kind of becomes, or negates, the beginning, according to interpretation... and I liked "Donnie Darko", although I'm not sure if it's not nearly as clever as it thinks it is, or whether it's far, far too clever for me to understand. Orboth.
Printer-friendly view of this topic
