posted
When you think about it, most plots are pretty stupid. Romeo and Juliet come to mind: thirteen year old kids from families who can't stand each other fall in love in a single night and then kill themselves. (Makes you want to kick their stupid adolescent a- ... and kill their parents in the process) Wyrms (Orson Scott Card): secret heir of the shmeerp dinasty gets hot for a disgusting ancient insectlike creature. Somehow all those ridiculous ideas turn out well or very well on paper. How do you know when to stop? How do you know that that particular plot is too cheesy even for a speculative fiction audience?
Posts: 507 | Registered: Jun 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
Honestly, they only sound cheesy when you bust them out of context and summarize them in fortune-cookie format.
At least in science fiction and fantasy plots (which, let's face is, has a greater chance of sounding corny upon close inspection), the major action points evolve naturally out of a developed world with interesting characters and a meaningful conflict. The plot will be driven by your protagonist's need.
Holly Lisle said that writing is like dancing naked on your roof. If you're going to be constantly worried about what people are going to think of you, or your books, you're not going to make it. Suck it up, let go, and don't worry about. Get naked, find a ladder, and start dancing.
posted
In a sense, you can boil down all plots to one-sentence cheese.
Boy meets girl.
Hero rescues universe.
Hero saves king from assassination plot.
Detective solves mystery.
It's ALL in the implementation. Beloved authors make us laugh, cry, and scream right along with the characters they create.
Write what you like because it will be much easier to evoke emotion in the reader if you can evoke it in yourself.
(P.S. I do not acknowledge Wyrms...I like OSC's writing too much to imagine he would have written that one. Or maybe, I suppose, every author is entitled to one bad book.)
posted
Most of the stories that seem cheesey feel that way because they are either too unoriginal or too unbelievable/absurd.
Since many plots are based on an old idea with interesting additions, they seem bad when reduced because you're removing all the new, interesting twists the author has added and effectively summarizing it as its archtype.
On the other hand, if the story is very complex, you leave a lot out when reducing, and it becomes unbelievable for lack of detail.
Of course, everyone has a different knowledge base of stories, so everyone has different threshholds for how original or believable a story has to be to be 'good'.
posted
As for sci-fi/fantasy plots or for that matter fiction being cheesy - well that depends on the opinion of the reader. For instance I am reading Robert Jordan and I know the plot, can predict the end - but I read it. Mostly because I enjoy reading that type of story. Some people read Piers Anthony and groan, but when you are writing and pouring your soul into it - I hope a writer wouldn't think it cheesy...otherwise throw it away
Posts: 287 | Registered: Jul 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
You're looking at it all wrong, Sara. There are only a set number of plots. Heinlein said there are three -- boy meets girl, the little man becomes king, the bastard gets what's coming to him. And John Gardner (the author of Grendel, not the James Bond one) said there are only three plots too: boy meets girl, the quest, and a strange rides into town. Combined, that gives us five. Isn't there a book that suggests there are 30?
But plots are merely a skeleton that gives direction. What I've discovered is that knowing the basic plot your working with gives you the ending of the story. A boy meets girl plot MUST end with them either getting together or going their separate ways. The QUEST plot must end with them finding what they're looking for. Etc.
What makes a story isn't the plot, but, as Christine notes, everything else -- characters, theme, twists along the way, the prose, authorial comments, etc. But character mostly. Thus since every quest plot must end with them finding what's being sought, that doesn't tell us anything about how the transformation of the characters, nor does it tell us anything about how the characters react when they've finally found their object of desire.
For example, THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Does anyone doubt that the Ring will be destoryed? Of course not. But, then, what keeps us reading. Everything else. And when Frodo is finally at Mount Doom, we are reading for the pleasure of seeing him throw the ring into the fire. But he doesn't (or can't). And that's the big surprise. I remember having to put the book down and walk around the house a couple of times after the destruction of the ring, I just couldn't believe what I'd read.
One last thing. As Heinlein notes, in speculative fiction, you have two elements working together -- the plot and the speculative element. So in his novel THE PUPPET MASTERS, you have the basic plots of boy meets girl and the little man becomes king plot as well as the speculative element of an alien race that latches itself on the human spine and takes over the human body. Once I realized this, the whole way I approached a book changed.
Hope this helps.
[This message has been edited by Garp (edited August 03, 2006).]
posted
Why is it that the girl never builds the boy? I've never seen a story or book or anything that involved a female building a male robot/android companion. Anyone else?
Posts: 247 | Registered: Apr 2006
| IP: Logged |
Even the plot isn't about the plot. Plots are simply stupid things.
It's all about how your characters react in the situations that the the plot provides for. Plots are just the excuse to expose the character by showing the characters and how they develop through their actions.
Personally, I like to think that there are two plots. The external plot (my nomenclature) is the one linked to the MacGuffin. It's the one that gets boiled down to one sentence, boy saves world, etc. In the end it's not all that important.
What's more important is the internal plot - this charts the emotional journey your character goes on while they're all wrapped up in the external plot.
(Apologize the minor rant that's about to happen)
This is why I think that the attempt to distinguish between plot-driven and character-driven novels is absurd. The plot and the character should be integrally linked. The events of the plot should only be able to take place because of the character in them. And the change in the character can only come about through the events of the plot.
Wyrms...that's one of Card's best books. More accessable than Hart's Hope, more complex yet unified than anything else he's written
"Plot" is something you impose on a story after it happens, a way of indexing your memory of the story to events so that you can find similarities between different stories. It doesn't tell you anything about the power of a given story.
posted
MacGuffin. Hmmm. Maybe that's why Spider-man 2 is one of my favorite movies, despite the stupid device that Doc Ock kept building. (In the end, why didn't something that was essentially a miniture sun, create steam when submerged beneath water?)
But the device wasn't important. Peter's relationships, with Mary Jane, Aunt May, Harry, Doc Ock, and his competing obligations, ect-- those were the important things.
[This message has been edited by ChrisOwens (edited August 03, 2006).]
quote: Why is it that the girl never builds the boy? I've never seen a story or book or anything that involved a female building a male robot/android companion. Anyone else?
You can't build a filthy-rich android.
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited August 03, 2006).]
posted
Can't remember the name of it right now but there was a movie that starred Robin Williams playing the part of an android/robotout a couple of years ago. The girl didn't build him but after her family bought him she came to care for and evntually love him.
[This message has been edited by spcpthook (edited August 04, 2006).]
posted
I once read on here that science fiction and fantasy plots and story lines are only limited to a persons imagination. If you have a dull imagination and can't envision what the author is trying to show, then why the hell are you reading SF/F!?
There are very few plots that have not being done, and if I could think of one and write it excellently I could get published easily Anyway, most ideas we write about are recycled or modified with a few addon's. Even romance novels have to be changed for there are millions of them! Literally!
posted
Women tend to be seen as the ones who have the control and the poewr, sexually speaking, which means that they typically do not have to create men so much as pick and choose from the ones available to them. You also often see plots in which women have to choose between two or more men but rarely see the reverse. (And I'm not talking about the plots in which men/women leave their existing relationship for a new one...a subsect of romance that kinda bugs me most of the time.) Posts: 3567 | Registered: May 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I, too, am bothered by the romance sect that has people leaving fine relationships for more romantic ones.
Though it happens in reality, it doesn't make a great story.
I liked that aspect of the recent Superman movie. They didn't go there.
I'm of the opinion that every character in a story must deserve their fate. If a Mary leaves Joe, we need to show that the relationship wasn't working.
The exception is the death of secondary characters. An undeserving character can die to fuel the conviction of the MC.
I do see in several stories men having to choose between women, however. Like Magic and Dragons, I blame this on the male author fantasizing about yet another thing they will never see in real life. (Rand and his many women is a great example - worst love stories ever - all (4?,5?) of them)
posted
Nothing like going to the absurd to get people to post. Of course all plots have been told before, and of course it's the execution that makes or breaks a story. But haven't you ever stopped in the middle of writing something and thought, oh crap, I just wrote another boy mets girl story, or oh no, I'm betting the bad guy is going to loose again. My post was meant to make a joke on all us "writers" and on humanity in general. There must be other plots, out there, but our brains are constrained to the archetypical ones because we are, after all, only human.
Posts: 507 | Registered: Jun 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
Lets say there are 8 major plot types (there are more but I want to keep the math simple) For each of those types, lets give them a severity rating from 1 to 5. (for instance a boy meets girl story with a "eternal love/soulmate" would be a 5, and a "meet and be friends" would be a 1. Now consider that you have, in your novel 1 main plot and probably at least a dozen minor plots. Suddenly you have 13^(8*5) story possibilites. (Thats a very very large number)
So, it hasn't all been done before. Your major plot probably has, but the differences are nigh infinite when you bring in the supporting plots.
quote:Can't remember the name of it right now but there was a movie that starred Robin Williams playing the part of an android/robotout a couple of years ago. The girl didn't build him but after her family bought him she came to care for and evntually love him.
(I just can't resist.) I think it was called "The Bicentennial Man." There's an Isaac Asimov story of the same title---it's worth a look.
posted
There's a saying: There's nothing new under the sun. That definitly applies to books, since they all essentially have the same theme (or themes). Nothing is actually new. It's just a new take on an old story. Like with fantasy, at least a quarter of all fantasy books are new variations of old fairy tales, like sleeping beauty. That doesn't mean they're not good books, they're just not as original as you'd think.
Posts: 4 | Registered: Aug 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm not sure every plot is stupid, but the fact a good book can have a stupid plot proves my theory that it all comes down to character.
My WIP intentionally has the plot of something you'd see on Cinemax at 2AM, but I, at least try, to get you so attached to the charcters you won't notice or if you do you won't care.
Printer-friendly view of this topic
Anyway, most ideas we write about are recycled or modified with a few addon's. Even romance novels have to be changed for there are millions of them! Literally! 
