Plot

In narrative, plot is a literary technique; it is the rendering and ordering of the events and actions of a story, particularly towards the achievement of some particular artistic or emotional effect.

Story arc

Plot is often schematically represented as an arc reflecting the rising action described in the following phases:

1. Initial situation – the beginning. It is the first incident that makes the story move.
2. Conflict or Problem – goal which the main character of the story has to achieve.
3. Complication or Rising action – obstacles which the main character has to overcome.
4. Climax – highest point of interest of the story.
5. Dénouement or Resolution – what happens to the character after overcoming all obstacles and reaching his goal, or failing to achieve the desired result and not reaching his goal.
6. Conclusion – the end result

As with all such generalizations, the schemata has some merit but fails to account for the totality of different plot possibilities. A more systematic approach was offered by literary critics in the 20th century, especially those associated with Formalism.

Fabula and sjuzhet

The Russian Formalists, especially Viktor Shklovsky and Boris Eichenbaum, introduced the distinction between fabula and sjezhet. Previously plot was considered to be a part of the content. However, the formalists argued convincingly that the plot was part of the formal property of the text.

The fabula, or fable was the basic material from which the story was constructed–what the Formalists referred to as the literary быть (byt'), or given. In one famous example, Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina was described as the story of an adultress who meets an unhappy end. However, the sjuzhet, or plot of the story is the twists and turns of the narrative based on the author's deployment of the literary devices used to tell the story. The fabula refers to what is narrated, the sjuzhet, or plot, refers to how it is told. The author uses a variety of plot techiques, or devices.

Plot devices

Plot devices are the literary techniques that the author uses to advance the plot. The author's narrative style is based on the types of narrative techiques, or plot device that the author employs. There are numerous stock plot devices. An example of some plot devices include:

• Flashback, general term for altering time sequences, taking characters back to the beginning of the tale, for instance.
• Foreshadowing, hinting at events to occur later.
• Frame story, or a story within a story, where a main story is used to organize a series of shorter stories. Early examples include Panchatantra, Arabian Nights and The Decameron. A more modern example is Brian Jacques The Legend of Luke.
• Framing device, the usage of a single action, scene, event, setting, or any element of significance at the beginning and end of a work.
• Chekhov's gun, the insertion of an object of apparent irrelevance early on in a narrative, the purpose of which is only revealed later on in the story.
• Defamiliarization, technique of forcing the reader to recognize common things in an unfamiliar or strange way, in order to enhance perception of the familiar.
• Deus ex machina (God out of the Machine), a plot device dating back to ancient Greek theater, where the primary conflict is resolved through a means that seems unrelated to the story (i.e. a God comes down out of nowhere and solves everything, saving the character from peril). In modern times, the Deus ex machina is often considered a clumsy method, to be avoided in order not to frustrate readers or viewers.

Subplot

In addition to the main plot, a story may have one or more subplots. The main plot is sometimes called the A-Plot while a subplot may be referred to as the B-Plot.

Suspension of disbelief

Suspension of disbelief is the reader's temporary acceptance of story elements as believable, regardless of how implausible they may seem in real life.

Forms

Plots have been developed in a wide range of genres and forms: tragic, comedy, romance, satire.

The term plot-driven is sometimes used to describe fiction in which a preconceived storyline is the main thrust, with the characters' behavior being molded by this inevitable sequence of events. Plot-driven is regarded as being the opposite of character-driven, in which the character is the main focus of the work.

History

Aristotle discussed plot in his classic work on tragedy, Poetics. According to Aristotle's Poetics, Tragedy contains 6 parts: plot, character, diction, reasoning, spectacular, and lyric poetry. “Plot (mythos) is the source and soul of tragedy followed in decreasing order of importance by the character (ethe), thought (dianonia), language (lexis), and music and stagecraft”. has many parts that compose poetry and stories. However, according to Aristotle Plot is the most important part. “Of the six parts of tragedy, plot, characters, diction (speech), thought, spectacle, song (cf. VI, 1449b 31–1450b 21) the plot is not only the "most important part" but even "the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy; the characters come only in second place" ” . The plot makes the story complete. It brings everything together and makes everything a whole. “The prominent quality of the mythos is, in fact, as mentioned by Aristotle through the concept of the ‘whole of a certain magnitude’”. The plot needs to be throughout the entire story. For it to be a good story it must have the plot throughout it and not in just the beginning. “The plot must be "complete" and "whole" in that it must have a clearly recognizable beginning, middle, and end. That is why good plots should "neither begin nor end haphazardly" , but be linked by causal necessity or probability; one criterion for the "completeness" of a plot is "that the whole plot will be disjointed and disturbed if any one of its parts is displaced or removed" ” . If there are many different things going on throughout the story, the plot should not get lost in the other things that are going on. “The plot should not get lost in trivialities and episodes; such plots are made by "bad poets," who are not able to relate the individual actions to one another "in accordance with the probable or necessary" ” . The plot also needs to be a certain length. Plots must be as long as they need to be so that it becomes full and keeps the reader involved. “Just as an organic whole such as the body of an organism "needs a certain magnitude which may be easily embraced in one view; in the same way the plot needs a certain length which can be easily embraced by the memory." ” . To get a reader involved the plot must also have an emotional effect over the reader to keep them reading. If there is no emotion then the reader will not want to keep on going. “The emotional effect peculiar to the tragic action is therefore that of promoting the experience of feelings such as pity and terror, which constitutes the ultimate end at which the representation of the mythos aims” .

Aristotle’s notion of mythos in Poetics differs from the modern interpretation of plot most prominently in its role in drama. According to Elizabeth Belfiore’s Tragic Pleasures; Aristotle on Plot and Emotion, Aristotle believed that “plot is essential to tragedy, ethos [character] is second to plot” . Aristotle believes that “psychological and ethical considerations are secondary to the events themselves” . Aristotle’s view focuses nearly all of his attention on the events of the plot, which, in turn, leaves the characters to become merely conveyors of situations rather than humans with convictions and motives. According to Meir Sternberg, Aristotle “restricts the well-made epic or play to a ‘whole’ (holos) action, with ‘beginning, middle, and end’ linked throughout by necessary or probable sequence, so that nothing will follow its cutoff point”). Aristotle’s definition of plot states that every event portrayed and every action taken is a logical progression from previous events. Aristotle’s focuses on mythos (plot) as opposed to a focus on ethos (character) or “conflict either in the sense of struggle within a person or in the sense of the clashing of opposed principles” . Aristotle explains that tragedy imitates the actions and lives of human beings rather than human beings themselves . Aristotle concerns himself with the universally logical events of a plot, rather than the specific and often illogical conflicts between characters associated with those events.

Many of Aristotle’s conclusions directly oppose those of modern narratologists such as Vladimir Propp, who “reverses Aristotle's theory that ‘tragedy is imitation not of human beings but of actions,’ by writing that stories are about characters who act” . Propp also argues that basic story elements, which he defines as functions, “are in fact ethically colored, either in themselves or because they are defined in terms of a character who has specific ethical qualities” . Propp’s viewpoint directly conflicts with that of Aristotle in Poetics because Aristotle states that drama consists of a logical sequence of events that is not affected by ethical dilemmas. G. W. F. Hegel, a noted philosopher and narratologist, believed that tragedy consists of the conflicts between each character’s ethical justification and the resolution toward a greater rational good. . Hegel’s viewpoint places character conflict as the central focus of tragedy, in clear contradiction to Aristotle’s plot-centric theory of tragedy. According to Meir Sternberg, modernist dramatic theory endorses the “open ending, and poststructuralism for preaching endless indeterminacy,” which is most noticeable in the modern absurdist theater . In comparison, Sternberg asserts that Aristotle’s viewpoint directs all complex endings and forms of closure into simple cause-and-effect sequences. .

Plot of historical events

Epistemological historian Paul Veyne (1971: 46-47; English trans. by Min Moore-Rinvolucri 1984: 32-33) applies the concept to real-life events, defining plot as “the fabric of history,” a system of interconnected historical facts:

“Facts do not exist in isolation, in the sense that the fabric of history is what we shall call a plot, a very human and not very ‘scientific’ mixture of material causes, aims, and chances—a slice of life, in short, that the historian cuts as he [sic] wills and in which facts have their objective connections and relative importance...the word plot has the advantage of reminding us that what the historian studies is as human as a play or a novel....then what are the facts worthy of rousing the interest of the historian? All depends on the plot chosen; a fact is interesting or uninteresting...in history as in the theater, to show everything is impossible—not because it would require too many pages, but because there is no elementary historical fact, no event worthy atom. If one ceases to see events in their plots, one is sucked into the abyss of the infinitesimal.”

See also

• Dramatic structure
• Plot device
• Plot hole
• Georges Polti's The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Bickham, Jack M. Scene & Sequel: How to Construct Fiction with Scene-by-scene Flow, Logic and Readability. Cincinnati, OH: Writer's Digest Books, 1993.  ISBN 0898795516 ISBN 9780898795516

External links

• Movie Plots - movieplots.googlepages.com. Retrieved November 3, 2007.

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