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by Bill Johnson
Understanding what a plot is creates a foundation for an ability to create one.
Unfortunately for most writers, they are consumed with the idea of creating the effect of
what a plot does without first understanding what a plot is.
What a plot does is raise dramatic questions a reader or viewer will follow a story to its
conclusion to get answers.
What a plot is is the process of generating questions around the outcome of a story's
dramatic purpose that gives a story a dramatic shape and outcome fulfilling to an
audience.
Romeo and Juliet is an example of a well-crafted plot. By loving each other in spite of
the mutual hatred of their families, Romeo and Juliet set the story in motion. But it is
the story's plot that makes the story's movement toward its fulfillment dramatic. By
raising up the obstacles that block the love of Romeo and Juliet fulfilling itself, the
story's plot makes the lover's plight more dramatic. Even knowing the story's outcome,
the action of its plot -- moment by moment -- generates for the story's audience a
dramatic experience of the power of a love that will not be denied.
In any story, as characters act to achieve goals, the actions of such characters should
advance the story toward its resolution and fulfillment. Because other characters are
driven to shape a story's dramatic purpose to their design, they are naturally in
opposition. As different characters act and block each other, they generate new
obstacles to each others progress. This escalates the drama over character goals,
scenes and the story's outcome.
A plot operates around the effect of making a story's movement toward resolution and
fulfillment dramatic. The catch is that it's only when a story is in motion that it has a
movement to block. Without this quality of dramatic tension generated by a plot around
a story's movement, a story appears to be a collection of incidents. The incidents may
be dramatic individually, but collectively they fail to engage the interest of an audience.
They fail because they lack a discernible purpose that arises out of resolving a story's
dramatic purpose.
The key here is to understand that to describe a story about love is not to describe its
plot. A story is about an issue of human need. A plot is what makes that issue acted out
to resolution and fulfillment dramatic. To create a great plot about love is to turn what
might appear to be a worn story idea, two teenagers in love, into Romeo and Juliet.
To illustrate how a plot grows from a story's premise, consider the novel The Hunt For
Red October. On the surface, it appears to be a plot-driven thriller about a Lithuaniandescended commander of a Russian nuclear submarine attempting to flee to America
and freedom. On a story level, however, it is about a battle between freedom and
authoritarianism. This is laid out in the story's premise, The courage to battle
oppression leads to freedom.
Because readers desire to experience that state where the values of freedom win out
over oppression, they readily internalize this story's movement. Because the story in its
every action proved its premise, it drew in readers. Its highly praised plot succeeded
because it made the underlying conflict of the story, freedom battling oppression, clear
and dramatic.