Definition of Plot for Writers

Plot integrates dramatic action, a character’s emotional development, and thematic significance in a story.  

 

To further break down plot: 

PLOT is a series of

scenes

deliberately arranged by

cause and effect

to create

dramatic action

 filled with

conflict, tension, suspense, and/or curiosity

 to further the

character’s emotional development

and provide

thematic significance

 

What does that mean?

A.     Scenes

Plot is a series of scenes that show outward action.  Scenes are in the now, the physical, moment-by-moment.  Action is a scene marker, as is dialogue.  Think of each scene as a little story plot of its own.

 

B.    Cause and Effect

Plot is a series of scenes deliberately arranged by cause and effect.  Cause and effect means that each scene comes directly from the preceding scene.  One scene causes the next, creating a satisfying story for audiences because each scene is organic. From the seeds you plant in the first scene, the next scene emerges.

 

C.    Dramatic Action

Plot is a series of scenes deliberately arranged by cause and effect to create dramatic action.  Dramatic action means that the scenes played out moment-by-moment through action and dialogue include tension.

 

D.   Conflict, Tension, Suspense, and/or Curiosity

 

Plot is a series of scenes deliberately arranged by cause and effect to create dramatic action filled with conflict, tension, and suspense. Story is conflict shown in scene. Conflict, tension, and suspense force the audience members to the edge of their seats. Conflict, tension, and suspense are built through setbacks, not through good news.

 

E.    Character’s Emotional Development

Plot is a series of scenes deliberately arranged by cause and effect to create dramatic action filled with conflict, tension, and suspense to further the character’s emotional development.  Authors’ and screenwriters’ develop story plots around the characters. More than anything else, an audience and readers identify most with the character.  Characters in a story show the story through their reactions and emotions to the dramatic action. 

We connect to one another through emotion. A character able to “show” an emotional response to the conflict and action engages the reader, while a character who merely “tells” how she feels about what happened is boring and often unbelievable. A character’s action or behavioral response to conflict, during the event itself and later, in relating the conflict, is most compelling to an audience.  Your audience needs to understand and care about your characters who represent the heart of your story.  Emotional meaning always comes from your characters.

 

F.    Thematic Significance

Plot is a series of scenes deliberately arranged by cause and effect to create dramatic action filled with conflict, tension, and suspense to further the character’s emotional development and create thematic significance.  Thematic significance ties your entire story together. It is the main thrust of your story and what you hope to prove through your presentation.  The theme is the why: what you want your audience to take away after having read your story. The deeper meaning of the story becomes the thematic significance. 

The Deeper the Meaning, the More Lasting the Project

Every story that becomes a classic has at least three universal plot threads:

(1) Character Emotional Development
(2) Dramatic Action
(3) Thematic Significance

Many writers develop one plot line at a time. The plot line you first choose to carry through the entire first draft is usually directly tied to your strength; strength determines preference (Take the Test).

Whether you begin with the Character Emotional Development plot line or the Dramatic Action plot line, most writers put off the Thematic Significance plot line to the end.

By your final draft, you have at least a vague idea of the deeper meaning of your story, what you are trying to say and the ways you have attempted to communicate that meaning through your story to your audience.

Crystallize the meaning you are attempting to convey into two specific universal themes and improve your chances of creating a classic blockbuster project.

Two Kinds of Thematic Significance

When a character is changed at depth over time, a story becomes thematically significant.

1) Character Emotional Development Thematic Significance

In Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Nick serves as the narrator. Of all the characters in the story, Nick is the only one who is changed by the Dramatic Action, thus making Nick also the protagonist. (The definition of a protagonist is the character most changed by the dramatic action in the story. Unlike The Great Gatsby, if other characters are changed by the dramatic action in your story, then the protagonist is determined as a matter of degree and significance of change.

Some might point to Gatsby as the protagonist, alive in the beginning and dead in the end. What counts with thematic significance is not the change from alive to dead, but how the dramatic action creates a long-term emotional change in the protagonist.

Nick sets his own thematic significance in Chapter 3 when he states that he is one of the few honest people he has known. Since he is the narrator, the reader is curious to know if he is reliable, or not. Does Nick have a clear sense of himself from his time in the war as he thinks? Or, does he have more to learn about himself before he can accurately judge himself? In the end, Nick understands he has only begun to live up to his initial assessment of himself as stated in the beginning.

A thematic significance statement for Nick’s character emotional plotline could be:

Only with maturity and assuming personal and moral responsibility are we able to accurately judge ourselves and others.

Hands on
1) Who is the protagonist of your story?
2) Write down a Thematic Significance statement that encompasses the emotional transformation your protagonist undergoes from the beginning and throughout to the end of the story.
3) Infuse your story with the theme through details and comparisons, metaphor and simile.


2) Dramatic Action Thematic Significance

The Great Gatsby, as with all classic stories, deals with universal themes. Along with Nick’s personal thematic significance, there is also an overall meaning or Thematic Significance for the entire story.

A thematic significance statement for The Great Gatsby as a whole could be:

Ambition for money and another man’s wife leads to destruction.

Hands on:
1) Write down a Thematic Significance statement that encompasses the meaning of the overall story. In other words, what do all of the scenes and dramatic action together add up to mean in the end.
2) Infuse your story with this theme through details and comparisons, metaphor and simile.

When a story embodies universal themes for the characters themselves and through all of the elements and details of the story itself, a story becomes lasting.

Refer to Blockbuster Plots Pure & Simple for more tips about each of the three universal plot lines and how to incorporate each one in your writing project and have fun doing it.

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU THINK PLOT?

Recently, I asked a random sampling of writers not familiar with my work what they thought of plot. Most of the answers I received bordered on hostile. I include a few of the tamer ones here:

"I view plot as an enemy that must be destroyed, lest it pilliage my village and rape my wimmins." UJ

"When I think of plot, I stop thinking about writing." JT

"I have a deep disdain for plot, really." LJ

I was most surprised when I read AK's comment: "All anyone cares about is plot, plot, plot."

Most writers I come in contact with "care" about plot because they're grappling with not only what plot is but, even more importantly, how best to use it.

Plot is more than a prescribed course of dramatic action.

Action in and of itself is not dramatic. Conflict that creates tension, suspense, mystery, and/or curiosity make action dramatic.
Random action is not dramatic. Action that unfolds through cause and effect is.
Action that happens in scene can be dramatic. After all, scene "shows" the action happening moment-by-moment on the page.
Action that happens in summary is not. After all, summary merely "tells" about action.

When a character emotionally anticipates conflict that is coming, emotionally reacts to conflict at hand, and emotionally responds to conflict after the fact, the action is dramatic. Dramatic action paired with meaningful character emotional development then becomes plot.

Plot is deeper than structure.

Dramatic action that happens in a novel, screenplay, memoir, short story, and any other kind of writing that causes a character(s) to react and thus be affected by and changed at depth over the duration of the story. The crux of every good story is character transformation.

Plot is the full integration of dramatic action, character emotional development and thematic significance in a story.

Some writers prefer to start writing about or with characters. Other writers begin with action. Still others begin with only a point they want to prove. All starting points are equally valid. It's the showing up and starting that counts.

Are you confident about what you know about plot and how to use it? Are you ever intimidated by the concept of plot? Confused by it?

I keep asking these types of questions because I'm afraid plot gets a bad rap. I'm hoping by asking what you think when you think plot, I might better understand the opposition.....

What do you think when you think plot?

Kids and teens learn in school that plot is a series of events linked by cause and effect.

That definition of makes me think a jewel thief wrote it. Someone dressed in black in a room full of shadows. A lightbulb hangs from the center of the room. She's wearing all black, and chalking out for the others her plot to steal a diamond ring.

Step One:
Get past the guard at the front door

Right off the bat and she is in trouble. HOW does she get by the guard at the door? The character element.

If you're a more intuitive writer, you come at this story from the character first -- A woman dressed in black breezes past the bank guard, her lips pursed in a kiss reserved for friends only.

Either way, a writer asks: because that happened, what happens next? (scenes linked by cause and effect).

Character messes with a straight-forward plot based on the series of events.

I prefer thinking about plot as all three threads intertwined:
Character Emotional Development
Dramatic Action
Thematic Significance

What do you think when you think plot?