The Plot Thickens

[rowyn]

A comment from level_head yesterday about "Man vs Nature" stories, where the central conflict revolves around people struggling against natural forces, reminded me of a couple of books that I've read. In them, the author posited a type of magic/psionics/whatever wherein certain people had the ability to prevent natural disasters. The world itself was rife with natural disasters, so there was a ton of demand for these services.

I thought this was a pretty neat concept, allowing for a class of people with powerful, protective abilities but not ones used in combat. However, while the books were about some of these supernaturally endowed people, the plots of both novels revolved around conflicts with other people and uses of their powers that weren't covered by the initial set-up of the book.

This strikes me as a very common thread in books: whatever conflict is presented at the outset of a novel is not the real conflict of the book. Some mystery or twist will reveal itself partway through to change the direction or the nature of the story. If the story at the outset seems to be "who will win this big race?" then later on it'll turn out to be about the people who are trying to fix the results of the race, or the lesson that protagonist needs to learn about the importance of winning, or that the trophy for winning the game contains a hidden doomsday device, etc. You get the idea.

And I wonder: is this an inevitable feature of novels? Is it particularly hard to tell a good story that's also straightforward, that's simply about winning the race, or catching the killer, or rescuing the princess? Or does the plot have to thicken from there, to make the story something new and unexpected?

Comments

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

If the plot doesn't thicken, it's more appropriate for a short story. Novels are really long so they kind of have to be complicated.

[rowyn]

You know, even short stories have twists more often than not. It seems like most short stories are set up for a "gotcha!" at the end, to surprise the reader.

I think if I define this most broadly, as "any time something happens that surprises the characters and/or the reader", then it's inevitable for any story. If things go exactly the way everyone expects it to, there's no real conflict or tension in the story.

But in a narrower sense, it's doable. The story about rescuing the people from the avalanche can really be about rescuing the people from the avalanche, and not about the ski resort's enemies having plotted to cause the avalanche, or how global warming causes avalanches, or whatnot. It's just that the focus will then be on the setbacks the rescuers face and how they overcome them and so forth.

I do feel like I don't read many of the latter sort of stories, though. I don't write them, either. My own writing suffers from plot-inflation, where I keep upping the stakes instead of sticking to one problem and solving it.

[howardtayler.livejournal.com]

The three-act format dictates the twist you've described:

ACT I: protagonist tackles problem

ACT II: protagonist discovers REAL problem

ACT III: protagonist solves real problem

If you don't like this format, don't write to it... but don't be surprised if people see your writing as simplistic (even though successfully breaking form is anything but simple.) We're conditioned to expect a twist of some sort in ACT II.

[rowyn]

It's not so much that I don't like the format -- the format's pretty cool -- as that I'm trying to think of how to subvert it effectively.

Also, it seems like a shame to me that this author went to the trouble of coming up with a cool and unusual concept, but then didn't go on to play within the confines of that concept. It's like she needed to break the rules of her own setting in order to get that "twist" in, even though the setting was already something atypical that I hadn't seen done before.

[level-head.livejournal.com]

The nature of the twist is important, I think.

Let me ramble for a moment: Nature exists for us mostly as meta-patterns, behaviors that arise out of often surprisingly simple rules. They produce results that often seem unpredictable, but really do logically follow from the rules once understood.

No one would have predicted a snowflake, for example, from the 100 degree or so offset between hydrogen atoms in a water molecule -- but knowing snowflakes exist, we can figure out how they worked.

A good story works this way. Early on, the rules have been established, and the best-feeling "twist" may be completely unexpected, but you can understand after the fact how it logically follows from the premises and constraints laid down.

Your own stories are quite good this way. Nanodevices have often played important (and surprising) roles, but you laid down enough rules beforehand that the effects could have been anticipated, and thus the twists don't feel like "cheating".

Too often, with magic, a new magical ability appears ... magically ... to save the day, and the idea of empathizing with the struggle is as nonsensical as the "battles" in the later Matrix movies. Lots of show and flash, but I no longer cared.

And a good novel must make you care to be completely satisfying.

Your own story evolved somewhat in this aspect. When Breya was bound and faced with immediate torture, we were detached enough to think it was funny (as you intended). When exactly the same thing happened to Bunni years later, you had your audience quite anxious indeed.

Part of that was because we knew the rules, more or less, and knew that you weren't going to break them to solve the damsel's dire distress.

And yes, the solution was a surprise -- but it logically followed. And you've got to be careful, since you really DO have a super-powerful being with a tendency to put his finger into things and change worlds.

===|==============/ Level Head

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

No one would have predicted a snowflake, for example, from the 100 degree or so offset between hydrogen atoms in a water molecule -- but knowing snowflakes exist, we can figure out how they worked.

A good story works this way. Early on, the rules have been established, and the best-feeling "twist" may be completely unexpected, but you can understand after the fact how it logically follows from the premises and constraints laid down.

Nicely put!

-The Gneech

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

"Who will win this big race?" is probably too linear to make a satisfying novel-length story in and of itself. I mean, unless you're going to do a NASCAR-esque lap-by-lap recount (which would make for very dull reading), you're going to end up with: "A started out in the lead, but B passed them quickly. A and B bounced back and forth between first and second place for most of the race, until B clipped A and they both went spinning out, enabling C to win. The end."

You could probably make a satisfying long story out of that by putting in a lot of sub-plots for every race participant -- but in that case, the race is just a framework, and not the actual story itself, if you see what I mean.

-The Gneech

[rowyn]

As a more specific example:

There was a mediocre comedy a few years ago about a "race" from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, I think. The premise was that these game organizers in Vegas would pick a handful of people at random off the street, and promise a million dollars to whoever got to X location in Los Angeles first. High rollers in Vegas would bet on the participants.

Most of the film was about the participants trying to get to Los Angeles. Wacky hijinks ensue.

But there were a few "twists" thrown in, things that break the framework of "this is a race between these participants". It's not like there wasn't enough material there to make a film without those twists, but rather that there wasn't enough ... something. Interest? Surprise? Something. The twists didn't add any time to the film that couldn't've been done with Wacky Hijinks instead.

Similarly, I've seen a couple of films where I knew, at X point in the movie, that the love interest was going to die. Because the film needed a "twist", and that was the only twist that worked. Again, this wasn't a matter of "we haven't got enough material to make a film" but "we need to put the 'surprise' in here or it won't seem like this story had a point". (I saw a third film subvert this, by making the death of the love interest look inevitable, and then saving the person at the end, which was a nice change.)

Maybe that is a matter of "satisfying" -- not that the story is dull, per se, but that most audiences will find it unsatisfying if there isn't some dramatic surprise in there.

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

Oh, I liked that comedy! Rowan Atkinson was great!

And... isn't Speed Racer going to be just racing, with weird things every race/lap?

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Well, there doesn't necessarily need to be a twist, as long as the stakes are raised. I think it's largely that twists are fun to write and, when done well, fun to read. From O'Henry to Whodunits to The Twilight Zone, twists have become a fixture of what contemporary readers expect from a good story. It's not required, so much as expected.

FWIW, I would say that a twist the audience is expecting (say, the death of a love interest), isn't really a twist. In movies, it's almost a genre element. Movies generally have such abbreviated storylines that they have to take shortcuts -- and "kill the love interest" is a quick and easy hook that everybody understands.

I have noticed that I have a well-developed sense of "seeing the twist coming," sometimes to the surprise of everyone around me, and it may be that you do too -- I think everybody who puts serious thought into the craft of storytelling is likely to develop this to some extent. You can see the groundwork for the specific upcoming twist being laid, because you know what "laying groundwork" looks like generally and recognize it for what it is.

-The Gneech

[rowyn]

I don't think the stakes need to be raised -- as with the LOTR example below, sometimes the stakes start out sufficiently high. Unexpected things need to happen, but they don't need to be of The Sixth Sense caliber. :)

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't want to seem like I'm constantly contradicting you, but the stakes keep going up in LotR all the time. Tolkien used the same "threat/haven/threat/haven" pattern in both LotR and The Hobbit. Using the movie version, because it's simpler and some of the details of the book elude me this early on a Sunday morning...

Assuming the story "starts" when they realize they've got the Big, Bad Ring and decide to leave the Shire and meet Gandalf at the Prancing Pony:

A Ringwraith catches up to them in Buckland! (The stakes go up. Instead of just traveling in the wild, now they're being specifically hunted.)

They elude the Ringwraith at first, but then he catches up to them in Buckland! They manage to escape on the ferry, only to see that there are three of them now! (Stakes go up.) [1]

They get to Bree, but Gandalf, the person they were depending on to tell them what to do next, doesn't show! They have to go it alone! (Stakes go up.)

The reason Gandalf didn't show is because Saruman, the benevolent White Wizard, suddenly turns out to be against them and has taken Gandalf prisoner! (Stakes go up.)

They meet a new ally, Aragorn -- but the Ringwraiths have caught up with them! (Stakes go up.)

They escape Bree, only to be caught at Weathertop -- and Frodo is gravely wounded! (Stakes go up.)

etc.

Yes, the overarching goal, i.e., "get rid of the ring" never changes. But at first, "get rid of the ring" means "get it to Bree," then it means "get it to Rivendell," then it means "throw it into Mount Doom" -- each one progressively harder than the last.

-The Gneech

[1] This was something I thought was very well done in the movie, actually, the way there was always another Nazgul every time you saw them, culminating in all nine in the chase to Rivendell. Again ... stakes going up!

[rowyn]

Oh, that's a difference of definition. I think of "stakes going up" as "what the characters are vying over becomes more important". Eg, the "simple murder" that turns out to be part of a big government conspiracy. "Tip-of-the-iceberg" phenomenon. In LotR, the stakes are always "the fate of the free world". But you're thinking of it in terms of "more obvious danger/problems for the characters".

Although this isn't a uniform "things get progressively more dangerous until the climax"; it's usually an alteration of "danger/saftey/more danger/safety/yet more danger" etc, with the riskiest moment being just prior to the climax.

The climax is pretty much defined as "just after the riskiest moment", too. The climax in LotR is when the ring goes into Mt. Doom, even though in the book there's another couple hundred pages to go and several more problems to overcome. The Hobbit is the same way: Bilbo's not home-free once the battle of the six armies is resolved, but that is the climactic moment. (As least, that's where I'd put the climax. Arguably, the climax is the death of Smaug, though.)

Anyway, yes, I do agree that a book will almost always build to the climax, in terms of difficulty for the characters, and the climax will usually come late in the story.

It would be an interesting exercise to have a story with an early climax, though. I think most people would find that unsatisfying.

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

One counterexample I can think of is the Lord of the Rings. Frodo's goal is to carry the ring to Mount Doom and throw it in, and it is made clear right away that resisting the ring's influence is part of the task. Aragorn's objective is to reclaim his kingdom. He and everyone else generally have the goal of fighting off the evil armies until the ring is destroyed. These objectives never change. When they are achieved, all is resolved.

[rowyn]

Oh, yes, that's a good example! Lots happens but the basic premise doesn't really change.

I do wonder a bit if the "twist" phenomenon is a modern obsession, due to a sense that all the good straightforward plots have been done already and that if you don't have a twist it won't be sufficiently original.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

IMO there has to be something unexpected. It doesn't necessarily need to be that the real puzzle to be solved is different from the presented puzzle, it could be obstacles appear that were unforeseen, or the protagonist took a chance and failed - is there any way he can possibly recover from what now appears impossible, or if not, how can he deal with it?

Tim Powers, 'Last Call' - the entire book revolves around that the protagonist made an unwise decision ten years ago, and now is locked into a desperate bid to undo it. Awesome book BTW, you might be intrigued by the use of Tarot symbolism in its magic.

[rowyn]

I'll look into Last Call, too. =) I've read another book or two by Powers and have a vaguely positive recollection of him.

And agreed re: the unexpected. It does seem very frequent for the unforeseen thing to turn out to be some brand-new and unanticipated problem, though.

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

Thinking again of the Pride of Chanur books, also that horrible romance you told me about where the book is narrated from the PoV of a servant who only interacts with people who interact with the protagonists.

Sometimes the 'action' between 'went here did X' and 'went there did Y' comes from the main characters trying to determine what really is going on. Mystery novels, for example, don't have a lot of sudden twists where the problem is really some other problem. Mostly, it's the detective trying to catch up with murderers and the people he runs into along the way. Often, the murderers (or terrorists if it's an action adventure) are shown doing their own thing as well. The tension comes when Detective Huss gets delayed by 15 minutes because she's in an argument with her sister. Her relationship with her sister isn't a sub-plot, per se, it doesn't suddenly get worse or better by the end of the novel. It exists, and manages to be interesting to the reader, yet an impediment to solving the case. Another instance in another book involved some cut-and-dry sexual harassment, and the tension of whether Cop X was going out of his way to bother co-worker Cop Y, or she was imagining it.

So it's quite possible that a relatively straightforward plot, requiring 5 clues to be acquired and one trap to be set, can take an age to resolve simply because the main characters are interacting with each other.

[rowyn]

Heehee! That was "Wuthering Heights". It's actually first-person narrated by a tenant of one of the protagonists. The bulk of the narrator's time is spent listening to a servant relate the story of the protagonists based on what she's heard from other servants and occasionally her own perceptions. Worst narrative device ever.

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

Right, I kept thinking "Fall of the House of Usher" except I knew it wasn't that one.

[level-head.livejournal.com]

That was the pits.

===|==============/ Level Head

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Well, the big twist in LotR, it seems to me, is that Frodo refuses to toss the ring in.

-The Gneech

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I thought it was when Frodo ditches most of the fellowship and runs off on his own with Sam.

[rowyn]

That's probably more of a surprise than Frodo deciding not to throw the ring in, true.

But LotR doesn't have the sort of twists I was thinking of. Like ceruleanst said, you know pretty much from the outset what the real problem is (the ring), what the real solution is (throw it into Mt. Doom) and what the real threats are (Sauron, other power-hungry who think they can use it, and the possibility that it will warp who ever carries it). These aren't subtly foreshadowed problems that don't come to prominence until a climactic moment. They're laid out quite plainly by Elrond.

I'm thinking of a "Big Twist" as something like "Frodo discovers that he actually does need to take the power of the ring for his own in order to triumph" or "Sauron turns out to be a good guy" or "Mt. Doom can't destroy the ring and Frodo has to do something else to get rid of it". A Big Twist is something that changes the nature of the story's "real problem" or "real solution".

A good author does not, of course, just throw in a Big Twist willy-nilly. There should be hints in the narrative that point to the "real problem/solution" that the protagonists are missing. (Possibly because they don't have access to the hints, and possibly because they don't have the advantage of knowing This Is a Story and it Must Follow the Rules of a Story that the readers do.) Soap operas and other TV serials sometimes do throw in Big Twists without foreshadowing ("Oh no! Your wife Bridget was really your sister all along!") and audiences generally hate this.

I need to pay more attention and see how if Big Twists really are pervasive in modern fiction or if I'm just not thinking of the other counter-examples now. :)

[telnar.livejournal.com]

One way to get a variation on the "man vs nature" theme is to include an intelligent adversary who is long dead (and has no living allies). That allows the heroes to try to outthink their opponent, but the tension comes from the (more or less) naturally occurring problem rather than from direct conflict.

[level-head.livejournal.com]

I like it.

Those ideas combine into "Man versus a world of gray goo" (nanobots). They may not be exactly hostile to humans intentionally, but their automatic behavior can still be deadly as they simply do what they do.

And what they do can be interesting indeed. Michael Crichton took a shot at this in Prey, but I thought that the concept deserved a rather more developed story. An entire planet, long since given over to this created ecosystem.

The book could be called Intelligent Design. ];-)

===|==============/ Level Head