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

[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. :)