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

[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.