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]

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