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]

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. :)