Interlocking gears are like the elements of story. All fit together to make the machine move. Causes and connections. Image by Reimund Bertrams from Pixabay.
Causes and connections. Image by Reimund Bertrams from Pixabay. 

If I asked why you like or dislike a particular story, the odds are very good you will say “the plot.” But what is the plot? The things that happen in the tale? But a series of events is not a plot. Neither is a situation. Let’s explore the story element, plot, in more detail. 

If you’d like to review other aspects of story, check out these posts: Setting, Characters, and Character Creation Tools. 

Plot Has Causality

In 2004, as part of the first creative writing class of my adult life, I encountered  E. M. Forster’s famous definition of plot:

‘The king died and then the queen died’ is a story. ‘The king died, then the queen died of grief‘ is a plot.

E. M. Forster in Aspects Of The Novel, 1927

I’d quibble with the use of the word “story” to mean series of events. Plot and the other basic elements of fiction—characters, setting, conflict, and resolution—are all part of story. For example, when we talk about short stories, we mean a piece of fictional writing with character, plot, setting, conflict, and resolution, not an agenda of related events.

A story’s plot links the events of the tale through causality—the reasons things happen. The human mind hungers for life to make sense and for events to hang together and have a relationship. If you ask yourself why the last piece of boring entertainment you experienced left you cold, it may well have been plot weakness. Audiences often forgive plot deficiencies if they love other aspects of the work, but the artist neglects creating a coherent plot at their peril. (Exhibit A: Cats, The Movie.) 

Plausible Causality

How does an artist convince us to believe the plot? If the plot is that the queen died of grief, the storyteller must not only show the grief but also establish the king and queen’s relationship so that death by grief is plausible. All story aspects, particularly the characters and their wants, needs, and conflicts, are embedded in a good plot. 

Plot Case Study: Water of Life

In my novelette, Water of Life, the main character, Sean, learns that the man he is supposed to meet for a moonshine pick-up is in some sort of gunplay-related trouble. I’ve just described a situation, also known as a story concept.

Sean wanders around in the woods looking for the man, encounters the man’s grandmother, and investigates his whereabout. Clues are discovered, weapons are brandished, fae magic is cast, and the mystery is revealed. By Forster’s definition, I’ve just presented a story (series of events). But what’s the plot?

Characters And Plot

To find the plot of this tale, we must consider causality.  I needed to move my main character from his car to the woods so that his wants and needs could bump up against the old grandmother’s wants and needs. I came up with all sorts of reasons: His job is to pick up the moonshine and he doesn’t want to face his boss without it; he’s a bit smitten with the young woman telling him about the moonshiner’s trouble and wants to impress her; the moonshiner is his friend. 

I felt that friendship was the most compelling reason for my main character’s actions, really the only one that lived up to being a cause for Sean to engage in the plot. And that a friendly, but casual, business relationship of a few months wasn’t entirely plausible to explain the lengths he ultimately goes through to solve the mystery. No, these men must have been through a life-or-death experience together. Deep, bromantic feelings have been felt and acted on. 

Note that a different character with a different personality might have been motivated by other reasons to hunt for the missing man. A more fearful or curious individual or bigger show-off could believably swallow the plot hook and run off into the woods to meet their fate.

Water of Life’s Plot

Thus, the (spoiler-redacted) plot of Water of Life—Sean’s one-time lover, Caleb, is missing. Did faeries spirit the moonshiner away? As Sean treks through a November ice storm in search of his friend, the forest itself bristles with fae ill intent, and a strange old mountain woman would just as soon shoot Sean as feed him squirrel stew. Calamity reigns unless he cracks the secret of Otter Springs and its Water of Life. 

Plot Devices

According to Wikipedia, “a plot device is any technique in a narrative used to move the plot forward.” Plot device is often thought to be a pejorative description, but really, like any aspect of art, they can be clunky or well done. A poorly thought-out device draws attention to itself, annoying the reader and taking them out of the story flow. A successful device is so well integrated and natural that its role of holding up the whole story line is barely noticeable. 

Have You Seen These Devices?

Examine your favorite fiction for these common plot devices. Were the devices used well or poorly?

  • MacGuffin. An object without intrinsic value that everyone in the story wants. The term is associated with Alfred Hitchcock and his film of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. In that story all the characters pursue what turns out to be a worthless piece of bric-a-brac. The term is also used more generally when everyone is after any sort of object or even a person. All the Indiana Jones films, for example, are about rivalry for an object. 
  • Deux ex machina. “Machine of the gods,” refers to ancient Greek and Roman plays in which a god shows up at the end of the story to sort everything out for the characters. A bit of theatrical magic allowed the actor playing the god to arrive from on high in the deux ex machina. This term is applied to works of fiction in which a powerful entity shows up at the end to rescue the characters from a hopeless situation. I think the “it was all a dream” endings could also be considered deux ex machina.
  • Red herring. Common in detective fiction, an object, person, or event meant to distract the audience from the clues that are actually important. Most of the plot of Great Expectations, for example, is a red herring regarding the identity of Pip’s mysterious benefactor. 
  • Chekhov’s gun. The writer Chekhov said that everything in a story must have a role in building the story. A rifle prominently displayed over the fireplace mantle must be fired at some point because the audience, perhaps unconsciously, expects it to have a role in the resolution of the story. For example, the movie, Knives Out, does some nice knife work, while I expected quite a bit more from Game of Thrones’ Sword Throne.
  • Plot armor. If you think about it, characters in fiction survive and thrive in situation that would destroy real-life people. They suffer few consequences, physical, mental, or emotional, for their choices. Watch any action movie, ever, for examples of this device. 

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