CHAPTER XI
PLOT AND STRUCTURE
Throughout all nature, throughout the universe so far as we know it, there is a basic tendency toward unity and growth. The tendency is of course present in the human mind. That is why the human mind demands plot and structure in fiction. In nature's higher manifestations of plant and animal the demand for unity progresses into a demand for organic structure, an assemblage of parts whose respective offices and limitations are determined by their relation to the whole and which therefore, in addition to their intrinsic value, assume a relative value that _outranks the intrinsic_. Add to the tendencies of unity and growth a tendency toward limit of growth, or perfection. Fiction plot is the result of these three universal demands, and bearing them in mind is a sound foundation from which to consider all problems in connection with plot.
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A similar process of reasoning from elemental beginnings would, if relentlessly applied to the laws, traditions and superstitions of art, do more than anything else to free it from chaff, artificialities and misconceptions that have attached themselves to it.
There is even advantage in considering examples from nature for the sake of clearer understanding of the nature and requirements of plot. You already know what plot is, but see whether comparison with the following will not crystallize your concept of it to a degree that will make you largely independent of rules and regulations:
A river-system, a river and its network of tributaries, is like a plot. A unity with growth in a single general direction with its mouth as climax or limit of growth; many elements combining smoothly and perfectly into one.
The tap-root and subsidiary roots of many plants furnish a similar illustration. A tree's framework is an inverted example.
A rope of vines or, more clearly, a man-made piece of rope in the process of making with the loose strands gathered at one end into a closely knit main line.
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A snow-slide forced by the terrain to converge all its material into a narrow gap at the foot of the slope.
It would be, I think, a pity if all trees and all river-systems were made in strict accordance with one pattern, as the rules so largely demand of plot-building. Yet either tree or river-system would be no longer such--and a sad spectacle indeed--if it were cut into bits, were large where it should be small or were otherwise changed from its essential nature.
_Structure_.--It has been said that the short story is far more exacting than the novel in demand for strict unification and rigid enforcement of relative values. That is true in practise and I am not sure that it isn't true in theory. Perhaps the novel escapes through mere laziness or inability of writer and reader to create and receive so large a unit perfectly constructed in all its many details. Perhaps, on the other hand, the novel is a more natural expression by the writer and a more natural and desired form for the reader. Perhaps, if we draw the distinction between novel and romance, only the latter should be held to the strict requirements of short-story structure.
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To take the form of strictest requirements, I have found only one rule that seems in practise to produce satisfactory results:
The short story has one main point and only one. It may be the climax of a course of events, an aspect of life, a psychological impasse, what you will. But there must be only one of it. Every other element in the story, every scrap of material, every bit of color, every human trait, _everything_ in the story, must be subsidiary to the main point. No elements are even admitted to the story unless they serve in developing the main point. When admitted they get space and emphasis only in proportion to that service. No one of them is valuable in itself; their values are wholly relative, not intrinsic. (Of course, there is no reason for not abandoning this principle on occasion if you are _sure_ you can better satisfy your readers by so doing.)
_Violations of Unity_.--Compelling your reader to follow alternately two sets of characters in two sets of scenes is dangerous, since it violates unity unless the reader is kept keenly conscious of their inevitable convergence upon one point. Hopping back and forth in the time of the action is in most {158} cases fatal to unity. Shifting the point of view is objected to on grounds of violated unity--telling your story first from the angle from which events are seen by one character, then from the angle of another character or from that of the author.
Do not leave loose strands dangling along your rope, like a minor character who vanishes without needed explanation, or a line of endeavor suddenly abandoned without a word.
Too many characters are not only an obstacle to clearness but greatly increase the difficulty of unification.
Do not attempt to include too much material, color, life-history or anything else. If your story refuses to unify satisfactorily it may be because you are using more elements than you are able to handle. Even if you can handle all you have, be sure that the expanse of your canvass is not greater than the reader can look at conveniently and without missing some of it. In a general way it is well to tuck it in at the edges, so to speak, and enclose it in a fairly definite picture-frame.
_Holding Reader to Correct Plot Line_.--It is {159} not sufficient to select and assemble the proper elements according to their relative values. The assignment of proper relative space and emphasis must be managed with such nicety that the reader can not mistake their common direction. He may be kept from knowledge of the goal, but he must know and feel that everything in the story, carrying him along with it, is sweeping along in one single general direction. If he is on a tributary flowing southwest he must know that it is a tributary, not the main stream, that it flows southwest and that the main stream, while it may flow southwest, south or south-east, will hardly flow north.
A reader tends to anticipate, to cast ahead. Make sure that, while you hold from him sufficient to make any desired surprise effective, he does not waste his attention-strength by casting ahead over false trails leading away from your general direction. In other words, keep him in hand from start to finish, being sure his feet follow your path in your direction.
To instill a sense of plot, one must either go into endless rules, exceptions, diagrams and analyses or else present only the fundamentals {160} and commoner guide-posts, leaving the writer to develop his own ability. There has been too much of the former method and I shall not attempt to add further initiative-killing rules, particularly as I believe that the majority of fiction rules can often be violated with good results.
_Non-Conformist Plot and Structure_.--No rule for fiction has a sound basis unless it is grounded on some such elemental in human nature as an instinctive desire for growth, unity, completeness, a rounded-out whole, symmetry, rhythm, contrast, and so forth. But even an elemental desire can be led to the point of temporary satiety, even contrast itself. Monotony is undoubtedly monotonous.
Consider the reader. Fed year after year with the results of the same rules, with the same literary devices, the same general plots and endings, the same signs along the way, isn't his appetite for standard food sure to be dulled at intervals? He is far wiser and more sophisticated in fiction than you probably think; if he goes right on eating standard food it is often because he finds a scarcity of other kinds. Why not study the condition of {161} his appetite, estimating from how much of certain kinds of food he has had to eat and for how long, and then make a business of feeding him a new kind until he tires of it in turn? A most unliterary suggestion? Perhaps, but I should not wholly relish the task of proving it such.
There are, at least, certain fashions in fiction and even in "literature" that change and change back with the years. The costume story reigns, sinks into oblivion, reigns again. The author chats himself into his stories, keeps out of them, enters once more to chat again. Romance and realism alternate in favor. The critics permit it, though sneering perhaps at each change, just as they are inclined to sneer at both change and permanence themselves.
Why not other changes? For example, more changes from the rules of plot? Many fairly radical changes, indeed, could be made without violation of the really fundamental rules.
Here is the story of an interesting laboratory experiment on the reactions of readers. During the war our managing editor was stationed in one of the largest officers' {162} training camps. He made a business of watching the reactions of his comrades to magazine fiction and of course to our own magazine in particular. It happened that an author asked me to decide a question for him. He was writing a novelette around an historical character and found himself on the horns of a dilemma. Either he must do extreme violence to the facts of that famous person's life, particularly as to sequence of events, or else abandon any attempt at a real fiction plot. I suggested that he abandon the attempt at plot and structure and make the story practically a mere running narrative.
In the training camp the results of that experiment were startling and very suggestive. Among all the stories in books and magazines that structureless novelette reported by far the most comment and praise. The most valuable point was that the readers were sufficiently analytical to know, and state, exactly why they liked it: "Different from other stories." "Couldn't tell what was going to happen." "Couldn't predict the end after reading a third of the way." "Like real life."
Many of them had read numerous other stories by the same author, Hugh Pendexter, {163} dealing with similar material and times, but all these stories had conformed to the laws of plot and structure. Practically none of the readers was sufficiently familiar with the historical character's life to know the material in advance.
Another laboratory experiment. One day in the office some one suggested we hadn't had a "desert island" story for a long while and ought to get one. All agreed, but of course with no enthusiasm; all of us could tell that story in its essentials before it was even written. Then some one wished they'd write "desert island" stories that were different. All seven of us fell to outlining the kind we'd like personally. All seven agreed. All wanted the usual "props" left out and all wanted the castaways to have a real and a realistic struggle for existence--"no self-sacrificing fish," as one put it. There were to be no practical specialists like engineers, sailors, carpenters and botanists in the party. Just every-day people like ourselves.
Then we figured that, if this was the kind of story all of us craved, there were probably many readers, just as sophisticated or "fed up" as we, who also would welcome this {164} departure. We presented the problem to J. Allan Dunn, asking whether he cared to write a "desert island" novelette without any of the usual material therefor, no savages, volcanoes, women, cocoanuts, socialism, rival party, tropical vegetation, fierce beasts, animals waiting for domestication, no specialists in the party, no supplies to draw from, nothing, not even a pen-knife or watch-crystal. Each of us wrote out a list of the things he knew or could do that might be useful in the circumstances--unspecialized and, mostly, meager lists.
He accepted, after justified hesitation. We modified our terms to permit him wild dogs and wild boars for excitement, meat and leather, but it was understood that action, interest and whatever plot proved possible were to be drawn from the barehanded struggle with nature for existence.
The conditions and circumstances were given to our readers along with the published story. It won a stronger response from them than had any other story we'd published for several years. This from the audience of a magazine devoted primarily to action stories of which the usual "desert island" story is a {165} fairly representative type, though it must be admitted that this audience has been recruited from among those who prefer more nourishing meat along with the action, insist upon a sound basis of fact or probability and are too sophisticated not to have tired of the usual hack melodrama.
These two experiments are at least suggestive. You can doubtless recall from your own experience stories that registered strongly on you because of variance from the usual types. Generally, if the story succeeds, the variance is attributed to genius or unusual gifts; as a matter of fact it is in most cases due either to accident or to a mere common-sense study of readers and what can be expected to have dulled their appetites.
_Ending a Story_.--Variance from type in the ending is of particular value. It must, of course, be an ending logically belonging to the story, but surprise, or at least change, is entirely possible.
Yet is there any escape from the "happy ever after" ending of a love-story? I suppose and hope so, but have my doubts except as to the rarest instances. A love-story without at least the suggestion of marriage or its {166} substitute as ending seems considered almost as desolate as a love-story without either love or story. Renunciation is a reversal of "happy ever after" rather than a variation, and not generally popular. Death is very grudgingly accepted as a substitute. I've made earnest effort to secure variants--parties decide to be friends instead, one party proves to love a third party or grows weary of the second, parties quarrel and omit making up, death of either or of all hands, anything for a change. No results except a death-rate well under one per cent.
Perhaps it is because writers believe editors will not accept variants from the "happy ever after." I suspect their belief is well founded, but I wonder whether in this case the editorial attitude is not solidly based on a downright insistence from human-being readers.
Unhappy endings? The minority like them, the majority do not. I can venture nothing more except that the size of the minority increases if the line is drawn not between "unhappy" and "happy" but between endings that leave the reader depressed and those that leave him uplifted. Through the {167} latter, with their appeal of pathos or high tragedy, there is decided opportunity for comparative variation from the usual.
At the end of a story I think most readers rather resent loose strands of plot left untied, like minor characters of whose future no glimpse is afforded or some minor enterprise that has run through the plot only to have its fate a mystery at the end. Skill, particularly in unifying severely to the central point, can make the reader forget the disappearance of minor strands at the very end, but it is well to remember that most readers have a healthy sense of legitimate curiosity.
_Beginning a Story_.--At the first word of your story the reader knows nothing concerning it except what title, illustrations and contents-page may have told him. Generally he doesn't know whether it is laid in Africa, Alaska or New York City, or whether it is of to-day, 1890 or 1700. The more quickly you tell him, the more quickly can you draw him into your illusion. If you wait, you almost certainly confuse and irritate him. Story after story comes in to editors that leaves the reader groping and unable to settle down until long after it is under way; often {168} he doesn't learn where he is until he has wandered through several pages. Even a paragraph is too long a wait--and waste. You need not make a business of placarding date and place, but there are a myriad ways of introducing him quickly to both. Failure to do this is so common and so extremely injurious to the story's effectiveness that it affords a most striking example of the disastrous effects of giving more attention to rules than to common sense and of not drilling into the very bones of writers the necessity of watching and measuring their stories constantly from the point of view of readers.
Another common and bad mistake is to present any but a main character first, preferably the main character. Indeed, in the short story perfect unification almost demands that he be first on the stage. But there is a common-sense reason aside from that of unity and centralization. Long experience with fiction has taught readers that the first character to appear is nearly always the main character, therefore whatever character gets the initial spot-light is promptly seized upon by them as the main one. If he isn't, they have to let go of the story illusion they are already building and start {169} building a new one around a new center and feel rather foolish or cheated and irritated. As in the case of not setting time and scene, the writer has failed to hold them to the correct plot line--even to start them on it. Of what avail is knowledge of technique, or the present method of teaching technique, if it fails to impress such horse-sense points as these? Sufficient skill can introduce the central character when and how it pleases, but most writers lack it.
In the case of the drama there is no harm in minor characters appearing first. Stage custom has established this, not the other, as the custom. Also, the stage, being better able to study its patrons at first-hand, has realized the catastrophe of letting them stray from the correct plot line and guards against it by giving out programs in advance as keys to caste (with characters listed in order of appearance), scene, time and sometimes even more; the rise of the curtain instantly gives the audience its bearings in a general way, and star, scene, time and even plot are frequently known before entering the theater. Writers of fiction could profit tremendously by careful study of the necessarily practical technique--or common sense--of the theater.
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