PowerPoint on PLOT for short story

1. Creative Writing
GE2405 EN 2322
WEEK 3: Plot, Dialogue

2. PLOT
What is considered the plot of a story?
Events that occur in the narrative.
The CONFLICT in the story.
CONFLICT in life is a negative thing, but in
fiction, it is drama, comedy, tragedy.
CONFLICT is your characters getting into some
kind of trouble.

3. PLOT/CONFLICT
“Only trouble is interesting” – Janet Burroway,
Writing Fiction
In life, nice things can happen, without conflict,
without problems, without trouble. But there
would be no story to it.
A shopping excursion can be uneventful – take
the MTR, go to a favourite mall, get a good
discount, come home and show your purchases
to friends and family. A nice day – BUT NO
STORY.

4. PLOT/CONFLICT
But if you go shopping, and realise at the counter
your credit card has expired, and while you don’t
know what to do, your old boss from a previous
job you hate is standing behind you and
recognises you, and pays for your expensive
dress with a fake smile, and by the time you get
to dinner with some friends visiting elsewhere,
the old boss has mentioned the incident on
Facebook and all your friends know about it, and
you think they are secretly making fun of you,
and the cute guy who is invited to the party is
there and you’re hoping he hasn’t heard about
this, and he says hi and introduces himself, and
you discover he is your old boss’s cousin now

5. PLOT/CONFLICT
THAT IS A STORY.

6. PLOT/CONFLICT
You could bring up that day of shopping to your
friends five years from now, with all these details,
and they will go – “oh my goodness what a thing
to happen”.
Charles Baxter, Burning Down the House:
“Say what you will about it, Hell is story-
friendly. If you want a compelling story, put
your protagonist among the damned. The
mechanisms of hell are nicely attuned to the
mechanisms of narrative. Not so the
pleasures of Paradise. Paradise is not a story.
It’s about what happens when the stories are

7. PLOT/CONFLICT
Where does Plot come from?
Good stories have:
Character that desires something
Dangers that prevent the desire from being
fulfilled
Drama = desire + danger

8. Desire as basis of Plot
“Fiction is the art form of human yearning. That is
absolutely essential to any work of fictional
narrative art – a character who yearns. And that
is not the same as a character who simply has
problems…The yearning is also the thing that
generates what we call plot, because the
elements of the plot come from thwarted or
blocked or challenged attempts to fulfill that
yearning.” – ROBERT OLEN BUTLER

9. Desire as basis of Plot
Writing exercise – pick a character you like, out
of the ones you have in your journal, or from
class exercises.
Jot down in your journal
What would they want most?
How difficult will it be for them to get it?
What if they get it, and realise it’s not actually
what they wanted?

10. Desire in Plot
*WARNING* - the great dangers in literature are
not necessarily spectacular.
Good drama doesn’t have to be: murders, chase
scenes, crashes, vampires – things that are very
Hollywood, a bit extreme.
The interesting obstacles to human desires are
gentler, subtler, closer than we think: our bodies,
our personalities, friends, lovers, families.
“More passion is destroyed at the breakfast table
than in a time warp” – Janet Burroway, Writing
Fiction.

11. PLOT – HOW
We have earlier established that Character
performing Action can give rise to Plot – ie what a
particularcharacter does can show us what’s
happening.
But what is the Order in which these things occur?
What comes after what? How, and why?
John L’Heureux says – “a story is about a single
moment in a character’s life that culminates in a
defining choice after which nothing will be the same
again.”
In other words, the plot of the story is about the
character’s journey, the arc a character undergoes,
whereby a transformation occurs. The character in
the beginning of the story is slightly different to the
character at the end of the story.

12. PLOT: Story Arc
So HOW does one plot? – by finding the decision
points that lead to the character’s choices, leading to
the final choice, and choosing the best scenes
through which to dramatise them.
The plot is the territory on which the war of the story
is being fought. It involves a set-up, rising action,
climax, and denoument.
Mel McKee – 4 imperatives for writing plot, similar to
negotiating territory:
i. Get your fighters fighting
Ii. Have something at stake – that is worth fighting
over.
Iii. Have the fight dive into a series of battles (or
scenes) with the last one being the biggest and most
dangerous of them all.
Iv. Have a walking away from the fight.

13. PLOT: Story Arc
Example: William Carlos Williams’s The Use of
Force
‘Territory’ – the girl’s mouth.
What’s the set-up? (getting the fight up)
What’s the rising action? (stakes – what’s worth
fighting over)
What’s the climax? (the battle/biggest scene)
What’s the denoument? (the walk away)

14. PLOT: Story Arc
Note: Good stories are complex stories.
Complex stories don’t have clear cut outcomes –
even if the character achieves everything they
desire in the story, there might be something else
that’s still lacking.
Hamlet: has to kill Claudius, his father’s
murderer. He achieves it in the end, but at the
cost of the lives of almost everyone in the play,
including his own life.
A complex story: The character achieves his
desire by losing something else.

15. PLOT: Story Arc
The Chessmen – why such a title? It’s not about people
actually sitting around playing chess.
What happens? Does a character achieve his desire?
Is it worth achieving by the end of it?
In gaining, there is loss. Vice versa.
The contradictive effect – that a desire is never cleanly
achieved, without repercussions – is what makes the story
beautiful.
Makes story RESONANT

16. The Chessmen
How is the ending of the story foreshadowed?
Is George Mural to blame for Nakagawa’s plight?
How does author elicit sympathy for Nakagawa?
(who is main character vs who is narrator?)
Trace the sequence of cause and effect incidents
in the story. Identify the climax. What starts the
chain of events?
Introduction of George? The season?
Hatayama’s prediction of laying off someone?

17. PLOT: Story Arc
Story complexity: John L’Heureux – What does
my character win by losing his struggle, or lose
by winning?
CAUSALITY – chain of events where certain
occurrences in one part of the story have
consequences in another part of the story.

18. CONCLUSION
Plot is character’s action, where character
desires and desire is thwarted
The events in plot are not random – causality,
foreshadowing.
Character changes from beginning of story to its
end.