[Writerpreneur] Riveting Storytelling 01

IS PLOTTING EVEN NECESSARY? Maybe Poe had it straight all along - when you have a story where no part can be removed without harming it, then that story has all the plot you need?

The word “plot” is one of the professional walls raised around the amateur writer. People treat the term with reverence and ceremony. Plot is the all important thing—if he is going to write fiction, then he must strive for plot, plot, plot!

I most disrespectfully submit that this is B-U-N-K.

Initially, defining “plot” presents a significant challenge. I believe Pitkin’s precise words define it best: “Plot is a climactic series of events, each of which both determines and is determined by the characters involved.”

Few people entertain the same notion about plot. For Poe, an excellent plot meant that removing any part of a story would damage the overall structure. Today’s writers would consider Poe’s stories to have very little plot. Therefore, I have seen him held up as a poor example in this respect—Poe, who made himself a classic in English, and whom Baudelaire made a classic in French! It’s true, however, that critics often use the world’s greatest men as poor examples.

Howells, on the contrary, believed that a series of events which grew out of the central character constituted any plot. This is the literary viewpoint, followed by prominent artists like Howells, and applies to novels. Schools, teachers, and numerous writers endorse Pitkin’s satisfactory didactic perspective. It is the strict dramatic plot. Read over any excellent play, and you’ll be able to apply Pitkin’s definition and to understand it more clearly.

However, we are not dealing with literature or the drama. Our focus is the business of fiction—and the foregoing remarks are unrelated to it. Therefore let us consider the horrible proposition: A Good Story Needs No Plot.

Reflect, brethren! Some of the best short stories ever written have very little plot. That is why some professors refuse to call them short stories, and apply other names to them. It is hard for a teacher to see any horizon—his spectacles are too strong. He wants to keep all young writers between two narrow and high walls—that is his business.

Look at magazine fiction. Has it any pretensions, any purpose, other than to entertain the reader? None. A fiction magazine shuns in horror all propaganda, religious controversy, and bore-some highbrow effusions. It aims: To distract readers, encouraging repeat readership. When it ceases to be entertaining, it ceases to have any existence.

Very well, then. What is the most entertaining story ever written? What’s the most popular, widely-read tale? Certain Chinese romances would fill the bill, but we are speaking of the western world. So our answer would be: “The Arabian Nights.”

Out of this collection of tales, the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor are most famous. These stories have not only been enjoyed for their own merit but have also influenced fiction, myth, and drama globally. In the most erudite oriental studies, those of Berthold Laufer, you will find Sinbad and his adventures figuring prominently. These stories lack plot entirely. They are nothing but loosely woven incidents, which are controlled entirely by chance. So much for plot, as an essential.

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ON THE OTHER HAND, we must not be blind to the value of plot in its strictest sense. It is essential to many forms of writing. To many commercial writers it is a great aid, and some of them depend altogether upon it. This is something you can choose to comprehend or dismiss. It is another of the many walls around the writer, which his imagination may over-leap.

Certain magazines are strong for plot, and most editors assert with pathetic enthusiasm that they must have plot. As a matter of fact, none of them care a hang about it, and any of them will buy a good story without a plot, just as readily as they would buy one with a strong plot. Let me prove my point, brethren, by a brief story just between ourselves, which must pass no farther.

Two editors of well-known fiction magazines were holding a lovely lodge of sorrow over me. They would like to use my stuff, but their magazines were famous for having strong and manly plots. Their readers wanted ‘em, looked for them. As one editor expressed himself:

“You write your stories well, but they are nothing except a lot of incidents strung together. They haven’t a vestige of plot!”

I might have pointed out that the reading public seemed more or less satisfied with my yarns, and that other magazines were not kicking them back. Instead of argument, I submitted to each of these editors several stories under a pen-name, carefully keeping from sight my connection with them. I typed them in an entirely different manner from my own. And what happened? The gentlemen bought them and wrote enthusiastically for more with offers of contracts.

There are two plausible explanations for this. One, that the editors themselves had only a vague idea of what they meant by plot, and had in mind a certain type of story. This is logical. The second explanation is that plot makes no difference whatever to a good and entertaining story. Take your choice, or combine the two.

Never accept the dicta of a magazine about what it wants; never guide your work to make it fall in line with the “requirements” of a magazine. Naturally, unless you’re engaged in some special line of hack work. Aim only to turn out an excellent product. An editor would publish the Prophecy of Esdras if he thought it would entertain his readers—and is there not one newspaper, indeed, which is running a serial called The Holy Bible?

With no desire to be critical, I am quite positive that to editors and teachers the word “plot” is only professional patter—something to teach and talk about. An editor recently gave me the same old line about a story, said it had no plot, and he’d buy it if I’d put some good strong plot into it. I agreed. I changed the name of one character, deleted one word, had the story copied on fresh paper. And what did he do when he read it again? Bought it as being entirely satisfactory. Of course.

Studying plot development, you understand, will not corrupt your morals, and if you’re going into the writing game seriously, you must study plot with the rest. However, do not dally with the notion that plot is the one great essential to be mastered, that a good plot will carry off a poor story. Not by a good deal. Plot is really one of the subservient elements to entertaining fiction.

And returning, upon due reflection, to Edgar Allan Poe’s theory, I am inclined to appreciate it more fully. He was one of the first of our commercial writers, and he knew his business down to the ground. When the gentlemen who gently scoff at him can turn out stories which will rival his, then let us accept their dicta with reverence. Until then, write your story so that removing any paragraph harms the entire story — and don’t worry about plot.

If the story is in you, it will come out.

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While some tend to write straight ahead -- with only headlights to show a few feet ahead of where you're going – others like to build the plot based on the character and his internal conflict.

Next, let's hear from another million-words-a-year writer. Who never started working until he had a conflicted character and their lowest common denominator appeal – one that the reading public yearned to read about...

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(From “This Fiction Business” by H. Bedford Jones)

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This excerpt is from “Forgotten Bestseller Secrets” — one of the Writerpreneur Series. You can get instant access to your own digital ebook copy and all its three mini-course transcripts from that link.

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