Writing Excuses 21.03: Deconstructing Plots

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Writing Excuses 21.03: Deconstructing Plots 

From https://writingexcuses.com/21-03-deconstructing-plots

Key Points: [Fair warning! They do NOT deconstruct plots in this episode, they talk about what that means and how they are going to do it during this season.] What does deconstructing plots mean? What's the essence, or the components of plots? What principles do these plot recipes have in common? The action plot and the emotion plot. Borrow a plot structure, then improvise and add your own details and flourishes. Arcs and through lines.Rules like the story must have a character with a problem or must have conflict are made to be broken. What draws us in? What pulls us through a story? Hooks! Beginnings, middles, and ends. Breaking rules! Signalling. Understanding the ripple effects. Rule of 3. Looking at specific plot structure, take them apart, and look at why and how they work.

[Season 21, Episode 03]

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

[Season 21, Episode 03]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] Deconstructing plots.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Mary Robinette] And, we are going to be talking about the other big thread that we're going to be running through the whole year. So, deconstructing plots. What does that even mean?

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] There's this thing that you'll see with food where they're like, this is a deconstructed peanut butter sandwich, where they get into, like, what the essence of things are. So, I've been thinking a lot about what the salt, fat, acid, heat of plot structure is. And what we're going to be doing this year is we are going to be digging into a bunch of different plot structures, looking at why they work, and then looking at the individual components of things that go into story. So, because, I mean, there are so many plot structures out there. But you... Flashing back to all of our metaphors, they're just recipes. So what are the underlying principles that they all have in common that lead us to things like the inciting incident, or the dark night of the soul? Like, what are those things?

[DongWon] I'm really excited for this season. And as soon as you pitched it, I was like very in on it. And I'm in on it for a contrary reason. Because I don't really believe in plot structures.

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] So, I think there's a thing about doing this podcast and about teaching, which is, whenever I ask... Am asked to teach a class or we're talking about the season, I love doing it about something I don't really understand. Which is contrary, because, like, if I'm going to teach, I should probably know about it. But sometimes the act of digging into teaching it gets my head around it in a way that I hadn't before. So, when you were talking about let's deconstruct plots, I was like, hell, yes. Let's go. Because it's a thing that I don't feel like I have a really great handle on. Right? Like, obviously, I can tell when a story is slow, I can tell when the story structure isn't hitting in all these different ways. But, for me, I always round it up to, oh, plot distance from character. That's like my one rule about plot is that plot distant from character. It's not helpful in 90% of situations where we need to talk about plot. So, anyways, this is just me saying (A) I'm going to be the audience surrogate here, being like, what do we mean? What does that mean?

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] And then (B) I'm just excited, really excited to dig into this. Yeah.

[Erin] I think I'm really similar, actually.

[Chuckles]

[Erin] So we can fight over who can be the audience surrogate. Like, I like plot, I gue... I mean, it's there. It's in a story.

[DongWon] It's obviously important.

[Erin] But I think it is interesting in that I really, I think, overindex away from plot.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Thinking back to my sort of soap opera roots, like, soap operas are such like... They're on every day. And so there are days in which, like, nothing really happens. Except a few... Maybe there's a conversation, and somebody looks good in a dress...

[Chuckles]

[Erin] And then there are days in which everyone gets slapped. Which are fun. But knowing how to link from one of those events to the next... Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And I sort of feel like, to go back to a different metaphor, not mine, fashion. I sometimes feel this way about clothing. Like, I can say this thing looks good at the Met Gala, and this one does not, to me. But if you ask me why, and then you ask someone who actually understands clothes why, like, they would be like, oh, it's this cut, it's this line, it's the whatever. It's that long speech from...

[DongWon] The Devil Wears Prada.

[Erin] The Devil Wears Prada. Where the character like... Who is it, Meryl Streep?

[DongWon] Cerulean.

[Erin] Yeah, she explains like all the things that go into...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] You deciding to wear this blue top. And I don't understand a lot of that.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And instead, I'm working on instinct. Which is great when you just wanted to say which one looks better. But if you're home, trying to figure out how to dress yourself, and you don't understand the underlying principles, you might be like, oh, this looked good on this person but not on me, and I don't understand why, I just have to keep trying.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. And especially if you are early in your career and you don't trust your own taste, and then you are second-guessing yourself all the time before you go out the door to a party.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And so I started off when I was writing, I know people have heard me say this before, that I understood character. Like, that was a thing from theater that I understood. But I would write really good... Like, stories that had a really good beginning, a really good middle, and a really good ending to three completely different stories...

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] That just happened to have the same set of characters. So structure and plot was the thing that I really focused on. And one of the mistakes that I made, I think early on, was that I thought plot was just about the action, the things that happened. And plot isn't. When you say plot distance from character, Rebecca Roanhorse describes this as there's an action plot and there's an emotion plot. Yeah. Which is really interesting. So she thinks that when... That the failure mode of an action plot is... Some of this, sometimes you'll see in science fiction early career stuff, where there's so many things happening, but you don't understand why any of it's important.

[DongWon] Totally. Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So, they focused on the action too much, and they've forgotten the emotion.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And the failure mode of the emotion plot you'll see in some literary fiction where they focused so much on the emotion that, like, nothing happens. So, both of those things are important. But you're right. How do we do these things? The thing for me is something I always go back to, which is that I do just want to write on instinct. I do just want to do the art of it. But the idea that technique exists for when the art isn't there. And so I don't think that people need to be thinking about these things all the time. The reason we keep saying tools, not rules, is that it's nice to have a toolbox. And you can... Like, I can improvise a meal in the kitchen.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] But I didn't start off improvising a meal. I started off following recipes. When I started writing, I didn't start off improvising a plot structure. Like, some of my early structures, if you look at it, like, my first sale is Rapunzel. It is... It's like hitting those beats. Like, there's a lot of things where I borrowed someone else's plot structure. And I think that we do that when it's like, oh, I love this thing that's so-and-so wrote, and I want to write a book like that. It's like, yeah, you want to copy their recipe, which is... There is nothing wrong with that. You can improvise around that, you can add your own details and flourishes. This isn't, hey, everybody, everything should be original and new. It's like... I think there are actually things.

[Erin] What I love about the way you're talking about plot is it's like... maybe I like plot more than I think because I often think about arcs and through lines in a piece. Which... Like, if that is also... When you talk about an emotion plot, I'm like, oh, I'm often thinking about what's the emotional through line, or what's like the knowledge through line. Like, what's... Who knows what when and why, and how does it affect them? But I never think of that as plot, I think, because I often associate plot as being rules, not tools. Like, I often think of plot as like...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] You must do these six things in this exact order, or else you have broken everything. And I hate that.

[DongWon] Yeah. And I think one thing that comes... I think about a lot of times when those... The rules of plot... Those are very culturally defined, too. Right? Like... I'm someone who... Certainly when it comes to my taste in movies, I'm notorious for liking the slowest, most glacially paced things imaginable. Like, when you were talking about the... Like, it's a failure of... The action plot, if they focus too much on the emotional, I just thought immediately of three of my favorite films...

[Chuckles]

[DongWon] That I would describe as literally nothing happens in this movie. A man cleans bathrooms for 2 hours, and then I'm crying, and I'm like, this is a perfect movie. But also, that movie is made by a western director, but is about a Japanese man, takes place in Japan, and he's using non-western plot structures. Right? And so to say that it is plotless is only from a perspective of a western audience member who's expecting Hero's Journey. Who's expecting certain kinds of beats and structures. And instead, what I'm being fed is really different structures. So when I watch [long Kong?], when I watch Korean cinema, these kinds of things are pulling from very different rhythms and expectations.

[Mary Robinette] Like, there's this rule that a story must have a character with a problem...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And I... And there's con... A story must have conflict. And I push against that so hard...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Because, like, one of my favorite stories that I think is one of... Like, the perfect story out there is Ray Bradbury's There Will Come Soft Rain.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And there's like... Show me the character with a problem and the action? Like, there's not. You can make an argument for the house, but really, no. And so...

[DongWon] At the beginning of the story, the house is sad and lonely. At the end of the story, the house is sad and lonely. Nothing changes.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. A character does not have to undergo change. Sherlock Holmes...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Doesn't undergo change...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] But the stories are so engaging. And I think that there are reasons that they're so engaging. Like, what draws us in? And so, the thing for me is when you were talking, Erin, about through lines and arcs, the thing that I've been thinking about is, well, what pulls us through a story? And we talk about a hook. And you have different hooks to attract... I'm going to actually use the fishing metaphor instead of sheep...

[laughter]

[Erin] Not the sheep.

[Mary Robinette] For readers... Or for listeners, I previously confessed that I had for years thought that it was talking about a shepherd's hook instead of a fishing hook. To move the sheep around. But it... When you're fishing, you've got a hook, you've got different lures on that. To... And different lures depending on what you're trying to catch, depending on what your intentions are. So I think with, when we're looking at fiction, it's a lot of the same thing. We're going to take a break, and when we come back, we're going to talk about some of the kinds of areas we're going to be poking at for the rest of the season.

[Mary Robinette] Okay. Welcome back. So, what are some things that you can look forward to? Are we going to be talking about beginnings? [pause] Yes.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] I look at the other two and they're like, I haven't looked at the outline for this season.

[laughter]

[DongWon] Wait, wait. You wanted us to know the structure of the season?

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] We just said we're not structure people.

[Mary Robinette] But we...

[Erin] Through lines...

[Mary Robinette] But I think the... Like, one of the few things that stories have in common...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Is beginning, middle, end.

[Erin] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] If for no other reason than you start reading it and then you stop reading it [garbled]

[laughter]

[Mary Robinette] So I think...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So, looking at what are some things that are consistent when you're looking at all of these different structures? We're going to be looking at middles. Like, people talk about the saggy middle. What are all the things... Like, most of the story actually happens in the middle.

[DongWon] It is most of the book. Yes.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. So...

[DongWon] It's not the part that everyone remembers the most, usually. Right? So what's actually happening there? What makes it effective? And how do you keep people moving through it? These are all really, really important questions.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] And, I assume the ending, at some point, we will definitely talk about. Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] We will talk... We will definitely talk...

[Erin] And how does it land? It's funny, like, how much an ending can, like, taint or make a story. I think about, weirdly, two endings that I love that other people did not like. Which are the ending of Lost and the ending of Mass Effect 3.

[DongWon] Interesting.

[Erin] It's like I'm the only one in history...

[DongWon] Both of these are like heretical tastes.

[laughter]

[Erin] Don't add me.

[DongWon] But my canonic one is I really like the ending of Sunshine, the Stanley Boyle movie that everyone loves the first half and hates the second half. But I'm like, I don't know, I think the whole thing works.

[Erin] Yeah. But it's interesting...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Thinking about, like, why do these things work?

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, for me, Lost works because the ending is an emotional ending, and I cared more about the emotional content than the solving puzzles content of that particular piece. So it hit me in the heart, it didn't need to hit me in the head.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Yeah. Yeah.

[Erin] You know what I mean? And for... I can't remember why I liked Mass Effect 3, but I remember being like, people are very mad, but I like these pretty colors.

[DongWon] People are too mad, but it is still insane to say that you like that ending.[garbled] to calm down.

[Erin] But I do think it's really interesting to think about, like, how do we do that, because what's unfortunate...

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Erin] I think about... The reason I picked those examples are they're two things where people never talk about the rest of it anymore.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] They only talk about the ending. And so if people are going to over index on the ending, what does that mean...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] That you have to do as a writer in order to not have them only be talking about [garbled]

[DongWon] Totally.

[Mary Robinette] Right. And also the fact that they... I think one of the reasons that people are mad about both of those is that they broke a rule.

[DongWon] Yes.

[Mary Robinette] And so deciding when you're going to break it. We do talk about tools, not rules, but the fact is that people have expectations, and a lot of these rules arose because someone reverse engineered something that they did by accident.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] Other people were like, oh, that's the way it should always be. And then an audience will overindex on, well, that's the way it must be. But the other reason is that when you do that reverse engineering, when you figure out, well, what did I do, how did I get to this point, that a lot of times it is because it created a specific effect.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] And so if your audience... If you've used all the tools at the beginning to set up one effect...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] It's like this is the effect I'm going to give you, and then they are disappointed in that, that's where the disconnect happens.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So I think... We've talked last season a little bit when Erin was talking about the chapter that's going in our craft book, Now Go Write, about breaking rules. It's like if you... I think it's like if you understand the effect of this thing, then you can decide how you're going to use it.

[DongWon] It's signaling that you meant to break that rule that's important. I think about another famous like, quote unquote, bad ending that I adore, which is Neon Genesis Evangelion. That ending is completely bonkers. I love it because it closes an emotional arc, like Lost for you. But it also is that way because they ran out of money and time. Right? And so they weren't able to signal we're doing this on purpose...

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] Because, quite frankly, they weren't doing it on purpose. I think they did something incredible that works. But it is the hand holding component, it is the hey, we know we're breaking a rule. We know you expected X, but we're going to give you Y. Trust us and go with it. And when that doesn't happen, I think that's when it feels like a mistake.

[Erin] And I actually think that's why it's so important to actually learn more.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] Like, I'm really excited to learn more about...

[DongWon] Exactly.

[Erin] These plot structures, because what you don't want to have happen is everyone is aware, whether intentionally or unintentionally, of a particular plot thing that you are doing...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And then you don't know that that's what you're doing, so you break away from it without signaling. Like somebody who cuts across eight lanes of highway without signaling. And you're like, oh my gosh, now you've caused an accident, what is happening? And I want to know what those rules are so that I...

[DongWon] Totally.

[Erin] Can break them intentionally.

[Mary Robinette] And I think it's actually in some cases less about signaling than understanding the ripple effects of the decision you've made.

[DongWon] Yeah. And sort of building on that, it's... When we say rules, it... There's not a committee sitting that's being like, here are the rules of fiction. If you follow them, you'll be fine. Humans are creatures of pattern recognition. Right? All storytelling is, is pattern recognition. We're seeing the same rhythms, we have the same expectations of like, oh, here's what happens in a story, because of all the other ones we've experienced, all the other ones that we've observed. Right? And so when we talk about different story structures, when we talk about different expectations, whether that's three act structure, seven point plot structure, non-western structures, all these different things. That is because over time people have developed certain expectations by observing certain patterns over and over again. So when you are breaking with that expectation, when you're breaking that pattern, knowing what other patterns there are, and moving from pattern A to pattern B, or just even inverting the pattern on purpose, becomes really important. So that you're not just chaotically wandering off the path, and then it doesn't match to anything we know.

[Mary Robinette] Let me give a really concrete example of this kind of thing, which is the rule of three.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] So, you hear it all the time. Three times is funny. Third time... Three times is... Bad things come in threes. Good things come in three. Three things is... Three times is funny. All of these are this expectation in Western culture that it's going to be one, two, three got it. And some other cultures, it's rule of five, rule of seven... I think there's one that's rule of 11. I'm like, whew, those are long evenings.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] But, once you know that, that the audience is expecting this dun, dun, dun, got it, if you've been watching media and it's like, this is very predictable, it's probably because they've been doing rule of three every time. And so you can manipulate that. If you want something to feel harder for a character, then you can go to a rule of four or five. They have to put in four or five efforts. If you want it to be easier, you can do a rule of one or two. You can even have the character go into it expecting it to be hard, get it on the first try, and have them be like, oh my goodness. That there's this big cathartic release that they were not expecting, the reader wasn't expecting it, because they're expecting this buildup to it. So if you know that, then you go in and you consciously break the rule of three for the effect, because you know what the audience expectations are.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Mary Robinette] That's the kind of thing where I'm like, you don't have to signal it, but you just have to know what the ripple effects are.

[DongWon] Exactly. So you can set up the pattern, and then break it.

[Erin] Yeah. And what I love about when you mentioned them all is that while there are maybe some that don't fit into this, it's a very odd number. So I actually think the desire for things to be in odd numbers is like a human brain thing that goes across cultures. But some go five, some go seven, some go nine, but it's rare to have like six, for some reason. Like, I don't know why our brains are like this. What I think is interesting is just knowing that, like, there's a discomfort in things ending in an even way.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] It's like if the fourth one was the one you ended up with. Like, maybe something is wrong about this. Can make you... If in fact you wanted it to secretly be the fifth, the fourth seems right, but in fact, something is wrong there.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Erin] You can actually, like, when you understand these patterns, it's like you can subconsciously create things going on...

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] That even the reader will understand why it feels off, but it just does.

[DongWon] You can be deliberately unsettled, you can make things feel unfinished, like the chord doesn't resolve. And then, if you're telling a horror story, if you're telling something psychologically upsetting... Yeah. Make it four. Four feels bad. I don't know why, but it does.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] It's death. So this is the kind of thing that we're going to be talking about this season. And, in addition to that, what we are also going to be doing is we are going to be taking plot structures, like the three act structure, the Hero's Journey, the Heroine's Journey, the four act structure... like, we're going to be looking at a bunch of different very specific plot structures and taking them apart and going, well, why does this work? Why do we have to have that thing here? So those are the things that we're going to be doing this season.

[Mary Robinette] So, for your homework, what I want you to do is I want you to grab something that you like. And I want you to kind of look at it and do... We've talked about doing reverse engineering of outlines before. I want you to do that with this, but in a kind of very gentle way. I just want you to go through and say, scene good? Scene bad? Like, good thing happen, bad thing happen? As the overall takeaway from the scene. And look to see if there's a pattern that you did not realize was in that work.

[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.