From Tabletop to Paperback – Plot: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

For the beginning writer, the first part of talking about Plot is realizing what it does and does not mean. It's such a nebulous concept that it requires defining before we can even discuss it. For my purposes, Plot is not the big, over-arching story of the narrative. Plot is the stuff that happens in between bits of the big, over-arching story of the narrative. What people typically call plot is actually a (Story or Character) Arc that answers a Story Question. We'll talk more about establishing Story Questions later, but the basic definition is pretty self-explanatory: what's the question that this narrative will answer?

For example:

Will Harry Potter find the Sorcerer's Stone?
Will Luke Skywalker get to leave home and do exciting, galaxy-changing things?
Will the crew of Battlestar Galactica make it to safety and freedom on Earth?
Will Westley marry his true love, Buttercup?
Can Alice escape from Wonderland?

You'll note that most of those Story Questions are barely addressed throughout the narrative itself except in the barest sense. Alice not getting lost and keeping her head on her shoulders (literally) are necessary to escape Wonderland, but they don't immediately impact the question. Harry does find the Stone but it's almost a deus ex machina and it's the "year at school" that gets the majority of screen time.

I could come up with a hundred examples of this, but the bottom line is this. "Will they get to the forum?" is Arc, "the funny things that happen on the way to the forum" is Plot.

For example:

A mirror showing Harry's one true desire threatens to overwhelm him
Luke negotiates with a scruffy nerfherder of a freighter pilot to get off his home planet.
A terrorist from the prison ship wants to run for president.
Westley dies.
Alice apparently trips balls with a hookah-smoking caterpillar.

That's foundational, memorable, important stuff, but it doesn't actually answer the Story Question because it's Plot.
Scene Questions v. Story Questions

This doesn't mean that your Plot Heavy scenes (the smallest building block of the story) can't or don't feed into the Story Question. In the bar where Luke Skywalker will negotiate passage off his home planet, he's nearly killed because he doesn't understand the rules in this rougher world. That vignette throws a bigger question mark on the Story Question. Or in the Harry Potter example, the mirror tells us something amazingly fundamental about Harry's Character Arc while setting up the solution to the Question.

The whole story is tied together when these kinds of things happen in individual scenes. This is even, or perhaps especially, true if the reader doesn't realize it until the resolution. Never underestimate the power of a truly grand "AH-HA!" moment. What this does not mean, though, is that every single scene has to have some big payoff at the resolution. Nor is each scene forced to somehow inform the larger question. Sometimes the cigar (that's filled with poison to kill the person about to light it up) is just a (deathtrap) cigar.

You might think of these types of Scene Questions -- Questions like Will they be eaten by alligators? or Will she make it to work on time? or Will the first date be horribly awkward? -- as the bread in the meal that is your story. If done well, a flavorful bread can enhance the rest of the meal, pull the individual dishes together, thicken a light course into a full serving, and, lastly, sop up the plate at the end. New writers might call this filler, but that's how you can tell they're new. These are the things that make up a story.

Dots Are Great...But You Have to Connect Them

More on this in part two, but the good news is that gamers are actually already very good at Plot. Non-gamer new writers that don't fall into the fluff camp usually never even realize the meal they're cooking is incomplete without the warm, enticing loaf of Plot.

More than once, I've had a writer I'm coaching say something like, "I knew exactly where my story was going to go, so I started writing it. I'm halfway through my plot outline and the thing is coming up way way short. What should I do?"

When I took a look at the manuscripts in question, I discovered that the freight train of Arc had come a'roarin' in with a full head of steam and left no room for anything else. It was like somebody took the dots from a connect-the-dots puzzle and decided the whole thing would work better if you just piled the dots on top of one another.

But neither puzzles nor stories really work that way. You've got to spread those dots out, man! Put them in some kind of sensible order that gives the outline of a picture! Then, and this is pretty key, you get out a pencil and you actually fill in the lines to finish the picture! I know, I know. that just sounds crazy, right?

But it's exactly how your story should work. Your Arc gives you the dots, without which there's no pattern to follow. You can't live without the dots for certain, but it's the lines that actually turn the whole thing into a picture. The lines create the actual finished shape. And it's the shape of the thing that people are going to remember.

Highly Visible Antagonists

This next piece of advice has been a tough nut for me to crack personally. It's one of the few places my gaming experience actually got in the way of my storytelling. In the next part of Plot, I'll explain how to (hopefully) avoid all the painful time I've spent coming to understand this concept. Before we get there, though, I have to point out the Elephant in the Narrative Room: the Highly Visible Antagonist.

Your Arc must have a Highly Visible Antagonist. Just in case you aren't sure what this means, think about Sauron, Darth Vader, Lex Luthor, Prince Humperdink, Khan, Agent Smith, and a thousand other guys you could name. The HVA is the really obvious, in-your-face threat who kicks your whole story into motion. These are the guys who steal the McGuffin, kidnap the damsel, blow up the planet, try to kill all the good guys, or commit whatever dastardly plot they're getting up to.

Now, this is going to sound ridiculous, but this is actually a point I still struggle with. The most important thing to remember about this Antagonist is that he is Highly Visible. These guys loom over the narrative landscape. (Perhaps like some sort of all-seeing, burning eye at the top of a black tower or something...)

For contrast, let me demonstrate some antagonists that are not particularly visible. Storm Troopers are a good example. They're scary guys in armor and helmets just like Vader, but you don't see any of them crushing throats. Orcs are ugly as sin, but they're a near numberless horde. Deserts that try to kill you with thirst, or avalanches, high-speed chases, horrific first dates, voyages through stormy seas, multiple suitors, gunfights with henchmen...these are all antagonizing forces. But they're sub-antagonists to the HVA. They are scene antagonists, here today and gone tomorrow.

Now, to me, guys shooting at you are pretty damn highly visible. So are vast deserts with no food or water. That bomb strapped to your chest? That thing is pretty visible, right? But in terms of your narrative arc, these things are obviously not the Highly Visible Antagonist. They might be minions of the HVA (Storm Troopers and orcs), they might be between your hero and the Highly Visible Antagonist (the desert or high-speed chase), they might alienate the damsel you're supposed to be rescuing (horrific first date), but they are demonstrably not the Highly Visible Antagonist.

And this is the reason we make such a stark contrast between Arcs and Plot. You can move the Arc along with Plot, typically by using antagonists who are connected directly to the Highly Visible One. You can also simply make your hero's life interesting with antagonists who are not connected to the Highly Visible Antagonist while nevertheless being dangerous, deadly, embarrassing, or just getting in the way of the hero answering his Story Question.

And what, at the end of the day, is the main thing that separates a scene antagonist from its Highly Visible older brother? A scene antagonist wants the opposite of what the hero wants in that scene. But the Highly Visible Antagonist wants the answer to the Story Question to be a (usually) big, fat NO.

NO, Darth Vader doesn't want Luke Skywalker changing the galaxy for the better. NO, Sauron doesn't want the One Ring destroyed. NO, the Cylons don't want the Galactica to make it to Earth. NO, Voldemort doesn't want Harry to live long enough to graduate. NO, Humperdinck doesn't want Westley to marry Buttercup because he wants to marry her. NO, Agent Smith doesn't want Neo to do...whatever it was Neo was supposed to do.

Or, just to be clear, if the hero wants a no, then the Highly Visible Antagonist wants a YES. Those are just a bit rarer, though.

It's that vehement and direct opposition to the hero's Story Question that makes the Antagonist Highly Visible.

So, now that the foundation is laid, next time I'll explain how gamers are already in a great position to make use of Plot and pad their stories out into much more robust and exciting shapes. But I'll also point out, both for me personally and in a more general way, that our good habits at the tabletop can trip us up when we hit the keyboard.