The Plot-Device Machine – Knowledge
“You can run but you can’t hide.” It’s simple truth, that getting distance from a problem may be no match for how “Knowledge is power.” And that’s only one side to how who knows what defines the story: you might move your characters around in your story to control how the plot unfolds, but knowledge almost is the plot.
(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)
Think about it: Knowledge is the only other side of the story that actually matches how our reader’s experiencing it. Unless it’s a travel guide, they aren’t following those movements; unless it’s a how-to they won’t be assembling the characters’ kind of strengths.
But knowledge means something, if the story can make us wonder “what’s really going on there” and let us share in the answer… because that answer or how to search for it always says at least a bit about our own lives. It could be
Specific: Bilbo solving each of Gollum’s riddles. Each time we figure one out ourselves, we cheer; each time we don’t, we sweat just a little for him.
Game-changing: the Green Goblin learning Spider-Man’s identity. (It’s not just what the hero knows!)
Layered: how much of a romance comes down to pacing what moments the couple are “getting to know” the chemistry they have, matched against False Impressions?
Or, bedrock: under all their clues, mysteries can get their ultimate power from revealing just how vicious a killer was right next to us all along.
So the more of your story is tied to the revelations in it, the harder it can hit.
Knowing when to Know
It may be because information’s about blind spots, but I’ve seen (and committed) so many moments where a plot misses one side of holding its mysteries together. A story can’t lose track of:
What’s someone know, right now? What does that make him think he needs to look into next—or not care about at all, so far?
And, how does his assumptions play into it? There’s no better tool for a character arc than to find the facts he just won’t accept, then show how wrong he is.
Then, how many ways can he follow that up? Talk to people, bring up Google, or track down a Dusty Tome? Run a test in a lab?
One trick is to consider all five senses (or more, depending on your cast!) for what signs each fact might leave, including from its history. Detectives look for everything from footprints to strange sounds to glimpses in ATM cameras, and all the associates and back-story a suspect has. Can someone really run away from an enemy without coming back all sweaty?
Also, which of those signs can he use best, to follow up? A hacker might dig through a dozen servers before he knocks on a witness’s door, but Sherlock Holmes will spot everything from calloused fingers to unscrupulous accounting at a glance—and he’ll know what the combination means, and how to poke around in disguise to get the next piece.
Check what all characters know, not just the main ones. Look at each step your central characters take (in investigating and everything else), and ask who else is going to get a hint of that and start nosing around themselves—or just jump right in—and what that tells the hero to look into, and keep things escalating. There’s just no comparison between Lois Lane being fooled by Clark Kent’s glasses and the thrill of Indy hauling up the Ark only to discover that the Nazis were watching him digging…
And, what are all those players doing for “information control”? Can they keep from leaving those traces (tiptoe past those guards), or erase them later or explain them away?
Better yet, who can trick who with all of that? There’s the “moment of distraction” that could tweak any moment in the story… and then there’s Holmes’s defining trick of pretending to set fire to a house, to make the blackmailer herself reveal her hiding place. And of course some of the best plot twists come when the villain (or hero) realize they’ve been tricked and the tables start turning.
You can lay most parts of the story out in terms of how each scrap of knowledge lets the hero—and everyone else—move forward, or else move off-track with your red herrings.
In fact, in many styles of writing, most of the pages are simply the combination of searching and moving. Whether it’s a grand investigation, sneaking around an enemy, or just describing scenery (whether or not real clues are hidden in it), they form the same pattern:
Typical scene: everyone moves in their most informative direction, sees what’s there, rinse and repeat.
Think about it, how many ways are there that really vary from that? There’s when someone settles in to search in one place (through a process like reading or talking), or into a flat-out race or chase where speed matters more than scenery (but even then, things can come up in the environment to help them maneuver). There are Strength moments, from fights to change-the-tires scenes, that I’ll get to in the next Plot Device post. And you have other conversations, that can be their own mix of Knowledge and Motive, and maybe some Movement (or Strength) too. But mixing Movement and Knowledge might be the bread and butter of getting things written.
In fact, part of the balance is how much you’ll let Knowledge obsolete Movement. Do characters need to go out to look at a site, or just run tests in their lab—or even skip gathering the lab samples if they can just talk to someone who’s seen it happen? (“Where’s my flying car? It’s called the Internet.”) Which means you can choose what clues call for legwork, and which dead ends aren’t shown on the map, to pick which discoveries get more emphasis… or just more chances for complications.
And of course, the more amazing a character’s control of knowledge is, the more it reshapes the whole story from the start. (If you’ve ever played a video game with a secondary “radar display” to keep track of your enemies, you know how different it feels to see a bit further!) Many a story’s been built just around why the protagonist knows at least a little that the rest of us don’t: the psychic, the spy, or just the witness nobody believes. Or it could be the same advantage in reverse, being the invisible man or inside source that can hide in plain sight. Then you have the challenge of building the story around just how much more they can find and what limits they still have.
(No, Superman, the missile control doesn’t have to be inside the lead box, that’s only the first thing where you can’t see what’s inside… oops.)
Knowledge, and movement, can be the major tools for organizing a story. But the other two Plot Device tools… those are the story pieces themselves.
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