The Uses of a Skeleton
Ms. Wrede, do you use a plot skeleton? asked the earnest student. How do you apply it to your work?
I sat there for a minute, completely slumguzzled. Because the question was coming from such an alien perspective that it took me a while to come up with an answer that seemed even remotely sensible to me. I eventually babbled something, but it was pretty disjointed; fortunately, having a blog gives me a chance to be a little more coherent.
The problem with that question, for me, is that little verb, use. All my books have a plot skeleton, but it's like the skeleton of the human body. I use my eyes to see things and my hands to type and my legs to walk with; my skeleton is one of the underlying things that makes it all possible. I don't use my skeleton any more than I use my stomach or my circulatory system; it's just there, doing its own thing, deep under everything else, and I don't much think about it at all, except when something goes wrong with it.
I also don't see how a plot skeleton can be "applied." It's just there. Or not. Reading about happy people sitting around being happy isn't particularly interesting to most people (either to read or to write about), so you start off with a protagonist who has a problem. People who sit around being miserable without doing anything aren't very interesting, either, so you have your protagonist take action in order to solve the problem. The action can succeed, fail, or be a partial success/failure-but, at which point the protagonist will either declare the story over (if it's a short one), or try again and again until he/she either permanently succeeds or permanently fails or gives up (if it's a novel).
The basic plot skeleton is descriptive, not prescriptive: it's just a way of pointing out the way most stories move, not a recipe that has to be followed. This is why there is only one of it. Your bones - your skeleton - may be slightly larger or smaller than mine, but if our skeletons were the only parts of us that showed, we'd all look practically identical. It's the cartilage and muscle and tendons and skin and hair that make people look different from each other (unless you're an expert). Plot is just the skeleton of the story. You need one in order for the story to stand up straight, instead of collapsing into an unreadable pile of goo, but if you strip the flesh from Great Literature, you will find the same bones underneath that you find in schlock.
It is also worth noting that the plot skeleton does not say anything at all about content. A lot of people seem to think that "plot" and "action-adventure" mean the same thing, but they don't. A story can have a plot that's chiefly emotional or intellectual - one that's focused on the protagonist coming to terms with a parent's death, for instance. The incidents of the story will be something like "Protagonist is depressed after funeral; protagonist goes to a movie to try to cheer up; cheerful movie makes protagonist feel even worse" rather than "Monster is attacking village; protagonist tries to kill monster; killing monster enrages monster's Mom, who is even more dangerous," but the skeleton underneath is still "Protagonist has problem; protagonist tries to solve problem; attempted solution makes matters worse."
Why even bother with the concept of a plot skeleton, then? Because it can be useful if a) one isn't very good at plotting-by-instinct, or b) there's something wrong at that level of the story. "A)" tends to happen during the pre-writing stage, when the author is having trouble coming up with the "what happens" part of the story. Asking basic questions like "What is the main character's problem here?" and "What does he/she do to try to fix it?" and "What goes wrong, and what's the new/worse situation that results?" can often result in useful answers that build a solid series of cause-and-effect incidents.
"B)" is something one usually notices after one has written a bunch of stuff that doesn't seem to be working. At this point, the same questions ("What's the problem? What does she do about it? How do things get worse?") can be useful to pinpoint what's missing, if something is. Sometimes, in order to do this kind of analysis, one has to unwind all the secondary and subplots first, because each plot and subplot has its own skeleton and in a complex, multi-stranded novel it's a lot easier than you might think to lose track and leave out a critical piece. As soon as you line everything up in order, though, it becomes obvious: "OK, the monster attacks the village; then the monster's Mom attacks…hey, I never did the bit where the protagonist kills the first monster!"
It's common sense applied to writing, that's all.
