• Have You Considered an Anarchist Approach to Plot?

    Matthew Clark Davison and Alice LaPlante on Throwing Bombs, Emotional Movement, and Other Plot Devices

    This is part two of a five-part series on the craft of writing by Matthew Clark Davison and Alice LaPlante.

    All too often, plot is taught as architecture, as per Freitig’s Triangle: rising action, climax, falling action, resolution. But we suggest that plot might better be understood as an emotional strategy: a controlled burn of surprise, contradiction, revelation. And—we might add–especially, connection.

    In this essay, based on a chapter from our forthcoming book from WW Norton, The Lab: Experiments Writing Across Genre, we suggest that an anarchist approach to plotting could result in much more compelling—and surprising—results. “Throwing bombs” we see as an essential creative tool to promote fiery characterization, tension, timing, and narrative play.

    We’ll also touch on the strategic use of emotional movement as plot. Most people are trained to see plot as a series of events. But what about a pattern of emotional movement? These too can drive your characters forward. Your goal should be fiery tension (even in the quietest of stories) based on emotional play and timing.

    First, what do we mean when we say “throw bombs”? We mean inserting any unanticipated event that is completely disconnected (on the surface, anyway) from what came before it.

    There are two kinds of bombs: external and internal.

    First, external: a surprising (even shocking) event beyond the control of the characters. An earthquake, tornado or some other act of God. Or a stranger or other unidentified character doing something out of the blue that completely disrupts the story.

    Internal bombs are when an unexpected chain of events is put into motion—but instead of being random and uncontrolled, it can be directly (if subtly) caused by your character(s).

    Take “The Ceiling” by Kevin Brockmeier. It starts out as a seemingly conventional story about a deteriorating marriage, but then the plot gets hijacked by a surreal event: the sky literally descends. The apocalyptic development that literally crushes the town and its inhabitants parallels the relationship’s  emotional collapse but is also a cosmic interruption none of the characters could have possibly brought about on their own, or predicted. It transforms what would have been a well-written but familiar story of a man discovering his wife’s infidelity with a neighbor into something not easily classified.

    Internal bombs are when an unexpected chain of events is put into motion—but instead of being random and uncontrolled, it can be directly (if subtly) caused by your character(s). In other words, due to who they are, they bring it on themselves.

    Here you must be careful not to make it either obvious, or—at the other end of the scale—outrageously unbelievable. It can seem out of character (see nonconforming oddities in our first essay in this series) but it should also be attributable to a herethero unknown (unconscious, hidden) aspect of your character.

    What both types of bombs have in common: they should leave you, the writer, with a problem: no idea what will happen next. If you turn your back on cliched or familiar reactions, this can be difficult. If traditional plotting devices are off bounds, you must consider how the bomb changes the characters, the theme, and the situation of the story in surprising yet convincing ways. (Thanks, EM Forster for that nugget of wisdom.).

    Bombs, whether internal or external, are great when you’re at an impasse in plot. You’ve written yourself into a corner, and can’t think of any way out except dull, expected, and overused actions or words or events that will suck the life out of your story.

    Try it when you’re in a pickle. We’ve had students get spectacular results from this exercise.

    The other plotting strategy we’d like to explore is when a story is driven, not by events, but by the emotional movement of a character. In our forthcoming book from W.W Norton, The Lab: Experiments Writing Across Genre, we use the example of Lydia Peelle’s story, “Reasons For and Advantages of Breathing.”

    You can chart the emotional progression of the story’s first-person protagonist as she navigates the loneliness and heartbreak of a divorce. But this is no cliched break-up story. Instead, you can see how the narrator goes through alternating moments of connection and disconnection as she struggles to heal emotionally. The tension between these coming-togethers and alienations from self and others is palpable, although nothing of real significance happens. And you’re often surprised by the things that connect versus the things that emotionally separate this narrator from other people, and the world.

    For example, a sexual interlude—often a way for a couple to be emotionally intimate—between the narrator and her estranged husband leads to a profound disconnection. Yet witnessing a rare reptile in a tank in a darkened laboratory with a elderly scientist acquaintance results in perhaps the deepest connection the narrator makes in the story.

    So: plot as driven by a character’s emotional fluctuations. It works.

    A final plot device we’ll look at is when a character lies, or hides something important from others, or possibly even themself. We’re not talking about lies that are uncovered by the literary equivalent of detective work, or stumbled across by accident, or which are exposed in a grand climatic reveal. Rather, we urge you to craft lies or misdirections that deeply but subtly influence characters’ thoughts, words, or deeds–and therefore the trajectory of a story.

    “The Reverse Bug” by Lore Segal is an understated story in which a character working at a research institute lies to pretend that he understands—and cares—more than he actually does. Social niceties and institutional language are his ways to tell untruths, even to himself, while keeping both the status quo and his organizational status intact. There’s no big revelation, just a slow seep of quiet artifice on multiple levels that works extraordinarily well.

    The takeaway here is that you don’t have to resort to the same-old formulaic conflict-crisis-resolution architecture of a traditional story. Particularly when you find yourself stuck with the age-old question: what can happen next? Rather than reaching out for something logically sound or tried-and-true, attempt to play with one of these three plotting devices. You could surprise yourself (always a good thing) while delighting your readers.

    __________________________________

    The Lab, by Matthew Clark Davison and Alice LaPlante, is available from WW Norton for pre-order.


    Matthew Clark Davison and Alice LaPlante
    Matthew Clark Davison and Alice LaPlante
    Matthew Clark Davison is the author of the novel Doubting Thomas and founder of The Lab, a generative writing workshop. He is emeritus faculty in creative writing at San Francisco State University, and lives in Oakland, California with his husband. He can be reached at through his website at www.matthewclarkdavison.com.

    Alice LaPlante is the author of the craft books The Making of a Story and Write Yourself Out of a Corner, and the New York Times bestselling novel Turn of Mind, as well as three other critically acclaimed works of fiction. She has taught creative writing at Stanford and San Francisco State University and now lives in Mallorca, Spain, with her family. She welcomes emails from other writers as well as readers at alice.laplante@gmail.com.





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