So getting back to my question within the thread topic, does this list look like too much plot, or are they not kitchen sinking elements per se? 1) An egalitarian society and a class divided society with culture shock as characters from each encounter the other's culture. 2) Some characters are privileged by being born rich; a free person who escapes slavery feels survivors guilt because she's privileged by her birth to get away. 3) Generational conflict that plays out differently but in both cases the young people want to change their respective worlds. 4) Beliefs adopted by people in each society contradict other groups' version of reality: in the village belief is influenced by who you side with; in the city belief is influenced by the pervasive media but in the same way, the group you identify with and which reality you believe are tied together in a similar way. 5) Trust issue issues between lovers and the elements of true love, beyond the destined/perfect for-each-other trope. I looked up the GwtW logline: "Against the backdrop of the great Civil War, a narcissistic Southern beauty, obsessed with idyllic love, struggles to reconstruct her life and finds her true love is closer than she thinks." That suggests the backdrop and the struggles are elements of the story rather than too much plot. Or am I looking at this wrong?
I feel like ridiculous plots are my strong suit, and the stories I've most enjoyed have also always had "slightly too much plot". With that said, this is definitely something I'm learning to temper. My last project I've put away because it grew completely unreasonable for a first work with more than 50 POVs, even though the vast majority of them were one-shots. I'm also suddenly finding myself seemingly writing a trilogy of rather thick books with a plot I intended for a fairly short novel, lol. Honestly I feel GRRM knows his craft though. I think his problem is that he is enjoying writing it too much. His last two books have been aggravatingly detailed compared to before. For example he really, really took his sweet time exploring the woods with Brienne and traveling down that river with Tyrion. He could probably have finished the entire story by now.
If I'm honest, Ginger, none of your points read like plot. They read like ideas or settings or themes. Plot is what happens. Who is/are your MC/s? What do they do? That's your plot. All the other stuff is important, but it's not plot. If you can lay out everything above through the prism of one or more characters experiencing it, then perhaps your question can be answered. 1) An egalitarian society and a class divided society with culture shock as characters from each encounter the other's culture. Which characters? Main ones or secondary? 2) Some characters are privileged by being born rich; a free person who escapes slavery feels survivors guilt because she's privileged by her birth to get away. This free person, is she your MC? 3) Generational conflict that plays out differently but in both cases the young people want to change their respective worlds. Is this a theme or an event or a series of events? 4) Beliefs adopted by people in each society contradict other groups' version of reality: in the village belief is influenced by who you side with; in the city belief is influenced by the pervasive media but in the same way, the group you identify with and which reality you believe are tied together in a similar way. Is this backstory, or main event stuff? 5) Trust issue issues between lovers and the elements of true love, beyond the destined/perfect for-each-other trope. Who are these lovers? Are they different from the characters above? I'm asking these questions because without knowing what happens, it's impossible to talk about plot. What happens is your plot. Or, rather I should say, story is what happens and plot is how you tell it. At the moment, I know neither your story nor it's structure, so I can't answer your question. But I would like to.
Yeah, I do know that. The problem is I'm reluctant to put a lot of plot details out there. I suppose I can't really get much feedback, I'll have to ponder all on my own.
Or chat with writerly friends. Or PM some people here you trust. Bouncing the ball around is always good.
THIS is so crucial. I've been wrestling with it because my plot as it is has the risk of not being properly developed if I get LAZY. For example, I have five corporations that make up the "villains" in the story, and if I just ADD haphazard connections, people will neck jerk and be like "where did this come from?" "why did this company have a connection with x? and end up conveniently against this company?" Every single plot point needs runway space, otherwise you hit into a wall by making that three line connection that spoils the story. So when you have haphazardly added plot points or too many plot points, you can never get around to setting up the payoff and logic behind them... which totally suuuuuucks
So true @jannert. I use to love the books of a Vampire series and eventually the Writer got carried away in her story telling. She started out writing strongly for the romance genre, which her fans loved her for, and from memory the first three in the series were solid romances. Over time, her series morphed into being strongly urban fantasy focused, and with so much unnecessary noise with subplots for future plots that had nothing to do with the romantic story at hand. The cast expanded with the growing number of pages of each book in the series. I think she got too carried away with her world or the voices in her head. I do remember a lot angry reviews from her loyal readership. And there is a problem when you can clearly skip large sections and chapters, and still have only read the 'romantic bits' to appreciate that story, which was the reason why people bought the book. In the end, I've dropped this author from my auto-buy list. These days when I occasionally go back to her site to check out the latest updates, I just can't find the same enthusiasm I had from before.
I think the problem people have when they think about "plot" is that it doesn't really click immediately what all this talk about "plot" is about. We hear it all the time, plot holes, plot lines, plot this and plot that... but what is it? This is Plot: (Point A) Man Stands Next To An Attractive Woman ---------------------------????????????--------------------------------- (Point B) Woman slaps man across the face. Can you imagine what might have happened in between these two points? That is what plot is all about. You know the basic structure of your story, boy and girl meet, they fall in love, they decide they can't live without each other and each one, thinking the other is already dead, commits suicide. Those are just plot points. I think of it as vertebrae. It's your job as the big bad writer to bridge the gaps in these plotted points with something that explains how we get from Point A to B smoothly and believably, and then keep on going until the last plot point is accomplished. The whole point of plot is to provide you with the tools to actually spit it out, already. Get the story down on paper, at least in some form, from beginning to end. Our thoughts are naturally disorganized. If we had it our way, we would spend hundreds of pages just talking about one character or whatever our favorite part of the world is. Eventually, maybe a story would materialize, or maybe we would get confused and just walk away or get "blocked". So let's take that example you gave. (A) Narcissistic Southern Beauty Is Obsessed With Idyllic Love ------------------------------???????????????????????-----------------------------------------(B) Her ego is deconstructed and she has to learn the true meaning of love. Okay, so... that is a little harder to fill in the blanks, right? So, you have to figure out some key events that could happen in the middle to get to that point. Let me make some shit up: (A) Stuck up rich bitch has screwed up view of romance ------------------- (b-1) She gets her heart broken by the kind of gentleman she always dreamed of -------------------- (b-2) She struggles to figure out what was wrong with her old world view with the help of some other character------------------ (b-3) She finds true love with a guy she never even thought twice about ---------------THE END So hopefully that illustrates the idea of plot. There is always this need to fill in the moment by moment of what happens, how do people hold their hands, what do they say to each other, what do they feel and experience along the way, but you can write a more directed story that actually goes somewhere if you are working toward something that you already figured out you want to happen. Or need to happen, depending on the genre or the structure of the story, you may have to fit certain constraints. This becomes ultra true if you're writing for something like a TV show or a comic book, or a video game, where time is of the essence and people really get impatient if the information is delivered too slowly or if it is handed to them too quickly. Plot is also instrumental in pacing, if you want to start with some crazy action and then tone it down, and then make sure tension builds as the story progresses... well, that's kind of hard to do if all you're doing is writing whatever comes to your mind for three hours at a time. You won't know the pace until you read your story back, unless you use some plotting techniques. I guess what's really weird is to keep in mind that plotting in stories is really the same concept as plotting graphics in mathematics. You have certain definite points, and from these definite points you can create a smooth trajectory or arc. I just realized what plot was recently, by the way, even after having taken quite a few English classes over the years... none of my teachers ever explained it to me, so I figured I would explain it here since I am reading some confusing things about plot and I really can relate to that confusion. I don't want anybody else getting confused if it can be avoided.
I'm sorry I was thinking out loud in this thread when I should have been in the "loglines" thread. I was wondering if I was adding too much to my story. My book is nearing completion and it's so complex I still can't tell someone what it's about in 25 words or less. I didn't mean to throw this thread off topic into a discussion of what is plot.
I'm sorry, but complex plots are my drug. You can't take them away from me. Even if you convince me I've gone overboard. I can't. I can't loose them. (Shudders and curls up with arms around laptop protectively.) My... precious.
And w forgot the taste of bread, the sound of trees, the softness of the wind... we even forgot our own name.
And this reminds me of why I get tired of some TV series that start out intriguing and then devolve into random stupid. Twin Peaks went that direction. So many people loved that series and I was intrigued for the first couple episodes, and then it just went off in random directions. I do so hope that the next season of Orphan Black doesn't go that way but I suspect it will. I have more hope for the series, Lucifer because at this point it continues along one theme, one story, rather than a bunch of little subplots strung along one after another.
I thought I should add, this little exercise in navel contemplating has led me to the conclusion I don't have a kitchen sink problem. I need a tiny tweak of the focus dial. I'm happy.
I love that image. Should we call you Smeagol from now on? I actually love reading complex plots. Please create them. I really don't enjoy reading stories with plots that are too simple—unless they are traditional folk tales or Old Yeller. Stories with complex plots are often the ones that stick with me the longest, because they are so rich with detail. And I do love detail. However, the creator of those complex plots has to bring them all safe into harbour at the end of the story if I'm going to walk away satisfied. If the writer keeps coming up with more and more cool stuff to the point where they lose track of who did what to whom, or drops plotlines and leaves them dangling because oh, look, a squirrel, then they're having a lot of fun—but the reader probably isn't.
You can always call me Smeagol... ... As long as you pay me. And yeah, complexity can get in the way if it's too random and overwhelming. But honestly I don't think that's a very common issue. I think most complex plots, including Game of Thrones, are justified in their own way. If you like it, and people who read it like it, what's the problem? It's not like he sacrificed his artistic integrity. If anything, the way he has characters separate without any blatant explanation is an artistic integrity thing, considering that some people seem to think it was bad but he did it anyway.
Debatable. Feel free to debate. Getting back to the thread topic, I liked @Indefatigable Id's explanation above. And I'd like to add something (which I've already said above, but it bears repeating). Story is what happens, and plot (or structure — they are aspects of the same beast) is how you tell it. You might tell your story linearly, or you might tell it with flashbacks, or you might tell it in a series of haikus. It doesn't matter, but deciding which method to use is an issue of structure (plot) and not story. Like @Indefatigable Id said, it's about how you get from point A to point B, but it's also about the order in which you present the points — nowhere is it written that they have to be sequential.
Well I hope you are proved right regarding GoT. I started reading (long before the series was filmed) and was so impressed by the first two books. Here is an author who really rocks! However, by the end of the third book, I was becoming anxious he was losing the plot (literally) and I stopped reading after book four. It just became too much of a muddle for me, and, like the real universe, seemed to be endlessly expanding in a literary Big Bang. I lost faith in his ability to eventually tie it all together. Killing off characters to end their plotlines made an impact at first; however, it soon began to feel like an easy way out. I've never watched the TV adaptation. I might go back to it if he ever finishes the series ...which of course he still hasn't. In fact, the filmed series has now lapped him. He's writing to catch up with his own series now, and has already expressed dismay that the TV show has taken a couple of turns he didn't intend. I actually feel sorry for the guy. I think he's very very blocked. It's been taking more and more time for each book to come out. You'd think he'd have hit his stride and would be producing them faster, not more slowly. Kind of like JK Rowling did with the Harry Potter series. But the opposite seems to have happened to Mr Martin. He now seems to be stuck in a mire of his own making. It's very sad, because he's really got writing chops, and his tale is very original. But the failure to control his plot has been his undoing already. Of course he's made tons of money on GoT, but he must feel really horrible to watch his creation being taken over by others, and knowing that, even if he does manage to finish it, it's no fun to write any more. As far as I'm concerned, George RR Martin is the poster boy for this thread's cautionary premise: "Don't create too much plot." Too much, in the sense of 'more than you can handle as a writer.' Some writers can handle very complex plots (like JK Rowling) and still tie everything together at the end. Some can't.
Hahaha. JK Rowling is not a complex writer. She's got a-notentirely-simplistic cast but there reasonably extensive nature does nothing to rescue them from the blatant simplicity of her story. It's a fairytale. A literal kids book. It's good for what it is but it is not a mature sophisticated storyline quite.
What I've discovered is that... It seems easy at first to create a lot of plot branches because every character has their own legend or destiny, but then you start to get doubts about "the legend", you start to sweat as the writer, and struggle to bring characters together without destroying their independent power... Once that happens you start fraying and unravelling a little more each day until you can't stand writing it anymore because you know in your heart you can't do it enough justice anymore. NCE - new character energy It always runs out I literally try to write as simple as I can imagine and I still wind up in a quagmire... Poor George RR Martin
Eh. I've never felt that. Not saying you can't, but I have to feel like that about character subplots.
Interesting. I didn't consider that the story might not be told in chronological order. I suppose what matters is the audience gets crucial information by the time they need it, to establish context and drive the story onward. I am glad to see that people have said that my concept of plot is more or less correct, this gives me hope that I'm on the right track after years of not seeing any way forward as a writer. See, I got to this point (of being a worse writer than I was as a teenager) by having too much confidence in talent. I had a lot of enthusiasm for my own ideas and no interest in learning discipline. It has taken me some time to understand that many people have ideas, many people have talent. I have come to think that many authors are just ordinary guys and gals with some degree of talent who had more of an appreciation for discipline. All I mean by discipline is studying storytelling, practicing, using devices correctly, adhering to elements of style, implementing structure and of course, regularly setting aside time for writing. But plot is especially important. In many cases, the difference between a good story and a not-so-good story comes down to plot. I think the simplest explanation for why people struggle with plot is that it's hard to understand. Also, muddying the waters are facts that we can't ignore, such as the fact that some authors can work without plot or that in some mediums, style, novelty or visuals can actually cover up a weak or almost non-existent plot. I observed the same thing in the game design community, that people would have a tendency to look only to the exceptional cases and strive for that. I think that's just human nature, we're so easily overcome by zeal and avarice that we forget that the little things matter just as much as the big things.
Yes. The discipline you mentioned is what a writer must master in order to bring their ideas to life between the covers of a book. Great ideas don't make a great book. Great ideas coupled with great storytelling skills do. And storytelling skills don't come to most of us without a lot of learning and practice, I reckon.
I didn't mean JK is a 'mature' writer (in the sense of audience.) She definitely wrote the Harry Potter books for children. Complex doesn't equal 'sophisticated.' I was using the word 'complex' in this context: adjective adjective: complex - consisting of many different and connected parts. What I meant by 'complex plot' is that her books have lots and lots of characters in them, with many subplots that go on for a number of books—and she kept all the threads under control and brought things to a conclusion that seemed to satisfy everybody (including my husband, who was a big fan. ) That's what I meant by 'complex.' I meant 'lots of characters and many plot diversions.' I didn't mean Rowling's Harry Potter series was written for adults. I compared her to George RR Martin because of the length of both series and the way both series were being filmed as they were being written—not the content. Actually I scratch my head a bit over why so many adults got so involved in her stories. I read the first one, and thought ...hum. If I was a kid I'd have loved this, but I'm not....
I am Plothog, hogger of plots. But has Plothog hogged more plots than he can handle? Will the power of all his plots overload his story? His only hope to seek out the wisdom of the mighty beta-readers and learn the fate of his entire world.
