3. The Plot

3. The Plot This, for many, is the big one. It’s possible to dispense entirely with a plot; John Sladek wrote a story called ‘Anxietal Register B’ which consists of a form to be filled in by the reader (I said there would be exceptions to every rule), but they’re tricky to pull off. Good plots satisfy immensely; For this reason, I’m sure, Roald Dahl is often cited as the perfect short story writer, but in truth he’s one of a great many in a long historical line, from Poe to Saki, from E F Benson to Somerset Maughan. Dahl is easy and accessible, and shares a common understanding of people. He’s also easy to read; no crime, this – for some reason, certain writers go out of their way to be unreadable in short form. I’ve been guilty myself, once writing a story in futuristic phonetic teen slang – I’ve never met anyone who’s read it. Inspiration for a plot can come, of course, from newspaper reports, friends, the internet, anywhere, but often they’re rarely enough on their own. Recently, a millionaire hotel owner was charged with the murder of a Middle Eastern pop star in Dubai. The reported article would make a good start-point, but not a plot – the danger is that you’ll try to crush too much story into too small a space, or fail to add the short fictional elements of resonance and surprise. In the case of the pop star death, it might be best to take a small slice of their life together, and show the reader where they’ll go after the story concludes. A simple scene in a restaurant could tell you all about them, and how their relationship is likely to end. Starting with something relatively simple doesn’t mean you have to scale down your ambitions, but if you have too much happening, you’ll stretch credibility and lose your reader. Too little plot unveiled too slowly, and you’ll bore them. A short story plot is not a three-act play. It doesn’t need the kind of structure one would expect in a novel. It may even end before the main event. In J G Ballard’s ‘The Watchtowers’, ominous towers guard a frightened populace, and only begin to open and reveal their purpose in the last line of the story. The point of the plot is to highlight the effect that a police state has on ordinary people. In Shirley Jackson’s celebrated ‘The Lottery’, villagers stone a character to death, but there is no explanation provided that will allow us to comprehend their cruelty. The point of the story is that real cruelty is inexplicable. So the plot does not directly provide the reader with satisfaction. Rather, it is the author’s delivery method for the idea. In Daphne Du Murier’s ‘The Birds’, no explanation for the avian behaviour is given, but now a remake of the film is in the works which will explain the plot. Why? Its very inexplicableness is what makes it so powerful. A plot is a skeleton; it is hidden under the skin. It needs characters and scenario to function. The perfect plot is one which emerges from the other two factors. ‘Don’t look now,’ says John to his wife, ‘but there are a couple of old girls two tables away who are trying to hypnotise me.’ John and Laura have lost a child, and are in Venice. John has a secret ability he has failed to recognize. The two old girls will ignite a terrible tragedy. Daphne Du Murier’s brilliant short story ‘Don’t Look Now’ combines the three elements to perfection because they rely on each other. If the couple had not gone to Venice, if John had not been so blind, everything would have been different – but how often in life do we ask ourselves what would have happened if we’d only behaved differently? A plot can’t simply be imposed on its characters, because free will must be exercised – but of course people are willfully blind, or optimistic, or cruel, and this affects outcome. In ‘Hancock’s Half Hour’, the character of Hancock is so clearly established – he’s vain, self-centred, deluded, a failed intellectual – that the writers only had to place him in any situation (Hancock gives blood, gets stuck in a lift, catches a cold) and they knew what he would do next. The character created the plot. That’s life. Kenneth Tynan once said that you don’t need to know why two people fall in love, you just need to know that they do. A man falls in love with a shop-window dummy. That’s a plot with a million directions, but if it’s written believably, no-one will question why he falls in love. They’ll be too busy worrying about the outcome. They could even end up being worried for the dummy. There is a tendency for new writers to create one-note short story characters. Of course people are complex and contradictory, but you don’t have to reveal all their facets in one tale. Rather, you highlight the facet that the scenario brings to the fore. Let’s put this in practical terms. The characters; Jack is sweet but hamstrung by his lack of confidence. Lisa is smart and lively, but bossy. The scenario: The couple get lost on the moors. The plot; an escaped convict needs a way of evading his captors. There’s more than enough here for a dozen outcomes, but the one that immediately suggests itself is Lisa falling for the convict. It’s the most obvious plot. But what if the convict fell for Jack? To my mind, the greatest plot danger is predictability. I read a great many stories where I’m ahead of the writer. It’s not because I’m especially astute – I have trouble following TV cop shows – but because what seems original to the author is not at all original to the reader. The unexpected is important. It’s the element in any story that makes you want to describe it to others. ‘You’ll never guess what happened today’ is a phrase which begs the other person to undermine any surprise. I’m not a fan of trick endings unless they come naturally – we never see the best ones coming. In ‘Don’t Look Now’, the elements of the ending are put in place early on, and still we fail to spot the climactic tragedy. Mystery writing, in particular, is about the fair withholding of information. I stress ‘fair’ because it would be a cheat to reveal at the end that the protagonist is a dog, unless you can read the story a second time and see that it’s obvious. Hiding is not the same as withholding. Let’s look at another Du Murier tale, ‘Adieu Sagesse’. This plot concerns a dull, dull 60 year-old banker with three daughters and a wife obsessed with appearance and status. He owns an old boat that has never been sailed, and lovingly tends it. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that he’ll soon give his family the finger before taking off for the open sea. After all, the title can be translated as ‘Goodbye Common Sense’. But instead of a closing scene in which the old man sails into a calm and glorious sunset – the perfect happy ending – Du Murier makes him sail off into stormy grey seas. This is a lower-key surprise ending, but a surprise all the same. The suggestion is that it won’t be plain sailing, but at least he’s got away. It’s more realistic. Scenario + characters may give you the plot, but it’s likely you’ll need to add something else. Put a man and a woman on a desert island and you may not need anything else, but pacing is important in a short story, so we have to get things moving. Let’s add the worst storm in 50 years, a pirate attack, sharks surrounding a floating crate of food, the arrival of twenty schoolchildren. I was never a huge Stephen King fan (I’ve since been rehabilitated), but I have to admit he has a way with plots, often mixing two traditional plots to form one new one. He’ll also use another great trick – take a very, very simple idea and keep pushing it further and further beyond its natural ending. I can’t create your plot for you, but I can give you an example of where one might come from. My story ‘Cupped Hands’ began when I read a newspaper report about African towns with no natural water supply. How do they survive? They have the water delivered in tankers. What if someone stole the truck? Why would they do that? Well, how about a guy who needed to leave town fast by stealing the tanker? Suddenly I knew the story was there, because a moral problem had been created. The guy can save himself by stealing the truck, but may doom the stricken town. There’s no easy answer to that one – perfect! Look for the stories where there are urgent decisions to be made. Look for the stories where the decisions are impossible to make. Then have your character decide to act in a surprising way. We’re just touching on this huge subject, of course – but it’s a start.