VanderMeer's Wonderbook, Chapter Four: Narrative Design (Continued)
Plot is often seen within certain fairly standard structures. The Freytag pyramid, mentioned yesterday, like the three act structure, and many other standard plot diagrams, builds tension towards the climax, then resolves that tension as the story ends. Vandermeer shows this through a series of diagrams, and then follows with some additional plot diagrams that provide further options.
The first of these comes from a film school illustration, and consists of a series of overlapping circles. The progress of the story is similar to that in the traditional plot diagrams, but the focus is upon the way that the circles overlap, a symbol of the transitions that move the story from one phase to the next. The diagram implies that at each step, the new elements begin to mingle with the old, washing them out, before the next phase begins introducing the elements necessary for that transition.
After this we get a diagram describing the picaresque novel, a story where the structure is temporal but without the same type of central drive. The events follow in sequence, and the story is structured as a series of events, not as one long sequence but as separate incidents or episodes. This can be extremely effective, and many great books (Cervantes Don Quixote, for example) are structured this way. In a sense, it is the most realistic plot structure, as it is only the sequencing in time that moves the plot forward. Yet, it is often most used in outlandish stories.
Next we get the staircase diagram, in which the action is always rising, and the plot climaxes without a falling action to follow. The victory or defeat is the ending, and the rest is all building towards that climax. Tension is constantly raising as the story progresses, without the relief and variation of some other plots. The stakes are always rising, and things are always getting more and more significant in such a story, so that the ending becomes an explosive release. Whatever resolution follows in such a story is minor.
The roller coaster, as it's name implies, has multiple, smaller, segments of rising and falling action. The story generally has two rises, each with a climactic turning point, with a small section of falling action. The ending is usually another rise in action, and a resolution that leaves the character near the top again. This is a structure used in commercial properties quite often.
These are the diagrams offered, overtly, and they represent a fairly broad realm of possibilities, but they are all, I think, in a similar vein. They all follow a single linear format, going from a to b, but a plot can circle itself, or shift to go backwards. A plot can have more than one story thread, and each can be in a different phase. These examples feel like building blocks that can be combined. What if you take the staircase and pin it on the roller coaster, making it so that the first rising action is a bit elongated, and the next is longer still, and the third becomes the actual staircase. Or, what if you do it by not fully relieving the tension each time? So, the rising action is followed by a climax and a smaller fall in the action, leaving tension unresolved that carries on and contributes to the next bout of rising action.
What if you consider the individual incidents within a picaresque work as having their own plot structures? What if you tell two stories, one with this type of plot, and one with that type. The two stories interact, but viewed separately, how different can they be and still function well when brough back together.
Their are really infinitely many plot structures. Look up the plot diagram for Tristram Shandy's first volume. The image is part a joke, showing and meandering line that doubles back on itself and bounces about absurdly. Yet, even to think of this as a joke, one must consider that the joke is about the validity of narrowing plots to things that can be simply diagrammed, and it would only work in the context of a novel like Tristram Shandy, where the plot is so eccentric.
Plots come in far more shapes than are presented here, as, no doubt, Vandermeer knows. I suspect that as the chapter continues that will be discussed, to some degree, and I recognize the usefulness of providing these basic concepts here. Plotting is not a simple matter, even in one of these simple structures, and to develop more complicated notions of how a plot can function requires some familiarity with these basics, but that does not mean that I have a lot more to say about them at this point.
The first of these comes from a film school illustration, and consists of a series of overlapping circles. The progress of the story is similar to that in the traditional plot diagrams, but the focus is upon the way that the circles overlap, a symbol of the transitions that move the story from one phase to the next. The diagram implies that at each step, the new elements begin to mingle with the old, washing them out, before the next phase begins introducing the elements necessary for that transition.
After this we get a diagram describing the picaresque novel, a story where the structure is temporal but without the same type of central drive. The events follow in sequence, and the story is structured as a series of events, not as one long sequence but as separate incidents or episodes. This can be extremely effective, and many great books (Cervantes Don Quixote, for example) are structured this way. In a sense, it is the most realistic plot structure, as it is only the sequencing in time that moves the plot forward. Yet, it is often most used in outlandish stories.
Next we get the staircase diagram, in which the action is always rising, and the plot climaxes without a falling action to follow. The victory or defeat is the ending, and the rest is all building towards that climax. Tension is constantly raising as the story progresses, without the relief and variation of some other plots. The stakes are always rising, and things are always getting more and more significant in such a story, so that the ending becomes an explosive release. Whatever resolution follows in such a story is minor.
The roller coaster, as it's name implies, has multiple, smaller, segments of rising and falling action. The story generally has two rises, each with a climactic turning point, with a small section of falling action. The ending is usually another rise in action, and a resolution that leaves the character near the top again. This is a structure used in commercial properties quite often.
These are the diagrams offered, overtly, and they represent a fairly broad realm of possibilities, but they are all, I think, in a similar vein. They all follow a single linear format, going from a to b, but a plot can circle itself, or shift to go backwards. A plot can have more than one story thread, and each can be in a different phase. These examples feel like building blocks that can be combined. What if you take the staircase and pin it on the roller coaster, making it so that the first rising action is a bit elongated, and the next is longer still, and the third becomes the actual staircase. Or, what if you do it by not fully relieving the tension each time? So, the rising action is followed by a climax and a smaller fall in the action, leaving tension unresolved that carries on and contributes to the next bout of rising action.
What if you consider the individual incidents within a picaresque work as having their own plot structures? What if you tell two stories, one with this type of plot, and one with that type. The two stories interact, but viewed separately, how different can they be and still function well when brough back together.
Their are really infinitely many plot structures. Look up the plot diagram for Tristram Shandy's first volume. The image is part a joke, showing and meandering line that doubles back on itself and bounces about absurdly. Yet, even to think of this as a joke, one must consider that the joke is about the validity of narrowing plots to things that can be simply diagrammed, and it would only work in the context of a novel like Tristram Shandy, where the plot is so eccentric.
Plots come in far more shapes than are presented here, as, no doubt, Vandermeer knows. I suspect that as the chapter continues that will be discussed, to some degree, and I recognize the usefulness of providing these basic concepts here. Plotting is not a simple matter, even in one of these simple structures, and to develop more complicated notions of how a plot can function requires some familiarity with these basics, but that does not mean that I have a lot more to say about them at this point.
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