Everything I Need to Know About Plot, I Learned From Buffy
By Dave King | October 21, 2014 |
photo by Jaina
A couple of weeks ago, a client told me one of his beta readers had said his book read like a comic book. I asked why that was a bad thing.
Granted, you don’t want your characters to be shallow caricatures or your plot to be mechanical or contrived, which is what many people mean by “reads like a comic book.” But all of this client’s characters were fully rounded and plausibly human. Even the psychopath who hunted people down in the woods had his vulnerable moments. And while his plot had problems, contrivance wasn’t one of them. I suspect his beta reader was complaining about the fact that his manuscript was an exciting adventure story.
Years ago, I stopped reading New Yorker fiction because I lost patience with beautifully written stories in which nothing much happens. For the sake of this article (oh, the sacrifices I make.), I picked up a recent issue to try again.
Joseph O’Neill’s “The Referees” tells the story of Rob, who has just returned to New York and is trying to get two character references so he can move into a co-op. We meet a lot of Rob’s former friends and get a good idea of who he is and what kind of life he’s led. He has a clear and engaging voice, and it’s hard not to like him despite his drawbacks. The story makes good use of some advanced techniques, like present-tense narration and a highly unreliable narrator. It also says some intriguing things about how we judge one another and ourselves. But by the end of the story Rob still has only one reference, which he wrote himself, and we don’t know if he gets the apartment or not. Maybe he’s changed by the experience. Maybe he’s not.
In short, nothing happens. It does it quite beautifully, but . . .
I understand why some people might love quality characterization and beautiful writing so much that they’re willing to read a story for these pleasures alone. But most readers need something more to keep them going. They want to hope that something good – or fear that something bad – will happen to characters they care about. They want to watch those characters take action to change their fates. They want to be surprised.
They want plot.
This hunger for plot is, I think, one reason comics and YA fiction, and the movies based on them, are so popular. The best practitioners of these arts know and value the power of story, and one of the best of these is Joss Whedon. He’s the force behind the current revival of the Marvel Universe (The Avengers, the Agents of Shield), but the work I know him for best is the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Buffyverse (alert – abundant spoilers ahead), the series follows the adventures of Buffy Summers, a cheerleader at a small, Southern California High School who is also the Slayer. A Slayer is a young woman, always chosen after the last one dies, who gains enhanced strength and reflexes to fight the vampires and demons who leak into our world through Hellmouths – connections with other, less savory dimensions. Slayers are found and trained by a member of the Watchers Council, one of whom is Giles, the librarian at Buffy’s school – the local Hellmouth is under the library. For seven seasons Buffy, along with a group of friends (not all of them entirely human), did battle against a long series of creatures bent on the destruction of all that is good and wholesome in the world.
The series is as campy and fun as you might expect. But underneath the silliness lies a lot of effective, often brilliant storytelling. In fact, Whedon’s handling of Buffy shows how to create stories that are comic book (in the best sense) without deteriorating into cartoonishness.
For instance, Whedon is willing to portray good and evil in pretty stark terms. Buffy is good and vampires are bad. And given that morality in the real world is often more confused than this, many readers like to escape into a world where the choices are clearer. Whedon keeps this working because his morality, while always clear, is never simplistic. Good and evil are the sides, but characters sometimes switch sides or aren’t sure what side they’re on. Three long-term character arcs involved two vampires and a demon joining the good guys, and three others involved good characters going over to the dark side. And the fact that these arcs develop over years shows that the transition from good to evil or back is not easy or facile.
Whedon has never been afraid of high stakes tension, either. People’s lives are at risk every episode, and the world at large is at risk at least once per season – to the point that in one of the later seasons of the show, he poked fun at his own end-of-season-apocalypse with this exchange:
“It’s . . . it’s the end of the world.”
“Again?”
But even when the world is in danger and dark forces are at work, Whedon never loses sight of the characters’ personal, internal, intimate struggles. In the episode “Helpless,” Giles, who by then has become a substitute father for Buffy, is driven by the Watchers Council to rob her of her powers and put her in deliberate danger. The Council has found that, at a certain point in their training, forcing a Slayer to rely on her own wit rather than her enhanced abilities helps her to fight more effectively and live longer. So Giles is acting for Buffy’s own good. But the betrayal breaks the trust that had formed between them, and that betrayal, rather than the vampire threatening to kill Buffy and her mother, is the real focus of the story.
Whedon never uses the conventions of the genre mindlessly and often works to confound them. At a critical moment in the episode “Passion,” one of the main characters, Jenny Calendar, is being pursued by a vampire through an empty school at night. It is the stereotypical horror-movie chase, with desperate races through darkened, echoing hallways, attempts to hide, sudden discovery, and renewed pursuit. You’re almost impatient for the moment when Jenny makes her final escape — she is a main character, after all.
Then the vampire catches her and snaps her neck.
It is one of the most shocking moments in the series, and the shock comes in part because it plays against genre expectations.
I suspect that one reason typical New Yorker stories are so plot free is that, out of a fear of falling into cliché, their writers shy away from strong conflict, clear morality, and standard storytelling conventions. But if Whedon’s work shows anything, it’s that there’s absolutely no reason the basic elements of a sound plot can’t be combined with the virtues of the typical New Yorker story. After all, Shakespeare managed deft characterization and a brilliant use of language while telling some ripping good yarns, complete with swordfights and ghosts and witches that wouldn’t be out of place in the Buffyverse.
In “Normal Again,” an episode from the sixth season, Buffy is injected with venom during a fight with a demon — and wakes up in a mental institution. There she learns that she had a complete breakdown and, for the last six years has been living in a delusional world in which she is a mythical being called the Slayer. The rest of the show cuts back and forth between the Buffyverse, in which her friends capture the demon to prepare an antidote to the venom, and the mental institution, where her doctors and parents try to find a way to keep her grounded in reality. Eventually, her psychiatrist tells her that her emotional connection to her imaginary friends is what’s keeping her in the delusional world. She genuinely loves these people who don’t exist.
At the climax of the show, Buffy traps her friends in a basement with the demon as a way of breaking free of her feelings for them. In the Buffyverse, she huddles in a corner, forcing herself not to intervene as they fight for their lives. In the mental institution, she struggles to stay with her parents despite everything that’s pulling her back. Then her mother, to encourage her, says she has to believe in herself. Buffy replies, “You’re right. Thank you. Good-bye.” And returns to the Buffyverse to rescue the people she loves.
If the thought of a delusional hero having to decide between sanity and the loss of passion sounds familiar, you may be remembering the end of Don Quixote. There, Alonso Quixano, after all of his delusional adventures as the Man of LaMancha, has finally recovered his sanity. But his friends try to persuade him to go mad again, to become Don Quixote once more, because as Buffy found, it’s better to be insane and live in a world with honor than remain sane in a world without it.
Many years ago, I read a National Lampoon article in which a group of New-Yorker-type writers kidnapped Frank W. Dixon, creator of the Hardy Boys series, and forced him to write plots for them. While that was, naturally, over the top parody, it might not be such a bad thing for New Yorker writers to explore the joys of the Buffyverse, and the brilliant storyteller behind it.
So how else to comics and cartoons show a mastery of plot? And I’d like to renew an offer I made a couple of months ago. If you have questions about your own fiction, feel free to send them to me — dave@davekingedits.com. I can’t promise to answer them all, but if they are of general interest, they may show up in a column.
Dave King has been editing for nearly 40 years now. He is co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, a former contributing editor to Writer’s Digest, and has contributed more than 100 articles over the last 12 years to Writer Unboxed. He lives on 25 acres in rural Massachusetts with his business partner and wife, Ruth Julian, who also edits his work. His other day job, at least on Sundays, is as the organist at a Lutheran church in Greenfield, Mass.
I was never into comics (unless Mad magazine counts), but I did get caught up in a cartoon series when I was a kid in the late 70s. I can’t recall the title, but it involved the transformation of a WWII submarine into a spaceship to take out an alien outpost on a Pluto moon that continually bombarded Earth with nukes.
First, the premise is outlandish. Apparently unconcerned with things like physics, I fell in love with the concept of an old sub used to fight advanced aliens.
The characters were not cliche, at least not in my young mind. A good mixture of the wise old captain, the young foolish warriors, and the comic relief.
The goal was concrete. Get to Pluto and clobber the alien gun firing on Earth. The series continued after that, but each phase had a specific goal.
The cliffhangers were fantastic. I couldn’t wait until the next weekly episode to find out of the sub’s crew survived to fight another week.
Literature? Heck no. Fun? You betcha! A sci-fi writer with an elementary understanding of language and usage, but with a great head for plot, can take a concept like that and have a fairly successful career. I’ll probably never see my name in the New Yorker (certainly not my political commentary), but I’ll take a few thousand Amazon sales over that any day.
That would be “Star Blazers,” the first American cartoon to be based on Japanese Anime. It was also the first long-form anime adventure cartoon, with a plot arc that spanned several episodes. So it would have taught you something about story.
I suspect a lot of our sense of story is formed by cartoons, just as the food we ate as children remains comfort food all of our lives. I know for a fact that a lot of my sense of humor was shaped by Chuck Jones and Jay Ward.
If you’d like to revisit your childhood, by the way, complete episodes of Star Blazers are available on Youtube.
Famed screenwriter and novelist William Goldman, in an introduction to his novel The Temple of Gold, writes about his love of comic books during the Depression. That fueled his desire to be a writer. Later he read New Yorker stories and was singularly unmoved. He said they were always about an unhappily married American couple in Europe, ending up at a cafe, and in the last paragraph a fly would walk across the table, and the story would end: And then she understood. He did not connect.
Then he read a collection of stories by Irwin Shaw and thought, Here is a writer who is finally writing a real story, with blood pumping and something actually happening.
I’ve been reading Shaw’s collected stories and of course they are not about huge outer action, because short stories rarely are. But what’s going on inside the characters is quietly shattering. See, e.g., “The Girls in Their Summer Dresses” and “The Eighty-Yard Run.” Shaw would later write hugely popular novels with plenty of outer action, too. But the point is that plot can, and should, happen even in the quietest spots. Perhaps even in the New Yorker.
I love Goldman’s description of the typical New Yorker story of his day.
I’d absolutely agree that you can craft brilliant stories around internal tensions alone, as long as those tensions build and resolve. I’d also agree that you can find brilliant fiction just about anywhere. But there does seem to be a cultural bias against conventional storytelling in some circles. Not just the New Yorker — it shows up in the NYT Book Review, as well.
“One reason you go over and over it is to make the piece sound less as if you were having a lot of fun with it yourself. You try to play it down. In fact, if there’s such a thing as a New Yorker style, that would be it— playing it down.” – James Thurber
Because, God knows, you shouldn’t write like you’re having fun.
Hahahahaha. Awesome.
Jim and Dave-
Irwin Shaw’s novel’s are under-appreciated, almost forgotten. But Rich Man, Poor Man and Bread Upon the Waters are masterful, excellent introductions to his narrative skill.
I’ve never read the novels, but I remember the TV version of Rich Man, Poor Man. And I do remember it as including some good, solid storytelling. I should put the books on my list.
I wonder how much damage it did to his literary reputation to have one of his books made into a miniseries.
I think there’s something to his rep getting hurt because the books became a TV mini-series. I know that because of that, I kind of dismissed him as a hack – until I read his book of short stories. Then I realized he was a master storyteller. (Sailor Off The Bremen is still one of my favorites.) And I was glad that he made all the TV money.
I completely agree with that, Don. He is due for a rediscovery.
JSB-
Irwin Shaw’s “Short Stories: Five Decades” should be mandatory reading for all writers. Excellent book. Too bad he’s not read by more writers today.
“I lost patience with beautifully written stories in which nothing much happens.”
Thank you! I feel like it’s brave for anyone in the literary community to step up and say literary fiction is boring. So much of it feels like the Emperors new clothes (except for Cormac McCarthy, who does it all, and does it perfectly)
Thanks, Jim.
Maybe it’s because I read a lot of books out of the past, but I’ve never been enamored by the literary culture. I know that what is now considered literature was once equally snubbed. Not that there isn’t a lot of awful writing passed off as commercial fiction. The point is, good writing can be found everywhere.
I once heard a nineteenth century critic complaining that, instead of enriching their minds with real literature, young people were wasting their time reading Dickens and Scott. The comic books of their day.
It is great to see someone giving Joss his due. There is a reason I have watched the entire series several times. That is because good storytelling holds up. And it is no surprise that Joss did such a wonderful take on the Bard in his recent version of Much Ado About Nothing, using actors from the Buffyverse and other projects.
I also agree with you on the issue with the New Yorker stories. This is why, sadly, I am not drawn to much of what is touted as “literature” these days. It often reminds me of a passage I remember as a kid from Look Homeward Angel, where it took an entire page to describe, in great detail, a table full of food. Beautiful descriptions, but I kept losing my place and starting over on the page. My tolerance for beautiful description leading me nowhere has gotten shorter as the years have gone on. What I want to read now is a Story – with characters I find interesting (not necessarily likable) and a decent plot. It doesn’t need to be super crafty – just engaging. I will suspend a lot of disbelief for good characters. And that’s why most of what I read are mystery series and YA series – with a little sci-fi as well. Most mainstream, real world fiction I find either too arch or clever, or too slow.
Yes. When you lose your place and have to start over, there’s something wrong with the writing.
I feel I should jump in to say, I really like The New Yorker. They are producing some of the finest investigative journalism (Sy Hirsch!) and non-fiction writing (Malcolm Gladwell!) going. And their humor is second to none. Andy Borowitz is often milk-out-your-nose funny, and the cartoons feel like an extension of the off-center humor of Chuck Jones and Jay Ward. There’s a reason Renni and I chose George Booth to illustrate Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.
I just skip the fiction. Other than that, I love the magazine.
Dave- I agree. The non-fiction in The New Yorker is terrific. This is why I have a ten-inch-stack of unfinished New Yorkers on my nightstand- I’m still finding great stuff to read. But I skip the ficiton, too. I used to feel bad about this- maybe my tastes just aren’t sophisticated enough, I’m not literary enough, etc.
Does anyone else ever suffer from “I don’t read The New Yorker” guilt?
Oh, I gave up on “I don’t read New Yorker Fiction”guilt years ago. If there’s anything more pointless that the stories themselves, it’s feeling guilt at not reading them.
As a long-time New Yorker devotee, I’ll agree with your take on the reporting and humor in the mag. I think the reviews can get a little self-indulgent and overly long. But, some of those are very good too. I think to dismiss all of the New Yorker’s fiction means you will miss some good stuff, though. (That’s almost akin to the snobs who say they never watch anything on TV.)
“Beatuifully written stories in which nothing much happens.” Oh, man, did you ever nail The New Yorker! One writer friend of mine called them “small stories that get smaller and smaller.” So true, and so discouraging to so many writers.
“Small stories that get smaller and smaller.” I like that.
Like the glorification of infinite regression.
Only without the pomp of Synecdoche, New York
Lists, they’re into lists, as well. A paragraph that consists of a list of fourteen slightly different attributes of your main character passes for characterization.
And allusions to allusions.
There’s a point at which a metaphor is cleaner, especially since all words are metaphors.
I went to a small play recently that was produced by some friends and the writing was brilliant and there were all of these allusions to Greek mythology and I was picking up on most of them. One of the main character’s name was “Delphi.”
Two days later at a party, I tossed “The Oracle at Delphi” into the charades hat. Only three people got it and one very intelligent woman turned to the producer. “What’s that?” she asked.
“Hell if I know,” said the producer.
If the producer doesn’t know the allusion, it might not be worth putting in there.
I understand one brave New Yorker writer tried to make an allusion to an allusion to an allusion. The story fell into infinite regression and imploded.
Someday, I’ve got to do a column on snark as a universal.
That’s awesome. What a weird thing – that the most prestigious fiction credit in the country seems to misrepresent most of modern fiction.
They say the novel’s dead.
I say those novels are dead and always have been: dead in the water.
Amen! I think a lot of literary writers are actually afraid of tension. They don’t understand the techniques of good storytelling so they choose to pretend it’s not important. But we wouldn’t still be reading The Odyssey if it didn’t have any.
I’ve also thought a lot about Buffy in terms of the Hero’s Journey. Her own deaths, why her mum had to die, why Giles needed to go back to England . . . There really is a lot there to be learned about really great storytelling.
Absolutely, Pam.
I suspect there are a lot of reasons New Yorker stories end up the way they do. Fear of conventional storytelling techniques, a culture that mistakes obscurity and affectation for sophistication, perhaps even a deep-seated belief that life is meaningless and good literature should reflect the fact.
I think this kind of faux-sophisticated affected writing has always been around. But past examples have been justly forgotten.
I read anything and everything I could get my hands on growing up, and my favorite has always been Stephen King. Then when I took literature classes and learned more about “literature” I moved him into a “guilty pleasure” place in my mind, and didn’t claim him as my fave in group conversations about our favorite writers during college. I had all his books, but no, Hardy and Dickens and Eliot and for more recent ones Garcia-Marquez and other “literary” writers were the ones I claimed as my favorites. It’s many years later now, I’m 43, and I only watched Buffy for the first time THIS YEAR and as camp as it was, I thoroughly enjoyed it, loved the characters who were SO WELL developed, and the stories, the stories were wonderful. So I’m not ashamed to list Buffy as one of my fave TV series (right alongside West Wing) and I truly am proud to say that Stephen King is my favorite writer (right alongside Dickens, who I really do love, and who was the Stephen King of his day minus the gruesomeness – though he does actually have some gruesome things, doesn’t he?)
So another closet lover of strong plot has come out? My job here is done.
And maybe David Remnick is too – since the New Yorker has published several Stephen King short stories.
Thanks for this, Dave. For one, it’s just the push I needed to jump into the Buffy series.
For another, it encourages me to leave the literary voices alone for awhile. The harshest critics seem to come from that crowd and reading criticism in the New Yorker has come to make me fear my genre work.
But I love that work. It’s why I got into this business.
So thanks.
If you’ve never explored the Buffyverse before, you’re in for a treat.
This column was sparked by a critique of a perfectly sound, exciting thriller that sounded a lot like the kind of critiques you’ve been getting. You’re right. Ignore them.
You’re the best, Dave, thanks.
You coming to the conference?
Thanks, Lance.
Sadly, I can’t make it to the conference. Too much to do here.
Lance-
If you love good characters and great story, you’ll love Buffy.
I remember calling friends AS the pilot was still on, telling them they had to tune into this show. One of my friends had never seen it, several years after it went off the air (first-run, that is), and I finally got her to start watching some re-runs. She liked it so much that she started getting several friends together to watch Buffy re-runs once a week (most of whom had never seen it before), and they still do that a number of years later, having seen the whole series several times. (A few published writers in that group too, btw.)
Enjoy!
This was such a great post for me to come upon this morning–I am known for my Buffy fandom. Now that I’ve had coffee, I’ve been thinking of other episodes of Buffy as plot–my favorite is probably “Once More, with Feeling.” So many shows these days do a musical episode, but Whedon’s version (which was among the first, I think) was so engaging because of what happened. [SPOILERS BELOW!]
During the course of the episode, Willow and Tara break up because Tara discovers that Willow has been using magic to mess with Tara’s memory; Giles decides he is leaving Sunnydale; Buffy and Spike finally kiss; Xander and Anya reveal that they’re each having doubts about their upcoming marriage; and the gang finds out Buffy actually was in heaven when she died, not in a demon dimension, as they’d all assumed. And this was all wrapped around some catchy songs! Wow.
One of the things that makes Whedon such a great storyteller is his willingness to play with the genre. You’re right that “Once More, With Feeling” actually integrated music into the story. “Hush” was conducted almost entirely in mime. “Conversations with Dead People” took place in real time. “The Zeppo” had a major apocalypse happening in the background of the real story. That episode also included one of the funniest decapitations in television history — but that’s another column.
Whedon really is a master storyteller.
Dave, after a year in the US, I forgot my native tongue, Hindi. I was six (in my defense). The only thing that encouraged me to read Hindi stories were comics. I devoured them. Most of them were from the Ramayana. In all the great classics, stuff happens, even as great ideas are expounded.
Thanks for a great post. Maybe we’ll have a family Friday night with Buffy.
I think people have forgotten that classics in the west also included a lot of the storytelling that shows up in comics. I’ve mentioned Shakespeare and Cervantes (I cried at the end of book two), and another comment mentioned Homer. But I remember when I read Candide. At the time, I was braced for the worst — eighteenth century French literature just sounds boring at the outset. It was delightful, light and funny and witty — the best of all possible books. I rolled through it, enjoying every minute.
Great writers of the past have never been afraid of story. It’s why people read.
I’d highly recommend getting into Buffy. A warning, though — there is a movie of the same name. Whedon wrote the script, but the movie ignored a lot of his vision and turned out pretty awful. Start with the TV series. And enjoy.
Thanks. I enjoyed this article and, while I’m not a comic book or Buffy fan, agree that stories require plot. Didn’t Aristotle put plot at the top of the attributes a drama needed?
I see that your article is categorized under “genre” (among others), but good literary fiction can (should?) have plenty of plot as well. Take Serena (Ron Rash) for example or Atonement (Ian McEwan) or The Blind Assassin (Margaret Atwood) or…drum roll…Light in August (William Faulkner). All in my Favorites of Favorites list.
He did, indeed. And, you’re right that a lot of the best literary (or mainstream) fiction does do some serious storytelling. I’d add Lauren Groff’s “The Monsters of Templeton” to your list.
I’m not currently a comic book reader (although I’ve had my moments of loving them) nor do I watch Buffy, but after reading this I think I will. I love finding new ways to visit the mastery of plot. Great post!
I’d do it.
Ruth and I watched the series through twice. The second time, I got a chance to really study the mechanics of the storytelling. You can learn a lot, and have serious fun along the way.
Julia! You *have* to watch Buffy–we have so much to discuss!
Your note about plot lacking in some adult fiction is spot on. When nothing much happens in adult lit or kid lit, I get bored.
I have to admit that I never saw Buffy the whole way through. My daughter and I are watching the DVDs from the beginning, so I had to skim some parts. I agree with you about what works.
I have apparently tapped a deep-seated disgust with New Yorker fiction. Therese, maybe we need to start a support group of some kind. Meaninglessness Anonymous?
Great post, Dave.
Can’t say I read the New Yorker (I am Canadian, you know LOL) but there are many books, literary and not, that could use a little burst of ‘something exciting.’ Good writing is important – very important – but how many well written books would be even better with more happening?
Denise Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT
Absolutely, Denise. I know there have been a couple of works of modern literature that have been just interesting enough to keep me reading until an ending that left me feeling I’d wasted my time. Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions comes to mind.
I’d have to check, but I believe that Canadians are, technically, allowed to read The New Yorker.
The Marvel franchise, including Joss Whedon, has only grown better as the years pass. When I watched Iron Man 3 I kept thinking, “Wow, that’s clever. Going to be hard to top that.” And then Winter Soldier did! The way they are weaving together the movies in the theatres and Agents of Shield on TV is so amazing. Plot, on plot on plot, with subplot, and plot some more!
And I think, just like you said, it’s the combination of strong characters, and internal and external conflict that makes them so riveting. Personally, I’ve always been a proud comic book and genre reader, and now I’m an unapologetic genre writer. But, I also want to be an excellent storyteller – so it’s great to learn from the stories that interest me.
I didn’t get too far into the question of strong characters, but it is true that the characters in comics and comic-related fiction do face large personal issues. I’ve seen Batman described as a billionaire dealing with his abandonment issues and failing.
Dave-
Best seller Diana Gabaldon once told me that she learned everything she ever needed to know about plotting from writing Scrooge McDuck comic book scripts.
Really? Think about that. How do you get from Scrooge McDuck to Outlander?
There’s no doubt that comic book plotting is effective and is not antithetical to creating powerful inner conflicts. The caution I’d add to your Buffy homage is that great fiction is more than the sum of those two things.
You said something interesting here: “…there’s absolutely no reason the basic elements of a sound plot can’t be combined with the virtues of the typical New Yorker story.”
In Writing 21st Century Fiction I showed that when great story and beautiful writing get together it’s gold. It’s what agents, editors and readers really, truly want. They’ve proved that with sales.
I don’t think you’re wrong to extol Buffy. Those were great scripts. I’d say, though, that the strengths of Buffy plotting are only the start. Great fiction builds on that.
Oh, absolutely, Donald. I’m just thinking of all those beautifully written books with sharp characters, masterful use of metaphor, and so many other writing virtues — and no plots. I’ve got to think that was a deliberate decision on the author’s part, and it makes absolutely no sense to me.
Do you have any idea why so many otherwise good writers shy away from plot?
Yes, I think it’s the culture of the literary fiction community.
In that world, “plot” equates with “action”, manipulation of the reader, cheap gimmicks. Plot is unrealistic, inorganic and artless. It’s impure.
The literary fiction community looks to what is “true.” That means original language that captures moments of existence with high precision.
To provoke in the reader a sense of palpable reality is the goal. To capture inchoate feelings that have no name is a virtue. The point is not to excite but to connect.
Plot driven stories are to literary writers unreal. Crime scenes, fantasy quests, throbbing romance between cut-out dolls…what good is that? Better is to capture life the way it is.
Beautiful writing wherein nothing happens, well, it may not sell well but, hey, it’s beautiful writing.
I’ve seen plot beaten out of MFA students. I’ve heard MFA professors say, “I don’t understand plot, so I don’t teach it.” It’s the culture. It started at Iowa and has spread. Is it wrong? No, but the audience for it is limited.
Nicely articulated, thank you.
So getting your readers engaged with a slice of life is connection, but getting them interested in what happens to your characters next is manipulation?
It is true that most stories are artificial to some extent, but that’s why readers bring the willing suspension of disbelief to what they read. It sounds like the literary community expects readers to be essentially passive, to become immersed in the beauties of the writing but not to bring any of their own experience to bear.
I think the correct term for this is Literary Onanism.
What Joss excels at, I feel, is his characterization. Buffy, Angel, Spike, Cordelia, Wesley…I could go on, are all so different and unique and they are what make the plots so fun and engaging. Ditto his characters from Firefly…..(sniff). He isn’t afraid to make them ambiguous and show their weaknesses in spite of the clear lines between good and evil that he draws.
A couple of you have mentioned the characters, and it has me thinking. His characters are fairly balanced, and even the evil ones have features that make them interesting, if not redeemable. (Spike’s love for Drusilla, for instance.) But I think what makes them so engaging is that he isn’t afraid to go big. While so many New Yorker stories involve characters whose biggest concerns are pretty petty (like needing referrals for an apartment — I really did pick that story at random), Whedon’s characters are concerned with large questions of love and loss, hope and fear. It takes a certain amount of skill to tackle these questions without letting them get out of control. It might be safer to stick with the more mundane stuff.
The reference probably stands for something else?
Great article! I happen to be a fan of both Buffy and the New Yorker :) but I get what you mean about the lack of plot in those short stories. Some are certainly better than others. Buffy had plot and heart, along with suspense and complex characters (oh I miss it!). A nice reminder that suspenseful plot and well written prose don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
Dave:
Great, fun post. I agree wholeheartedly with your statement that some writers are so terrified of cliché that they seem paralyzed by the prospect of something actually happening in their stories. Inner life becomes the entirety of life. But that’s not just indicative of a fear of cliché. It suggests a much deeper fear — of the world, consequences, responsibility, making a mistake. The writing comes across as a form of applying lipstick on a corpse. I realize somebody’s gotta do it, but I’m glad it ain’t my job.
As to inner life becoming the totality of life, Garrison Keillor wrote about his own experience of trying to write like this in his short story “Happy to be Here,” later collected in the anthology of the same name. He eventually found himself narrating his entire internal life as if he were a character.
“I began to have fears about my capacity to love — fears that were not mine but my characters’. I was constantly torn by internal contradictions, although in cold fact I was as smug as a lizard. When, let us say, I felt a wave of warm tenderness sweep over me, I didn’t know if it was my tenderness or that of Sammy Delphine, the hero of my novel-in-progress.
“I decided that if I kept on being introspective, I was going to wind up motivating myself right into the ground.”
This is such a timely post for me. A few days ago, I watched the Buffy episode LIE TO ME to get out of a plot rut. It pulled me back into the importance of character, great dialogue with subtext, and moral ambiguity. I’m back to exploring character and deep needs. Plot will come naturally from all that. Now if I could just figure out a way to add an apocalypse or several to my story…
I had forgotten about “Lie to Me.” And you’re right, it does involve a lot of nicely turned moral ambiguity.
Great article! Joss Whedon’s been the biggest influence on my style, both as a writer and as a filmmaker. I’ve learned as much about crafting a story from his work in TV as I have from any novelist I’ve read. The character arcs in Whedon’s shows are second to none, and the storylines kept me glued to my seat on a weekly basis.
It’s sad that so many writers forgo a solid plot, because there’s no reason you can’t have great characterization AND story. Maybe it makes me less literary, but I’ll take an interesting story where something happens over an intellectual character piece any day of the week.
I think it makes you less literary in the sense that you won’t belong to the literary club Donald described above. But, as I said, Shakespeare, Dickens, and Voltaire wrote some great stories. I know which group I’d rather belong to.
Heh, yeah, I think I can live with that.
Dave,
I don’t think Buffy was an actual cheerleader in Sunnydale. She made the alternate list but at try-outs she threw a student through the roof. I didn’t watch Buffy until it was in re-run. Then it took me a couple of episodes to get hooked, but hooked I became.
When I read plot-less (or “a day in the life of”) stories I assume it is my job to figure the deeper meaning of the story, and it can be frustrating since I have no way to know if I’ve come up with the correct interpretation.
I really love STORY. Story needs a character involved in an external plot that will (or not) change the character internally. And I want to know WHY. There has to be something meaningful going on in the story and I have to be able to understand it.
You’re right, and I stand corrected. Buffy was a cheerleader at her former high school, until she burned down the auditorium because it was full of vampires. And, yes, that went on her permanent record.
I, too, have felt the need to mine a slice-of-life story for meaning. But I’ve reached the point in life where, if I can’t find it, I figure it’s the author’s fault.
Interesting and funny! A few of my friends are big Buffy fans. I might just have to check it out one of these days.
I might swing my questions by you some time, Dave; I’m working on a second draft of an epic fantasy novel right now. I’d be curious as to what your thoughts are on how best to write a villain that is frightening and awful but also human and not at all cartoonish.
I’d recommend Buffy. It will probably be the most fun you’ll have learning about plot.
I’m looking forward to your questions.
“Years ago, I stopped reading New Yorker fiction because I lost patience with beautifully written stories in which nothing much happens.”
That’s because The New Yorker publishes literary fiction not genre fiction. Literary fiction has a completely different plot structure–ask Mary Buckham–and purpose: ask Joan Didion.
I bring this up because I find it to be one of the worst ways in which so many “writing experts” and “coaches” have misguided and continue to misguide their clients.
It’s fine if you don’t like literary fiction. That’s not at all my point, to make any like literary fiction. But to try and make it fit into a round hole, even though you clearly realize it’s a square peg, is to damage the worth of literary fiction and to limit the creativity possibility of a writer who may be a literary writer rather than genre writer. Because–by inference–you would be trying to get that writer to use a plot structure which has nothing to do with their purpose for writing the story they want to share with a reader in the way they’re telling it.
(Sorry for the typos. I got distracted by my alarm going off, telling me it’s time to check something.)
I was somewhat distracted last night by a fundraiser that was ending around the time I wrote my comment but now I have had a chance to read the majority of the comments on this post.
First, we cannot compare 20th and 21st century literary fiction to that of the 17th, 18th, or 19th century, which is what I see in some of the comments. Because James Joyce changed the entire need for “story” and “coherent” narrative with Ulysses. And, second, the point I was really trying to make is that it worries me considerably that we are so obsessed with trying to make everything the “same.” Perhaps “most people” do “hunger for plot.” But that’s “most”; not all. So, can we leave room for people who would like something other than what various writing experts extoll as the right way to write; or the inclusion of plot that has a resolution? That’s really why I tend to comment against the grain sometimes–to champion the right to write exactly as one is inspired to; not withstanding the need to internalize craft, etc.
But this “sameness” of how to write really drives me to distraction. All the “rules” and “a story needs *this* and *this* and *this* in order for it be compelling is incredibly boring to my ears.
Perhaps it’s my background and the fact that my father pioneered post-Independence modern art in India. But I am all for originality and making one’s own way, if the way cannot be found via conventional means; over someone else’s ideas of what writing should or should not be. Even if we are talking about commercially successful writing versus something more esoteric.
It is virtually *impossible* for anyone to be completely objective about anything. And that goes for writing and critiquing it. But I would love it if, for once, the experts left room for the unknown.
Well, I can’t speak for other writing experts, but I treat the techniques I advise my clients to use as tools rather than rules. If a client does write a successful literary novel, I won’t try to impose a plot structure the client doesn’t want. I also realize that a plot needn’t be straightforward and linear.
But the fundamental purpose of writing is to engage readers with your story, and Joyce didn’t change that. People are still enjoying Homer and Cervantes and Voltaire, and I’m confident more people read Oliver Twist each year than Ulysses. So I think the comparisons between literature then and now are apt. People still want what the great writers of the past deliver.
But, as Donald explained so nicely, there seems to be a prejudice among self-consciously literary authors (and the acquisitions editors who publish them) against using plot as a means of engaging their readers. Granted, the best of them often write enjoyable books despite this self-imposed limitation. But my point here is that the limitation is prejudice-based and self-imposed. There’s no reason the virtues you find in Buckham and Didion can’t co-exist with plot. They certainly always used to.
Plot is a highly useful tool. Why should writers, any writers, shun it on principle?
I went to one of Whedon’s talks. He taught me that good and evil aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. He brings out the why in the villain and makes audience think on whether the evil is really truly evil or a product of his past.
I am beginning to think the question of characterization — and moral ambiguity — does deserve its own column.
Incidentally [SPOILER ALERT], inspired by this discussion, I spent (wasted!) some time yesterday watching Buffy clips on Youtube. I had forgotten the way even the good characters are far from perfect — one of the clips was of Xander not telling Buffy that Willow was trying to restore Angel’s soul, hoping that Buffy would kill Angel before Willow got a chance.
Another thing I noticed is the degree to which Whedon maintains character integrity regardless of how much the characters change. At the beginning of the series, Willow is an insecure and immature wallflower. Over the course of the next seven years, she comes out as a witch, gets into a romantic relationship with Oz, comes out as a lesbian and gets into a romantic relationship with Tara, becomes addicted to dark magic, recovers, watches Tara die in front of her, and in her grief and rage nearly destroys the world. (Did I mention that Whedon paints on a large canvas?) In the final season of the series, she’s dealing with her addiction to magic — she can perform it, but there’s always the risk she’ll fall back into the darkness. But for the final battle in the last show, she has to perform a major spell in order to save the day, a spell larger than anything she has ever tried. She manages to tap into white rather than dark magic and, for a moment transforms into a goddess. Afterwards, she collapses on her side.
And says, in a small voice, “Well . . . that was nifty.” It’s exactly what the Willow we met in the first show would have said.
Oh dear, now I have memories of the hours I spent reading Archie and Little Lulu and the perfection of a three-act arc in the span of 5 panels. Great post Dave!
I spent some years with Archie as well, though I don’t remember any of them now. Still, I wonder if the story arcs didn’t sink into my subconscious somewhere. Hmmmmm
I loved Buffy, and I’m rediscovering a love for Angel as well. Joss’s writing in both shows and in most of his work since has been interesting and entertaining, and he is masterful at making a plot work and grow and develop over an entire season, even, without boring the audience. My husband is the first and fastest to bore with a television show, declaring so many to be predictable and formulaic. Yet when I made him sit and watch Buffy with me, he never guessed the plot correctly, try as he might, in any of the seven seasons, and he remained entertained throughout. He didn’t want to watch Angel, professing a distaste for the David Boreanaz character, but I convinced him to give it a shot, promising that the character became more developed away from the Buffy moody-dark-lovelorn theme. He agreed to try, and we’re now into the third season. He loves it and is always finding the comedic elements hilarious and the drama to be campy but enjoyable. It’s too bad, really, that so many potential fans missed out on these shows in their first run because the titles alone put them off.
My wife was never fond of Broody Angel, either, but I rather liked what Whedon did with him as his own show progressed. And the development of Cordelia was another brilliant bit of characterization.
Yeah, I’m thinking that next month will be, “Everything I Need to Know About Characterization, I Learned from Joss Whedon.”
Dave, bless you. I am a Joss Whedon fan since that first Buffy the Vampire episode. To me, the New Yorker is like cotton candy, tasty, but lacking nutrition. Buffy–more like rare steak.
Too funny that you should write this. My son and I are re-watching the series and I recently posted about an episode with Spike in it. Oh, and I completely agree. Buffy rocks.
I’ve been thinking about the points Sevigne raised, and I realized something. (Donald and James, I’d love to get your thoughts on this as well.) Literary fiction is a genre. It has its own tropes — one of which is lack of coherent narrative, but there’s also the lists and the self-conscious style and the flies crawling across the table. And most readers find New Yorker fiction unsatisfying because the writers are simply writing to genre — following the tropes mechanically. It’s a little less obvious since the features of the genre are more sophisticated than, say, those of manor house mysteries. But most of the stories are every bit as generic as the most formulaic romance.
If you love the genre, you’ll still enjoy these stories, just as fantasy lovers are willing to put up with hackwork as long as it includes dragons and elves. But the fact that most of these stories don’t appeal to a wider readership shows that they lack something fundamental.
I think what I’m doing in this article is trying to push literary writers to produce crossover novels. And that means pushing them to be individual, to follow their true story wherever it goes (even if it leads to an actual plot), and not to limit themselves by the standards of their chosen genre.
Dave,
Glad you thought to raise this subject. In spite of being a literary writer, I, too, have been turned off to New Yorker fiction. What is missing in virtually all those pieces are two things: scene and dialogue, which gives the reader no place to actually connect in a present moment. This leaves me with a Why bother, Who cares, response. The narrative is virtual self-reflection.
But great literary fiction is loaded with scene and dialogue EG Bel Canto, Atonement, Disgrace, McCarthy’s work. So the New Yorker is creating/following its own tropes. And thousands of writers are trying to get a piece in there. They are shaping a new literary fiction.
My engagement with NYer fiction each week is to give the piece the Ray Rhamey look, in this case the first sentence or paragraph. (Usually I come up with something as tasty as a handful of sand.)
I gather this is why you said in our last back and forth on WU you hadn’t read any Franzen. Indeed nothing happens in The Corrections, although there were character arcs, so it was an interesting work, breaking its own mold. And the guy is brilliant. (I can’t say I’m a devotee, but I learned something.)
And thanks for the last paragraph about crossing over. That is my goal with the literary genre: stories with arc, plot, moral argument woven with the delicacies of inner information and insight. In his quiet way Richard Ford has been doing this.
You’re right about good literary fiction making use of scene. I haven’t read Franzen, but I’ve read All the Pretty Horses, and it managed some serious action in addition to the beautifully evoked settings.
Truth to tell, I don’t read much modern fiction in my free time because of my interest in the past. I read some in order to keep current, but when I want to kick back for fun, I do tend to pick up something from the eighteenth century or before.
I was never a comic book fan, but writers can learn a lot from the format, I think. With limited space, comic books require their authors to get to the nitty gritty of a story straightaway.
It is difficult to convince people that “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” is a great example of ‘television as literature’. I use Buffy to teach deconstructing fiction to my kids, and while I always have to drag my 17 yob to the table for these discussions, he never denies the power of deeply meaningful story and character development in Buffy.
While I enjoy the beauty of language, I read stories to experience another life in which things happen and people change. I don’t want to spend precious time with a character immersed in navel gazing. It’s like the literary version of the selfie.
Dave–
Off the grid for eight days, I feel fully returned to real life after reading your great post, and so many thoughtful comments. There’s little to add, but that never stops me. First, I share James Scott Bell’s appreciation of Erwin Shaw’s short stories. They serve as a perfect answer to the exercises in rudderless technique in the New Yorker.
Second, the literati’s objection to plot reminds me of objections to the use of coincidence in Thomas Hardy’s novels. A Hardy defender whose name I can’t remember answered the critics by simply observing that coincidence was Hardy’s way of compressing and accelerating the action, of keeping stories interesting. This makes perfect sense to me, because the devices he chose and the way he used them are why Hardy’s narratives are great works of art. Same devices used differently by someone else? Not so much.
Third, any experience–mental or literal–rendered in print becomes an act of literary artifice. So, it’s ludicrous to claim more structure somehow weakens the degree of artistry in a work. Tell that to an architect, and see how far you get.
Dave-
Great post! (And interesting comments.)
I heard Graham Yost – known for the movie Speed, and lately the TV series Justified (a great writer in his own right) – speak and he told the story of how Joss Whedon came up with Buffy. Whedon was in Phoenix with nothing to do one afternoon and went to a movie. In one scene, a monster chased a cheerleader into a dark alley.
As you mentioned: “the stereotypical horror-movie chase”…
But then inspiration hit. And Whedon wondered: what if the next scene had the monster running back out, afraid for its life?
And Buffy was born.
===
Btw, my favorite short story rejection note from a literary magazine was a regular form rejection, but underneath it someone wrote: “Liked your story but it had too much plot for us.”
Btw, ran across this the other day – not sure how I stumbled across it but it appears to be a transcript of Whedon talking with some class, somewhere in the UK. It’s pretty rough, and kinda rambly … but it’s Joss Whedon, so it’s worth checking out (and he talks a bit about villains and characters ‘n stuff).
https://news.impossible.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Joss-screenwriting-talk.pdf
Thanks for the timely piece. I’m a first time reader who has become quite frustrated with storytelling lately. I enjoy some stories from the NewYorker, but as a “younger” writer, it’s not the best place to look for examples on how to write short fiction. Maybe that’s why I’m frustrated in part. What I’ve been doing this year is reading short story writers and trying to copy the style to learn from them (James Joyce, Sherwood Anderson, Flannery O’Connor, William Maxwell, Chris Offutt). It’s been helpful.
But I realized this weekend that what I think I’m struggling with is plot. I have taken advice from a former fiction professor where I did my undergrad. He says to start close to the conflict, then add two catalyzing events to the story. Well, my problem is that I think up a dozen different things but can’t seem to decide which ones are good for the story. I’ve got about 10 different stories that are half finished like this.
Can you offer any advice regarding the “add two catalysts” idea or to what happens next?
Thanks,
Gene
Rules like “two catalyzing events per story” can help clarify your thinking, and a catalyzing event is certainly one of the storytelling tools available to you. But the rule can’t be the foundation for your story. Plot should grow out of your characters. Start with a clear sense of who your main character is, focus on what they want or fear (that’s where your plot arc begins), then follow what they would do in order to get or avoid it.
I know that this advice probably isn’t easy to implement. Writing by the rules is much easier. But the best fiction comes about when you really know and love your characters, then let them go on the page. Of course, once you have the basic story in place, you can go back and (using principles like “two catalyzing event” make the story more effective. But that’s rewriting, not writing.