20 Master Plots (12 page)

In the first and second acts (or dramatic phases, if you prefer the term), the reader shouldn't be able to project the picture properly. You've given clues, perhaps (some of them might even be red herrings to throw the reader off the track), but you don't want to get caught early on in your story. If you are, your audience will abandon you or give you a curt, "I thought so."

The final movement of your fiction includes the revelation. In the quest plot, the revelation occurs once the protagonist obtains (or is denied) the object of her search.

It isn't unusual in this type of plot for there to be additional complications
as a result of obtaining the goal.
Things aren't what the hero expected them to be, and it could be that what the hero was searching for all this time wasn't what she really wanted. But there is the moment of
realization,
which is an insight made by the hero about the nature and meaning of the quest itself.

Jason, through his bravery and cleverness (with a little help from his friends on Mount Olympus), kills the dragon that guards the Golden Fleece. Okay, that means he goes home and collects his crown, right?

Not exactly.

Jason returns to the evil king and throws the fleece at his feet and demands the king turn over the keys to the kingdom. Only the fleece is no longer golden. The king welshes on the bet. Jason points out there was nothing in the bet about the fleece having to stay golden, only that he would find and retrieve it.

Still the king refuses.

Jason has to take matters into his own hands. That night, while everyone is asleep, Jason kills the king.

Now he has everything: his rightful kingdom, the enchanted Medea, and the not-so-Golden Fleece.

You might ask yourself, "Why didn't Jason just kill the king up front and save himself a lot of grief?" He could've, of course, but then he wouldn't have been a hero. It is Jason's trials that make him a king, not the crown.

This tale isn't that different from dozens of fairy tales that circulated throughout Europe during the Middle Ages. We know the tales: they're always about a young boy or girl who must go out in the world to find something. It is their contact with the outside world, the world away from home, that teaches them the lessons they need to mature into adults. Jason learns the lessons he needs to mature into a king.

Dorothy matures, too. She isn't on her way to becoming a queen, but she is on her way to becoming an adult, just as her friends are on their way to becoming integrated human beings by finding their potpourri of brains, heart and nerve.

After Dorothy's triumph against the Wicked Witch of the West, she and her friends confront the great wizard, who in spite of his promises to help everyone turns out to be a bumbling old humbug. But the wizard, who looks suspiciously like Professor Marvel from the carnival, is clever enough to point out that everybody already has what they want, having proven themselves by rescuing Dorothy from the clutches of the witch.

Everyone but Dorothy, that is, who's still hung up in Oz and can't get home.

The wizard promises to take her home in his hot air balloon, but that plan goes awry when the balloon sails off without her. Dorothy finally gets home with the help of the good witch Glinda. All she has to do is say, "There's no place like home," and bang, she's back in her own bed in Kansas along with Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. Dorothy's realization that true happiness can be found in her own backyard depends on her verbal acknowledgement. As soon as she says it out loud and with feeling, she's home.

Gilgamesh, in his search for immortality for his friend Enkidu, ends up going to the underworld in search of the secrets of life. He meets the Babylonian version of Noah, who tells him about the Great Flood. The old man is a terrible fatalist and tells Gilgamesh that nothing lasts forever and that life is brief, and death is part of the process. He also tells Gilgamesh that the secret of life is a rose that grows at the bottom of the waters of death. Gilgamesh tries to get the rose, but an evil serpent eats it first.

Gilgamesh goes home disillusioned, alone and defeated. He makes a final plea to the gods, one of whom takes sympathy on him and arranges a meeting with his dead pal. Enkidu tells Gilgamesh what life after death is like: full of worms, neglect and disrespect. Gilgamesh accepts his lot because he must, and he returns to his kingdom feeling mortal for the first time.

Don Quixote goes home just as disillusioned. Like Gilgamesh, he doesn't find the object of his quest, and he gives in to the harsh world around him.

As you bring your main character to the climax of your story, and as you make him confront the realities that have presented themselves during the course of your story, you have either created a character who rejects the lessons he's learned (and goes back to point zero) or one who learns from them by accepting them. This plot, more than many others, points out the change in your character from beginning to end.

CHECKLIST

As you write your story, keep these points in mind:

1. A quest plot should be about a search for a person, place or thing; develop a close parallel between your protagonist's intent and motivation and the object he's trying to find.

2. Your plot should move around a lot, visiting many people and places. But don't just move your character around as the wind blows. Movement should be orchestrated according to your plan of cause and effect. (You can make the journey
seem
like there's nothing guiding it —making it seem casual—but in fact it is causal.)

3. Consider bringing your plot full circle geographically. The protagonist frequently ends up in the same place where she started.

4. Make your character substantially different at the end of the story as a result of her quest. This plot is about the character who makes the search, not about the object of the search itself. Your character is in the process of changing during the course of the story. What or who is she becoming?

5. The object of the journey is wisdom, which takes the form of self-realization for the hero. Oftentimes this is the process of maturation. It may be about a child who learns the lessons of adulthood, but it also may be about an adult who learns the lessons of life.

6. Your first act should include a motivating incident, which initiates your hero's actual search. Don't just launch into a quest; make sure your readers understand
why
your character wants to go on the quest.

7. Your hero should have at least one traveling companion. He must have interactions with other characters to keep the story from becoming too abstract or too interior. Your hero needs someone to bounce ideas off of, someone to argue with.

8. Consider including a helpful character.

9. Your last act should include your character's revelation, which occurs either after giving up the search or after successfully concluding it.

10. What your character discovers is usually different from what he originally sought.

T
he adventure plot resembles the quest plot in many ways, but there are some profound differences between them. The quest plot is a character plot; it is a plot of the mind. The adventure plot, on the other hand, is an action plot; it is a plot of the body.

The difference lies mainly in the focus. In the quest plot, the focus from beginning to end is the person making the journey; in the adventure plot, the focus is the journey itself.

The world loves a good adventure story. For the hero, it is a going out into the world; for the readers, it is a vicarious adventure to places they've never been, like Fez and Novosibirsk and Tierra del Fuego. It is eating dinner in a small restaurant on the Left Bank or eating Mongolian barbecue outside a yurt with a flock of sheep and goats at your side. Adventure is love in strange places. It is whatever is exotic and strange. Adventure is doing things we'll probably never do, going to the brink of danger and returning safely.

The protagonist goes in search of fortune, and according to the dictates of adventure, fortune is never found at home, but somewhere over the rainbow.

Since the purpose of the adventure is the journey, it's not important that the hero change in any appreciable way. This isn't a

psychological story like the quest plot. What's important is the moment at hand and the one following it. What's important is a sense of breathlessness.

We don't get lectures about the meaning of life and we don't get characters who suffer from post-Modernist angst. The protagonist is perfectly fitted for the adventure: she is swept up in the event because the event is always larger than the character. The character may prevail through skill or daring but is defined by the event. Indiana Jones and Luke Skywalker and James Bond are defined by their actions in their stories.

Going into the world can mean different things. Consider Jules Verne's
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
or Jack London's
The Sea Wolf
or even Daniel Defoe's
Robinson Crusoe.
In these stories the world is defined variously as the bottom of the ocean; aboard the sailing ship
Ghost
with a tyrannical captain; or marooned on an island off the coast of South America. The world can take many forms. What's important about the locations is that they are anything but the mundane world we inhabit. Readers enjoy adventures as much for the places they get to go as for the action that involves the character.

The world may also be an invention such as another planet, a sunken continent or the interior of the planet; or it can be pure imagination, such as the lands of
Gulliver's Travels.

Bruno Bettelheim, the Freudian analyst who interprets fairy tales, talks at great length about the child's fear of leaving Mother's lap and going into the world. Many fairy tales are about just that: venturing into the unknown. The adventure story for adults is nothing more than an extension of the child's fairy tale.

ONCE UPON A TIME . . .

When it comes to studying the structure of the adventure, the fairy tale is the best place to begin. People tend to underestimate the value and technical skill of fairy tales. They aren't simplistic tales for grade-school minds; they're exquisitely fashioned fictions that are precise, economical and rich with meaning and symbolism. And yet they appeal to the young mind, which doesn't get tangled up with all kinds of heavy moralizing or complicated plots.

Fairy tales use a relatively limited number of plots, but one of the most common is the adventure plot. "The Three Languages" as collected by the Brothers Grimm is the prototypical adventure. The story begins with an aged Swiss count with a son who, according to the count, is stupid. The count orders his son to leave the castle to be educated. Adventures usually begin at home, but once a reason has been established for leaving, the hero departs immediately.

As is typical with fairy tales, the story begins with the first line, a lesson a lot of us could learn. While the child may be reluctant to leave home, the adult is usually eager to get out. In either case, there should be some kind of motivating incident that forces the hero to move. In the case of "The Three Languages," the motivating force comes in the second line, when the father throws his son out of the house. The son has no choice; he must leave. Simpler reasons for the leaving (out of curiosity, for example) aren't enough; the act should
impel
the character. Oftentimes the character has no choice but to act. Ned Land in
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
leaves to investigate a giant sea monster that has been sinking merchant ships. Robin Hood begins his journey as the prince of thieves only after he shoots one of the king's stags on a bet and must go on the lam. Lemuel Gulliver gets shipwrecked, as does Robinson Crusoe, as does Humphrey Van Weyden in Jack London's
The Sea Wolf,
who has the misfortune of being picked up by the brutish sea captain Wolf Larsen. Same with Kipling's
Captains Courageous.
Even Mole in Kenneth Grahame's
The Wind in the Willows
gets spring fever and leaves his hole in the ground to stroll in the meadow, where he meets Water Rat, who takes him for a trip down the river.