I recently received the following:
“I’ve a topic for you. What about the no-plot novel? I’ve always argued that a novel doesn’t need a plot as long as it has a point, also there’s the whole “character is plot” argument. The plots in my books are neither here nor there, just things to get my characters to do while I write about them.”
I’m not certain what he’s getting at here. “…as long as it has a point.” I assume this refers to the deeper meaning of the piece or the Thematic Significance. “….character is the plot.” I assume this refers to the Character Emotional Development. “…just things to get my characters to do while I write about them.” This, I assume, is the crux of his query — no dramatic action? Perhaps. If the “things” involve conflict that the character then has the opportunity to respond or react to emotionally, I’d say he is writing a novel with plot.
Again, I define plot as a series of scenes deliberately arranged by cause and effect to create dramatic action filled with conflict in order to further the character’s emotional development and provide thematic significance. In other words, when the dramatic action causes the character to be changed at depth over time the story means something.
What do you think??? Is he writing with plot or no-plot? Perhaps I’m reading too much into what he’s written because I dread thinking he’s writing with no conflict involved. Don’t get me wrong, I believe character carries the story. Still, even with beautiful language, internal conflict without any external conflict, could end up a slow, boring, flat read indeed…..
I wonder if he means one of those stream-of-consciousness novels which is full of memory and internal movement but no real external movement from scene A to scene B.
Or maybe he means a slice-of-life novel where nothing really happens…but where there is all this angsty stuff going on.
Maybe he means “a kind of emotional conclusion” when he writes that the story has a “point”
Thanks, Carole, for your comments. Now, the question becomes, would you read any of those types of novels?? Short stories, perhaps. But, a full-length novel?? Hmmmmm. Could memory, internal movement, slice-of-life be written in a compelling enough manner to hold your interest for an entire novel???
When I wrote the comment what I was thinking about was structure. I have never written a sonnet because the form exists before the poem. I write the words and then structure them afterward.
It’s the same with my short stories and my novels. I start off with a guy in a situation: in the first novel, it’s a guy getting ready for work; in the second, a hut waking up with a sore neck; in the third, a guy standing around in a park; in the fourth, a pair of half-brothers getting dressed and in the current one, a woman cleaning her dead father’s flat. In each instance that is all I’ve known about the characters. There is no plan.
The closest I’ve come to a plan was in my last novel. Once I realised who the brothers were and where they were I could see where the book needed to end and so I wrote the last chapter. Then all I had to do was get them there. If there’s a plot then it’s The Journey but the point to the novel only became clear to me when I was writing a block of dialogue and a priest utters the line, “There are no reasons for unreasonable things.” After I had that in my head that became the ‘flavour’ of the book. The brothers began looking for reasons after the fact. Where they ended up at the close of the book was no longer the issue because their inability to resolve their actions would continue for the rest of their lives.
Is the book a ‘slice of life’? I suppose it is. The point about the plot, the who does what to whom, is that it doesn’t matter who they meet on their travels. Every book I have written can be drilled down to a very thin plot, the skeleton through the body of the work but, just as with the human body, the skeleton is hidden from view. A plot, to my mind, is an artificial construct. The better plots are hard to notice but all you have to do is look at the writings of P G Wodehouse or E. F. Benson to see books that wear their plots proudly. Everything in their books is idealised.
There is an online essay you might like to have a look at which discusses Virginia Wolff’s plotless novel Mrs Dalloway which you might want to have a look at but a Google search for “plotless novel” (use the inverted commas) reveals a few interesting examples including Kerouac, Naipaul, Calvino, Bookner and, of course, Beckett.
How can he write with ‘no-plot’? Even baseless, meaningless story writing needs plots, one way or the other.
Well, let him write. We will wait to read it and then see, what he means by ‘no-plot’ writing.
I have to agree with you, Martha–I’m guessing that either this writer has more plot than he realizes or he NEEDS more plot. I think sometimes writers think that to have a plot means it’s all laying right out there on the page, for a reader to sort of track with a pencil. A good, substantial plot can be so hidden and layered into a story that the reader never even notices it.
I’ve been taught by my wonderful cp that if the the scene doesn’t advance the story, it should be deleted. The plot moves along in increments and there isn’t room for the characters doing whatever until more action happens. I would think tension would be lost and it’s the tension that keeps me reading. Some scenes are break scenes, but they still should move the plot ahead.
BUT there always is the exception to the rule and that makes reading fun. 😀 God made us all different. Just THINK what that means for storytelling.
Hugs, JJ
I find this all so interesting.
There are definitely two camps — obviously the plot camp would be strong on this blog since that’s what the blog is all about. But, the character side is definitely out there.
I’ll try in the next couple of days to post some of the comments I received when I queried writers what they thought when they thought plot.
You can’t believe, or perhaps you can, the negative reactions the majority of writers had to the concept of plot. I’m warmed by the responses here, but again, I don’t know that it’s a fair representation of who is out there.
Fascinating………
I, too, like characters over a lot of high action but I can’t think of a story I’ve read and liked that didn’t have some kind of action going on.
After returning from vacation I had no idea how to get started again. I decided to reread your entries here again and I’m off and running.
Many thanks
Thanks, Jim, for the link to the essay about Mrs. Dalloway. Fascinating piece.
What a particularly liked were:
“to relate the plot involves capturing the reasons why the things that happen happen.” So simple and yet so true.
“Plots make what happen in a novel seem natural and inevitable.”
Coincidences are usually frowned upon in writing fiction because they can be construed as too convenient for the writer and thus not believable which can thrust the reader out the dream.
“Most stories that are written and read have plots. The writer makes certain decisions about characters (their personalities and qualities), and about characters’ relations to other characters or to social forces and events. The author then comes up with a plot built upon the likely responses and actions of character types in relation to other character types or in relation to social happenings.”
Well, I can’t quote the entire piece here, but needless to say, I really enjoyed reading it.
I applaud you for writing outside the box and support your efforts.
Great good luck!
I’m a terrible joke teller but here goes: After a night of lovemaking a man asks his besotted: Was it good for you? to which she responds: Define good!!!!! For me the plot question is a bit like this joke. There are so many ways to go with it. I’m always striving for good lines, great scenes, interesting characters but I also very often refer back to my novel’s grand structure which is written on butcher’s paper and taped to the walls of my office (Thanks to Martha’s ‘Blockbuster Plots) I don’t think I’d want to read a novel that is all in the characters head without much else going on, but then show me a great book that accomplishes this and I’ll be the first to read it. The person who wrote in looks like he’s hoping for a ‘Yes, you’re doing it the right way’ sort of answer. My first writing instructor, Thaisa Frank says there are no right or wrong ways to tell a story just the inevitable path it must take.
I loved Susan Minot’s ‘Evening’ which was recently turned into a movie. There wasn’t a whole lot of plot though it did chronicle the life of a seventy something woman as she lay dying. I’m at the personal stage in life where I strive for balance and I guess that applies to my writing style as well. Pick and chose wisely and write the story that needs to be told by you right now… Mary Kennedy Eastham, Author, ‘The Shadow of a Dog I Can’t Forget’ and the novel ‘Night Surfing – The story of love and wonder in the waves of Malibu’