Plot

Elizabeth Simmons discusses the concepts and complexities of the plot.

A plot is a progression of incidents that drive the story forward and reveal character. It is the time sequence of cause-and-effect events that happen from beginning to end. The plot includes the main events, turning points, conflict, and the core elements of story structure — usually told in three acts with a resolution at the end, (Eaton, 2023).

Now the plot of a short story varies between six to ten story elements depending on the creative writing school of thought, and their writing philosophy. Short stories center on story elements of one big crisis event, or conflict that moves the story forward. However, in literary fiction sometimes these stories do not have a plot but focus on the major conflict that prevents the protagonist from growing or changing. A key point to remember is that short stories and novels written in the literary fiction genre employstyle, character, language, and theme over plot. Yet nowadays we do see stories that fuse literary fiction with plot points. Some examples of authors doing this technique in their novels are Albert Camus’s The Stranger, The Handmaids Tale by Margret Atwood, and The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

The concept of plot plays a critical role in speculative and genre fiction, which includes genres such as science fiction, westerns, romances, and some literary fiction. This underscores why plot is relevant in fiction: it serves as a tool for writers to navigate thematic exploration and character development. Employing a plot provides a structured narrative and consistent pacing, contributing to the narrative’s momentum. This universal story structure is clear across various genres and is found in literature written in many languages, from English to Chinese (Crane, 2023).

Novels by default can have complicatedplots, characters, subplots, plot points, story arcs, and feature several conflicts at once. They can extend from three to seven acts or as we read in fiction oftentimes, they break the rules of structure and freeze in Act two or never solve their conflicts. The universal story structure located in global literature often involves multiple subplots and conflicts that intertwine with the main plot or conflict. This plot structure is typically more detailed, with clear beginnings, middles, and ends. Some short story writers in this generation including myself, do write short stories using a three-act structure and deploy a plot into our micro-flash fiction.

However, in novels the plot is the cement foundation of the story. It provides the framework, and the literary techniques to develop characters, explore themes, and shape conflicts and mold other story elements into a stable housing structure.

There are a multitude of fictional schools of thought, but it is believed there are about 10 basic plots. Though some creative writing schools argue there are only five or six elements of plot. Plot points are the cause-and-effect moments in a narrative that push the main character through an inciting incident, conflict, and resolution, (Friedman, 2022). These three elements of plot in simpler terms mirror a beginning, middle, and end of a short story or reflect act one, two, and three in a novel.

Thank you for reading.
Elizabeth

References:
1. Eaton, K. (2023). “What Is Plot?(1st ed., Vol. 1). Corsair.
( http://www.jstor.org/stable/468450)
2. Crane. R.S.(2023) “The concept of plot and the plot of Tom Jones” (www.jstor.org/stable/23099019)
3. Friedman, Norman, (2022). “Forms of the Plot,” on JSTOR (www.jstor.org/stable/27795481)

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