What a Plot IS

by Bill Johnson
Understanding what a plot is creates a foundation for an ability to create one.
Unfortunately for most writers, they are consumed with the idea of creating the effect of
what a plot does without first understanding what a plot is.
What a plot does is raise dramatic questions a reader or viewer will follow a story to its
conclusion to get answers.
What a plot is is the process of generating questions around the outcome of a story's
dramatic purpose that gives a story a dramatic shape and outcome fulfilling to an
audience.
Romeo and Juliet is an example of a well-crafted plot. By loving each other in spite of
the mutual hatred of their families, Romeo and Juliet set the story in motion. But it is
the story's plot that makes the story's movement toward its fulfillment dramatic. By
raising up the obstacles that block the love of Romeo and Juliet fulfilling itself, the
story's plot makes the lover's plight more dramatic. Even knowing the story's outcome,
the action of its plot -- moment by moment -- generates for the story's audience a
dramatic experience of the power of a love that will not be denied.
In any story, as characters act to achieve goals, the actions of such characters should
advance the story toward its resolution and fulfillment. Because other characters are
driven to shape a story's dramatic purpose to their design, they are naturally in
opposition. As different characters act and block each other, they generate new
obstacles to each others progress. This escalates the drama over character goals,
scenes and the story's outcome.
A plot operates around the effect of making a story's movement toward resolution and
fulfillment dramatic. The catch is that it's only when a story is in motion that it has a
movement to block. Without this quality of dramatic tension generated by a plot around
a story's movement, a story appears to be a collection of incidents. The incidents may
be dramatic individually, but collectively they fail to engage the interest of an audience.
They fail because they lack a discernible purpose that arises out of resolving a story's
dramatic purpose.
The key here is to understand that to describe a story about love is not to describe its
plot. A story is about an issue of human need. A plot is what makes that issue acted out
to resolution and fulfillment dramatic. To create a great plot about love is to turn what
might appear to be a worn story idea, two teenagers in love, into Romeo and Juliet.
To illustrate how a plot grows from a story's premise, consider the novel The Hunt For
Red October. On the surface, it appears to be a plot-driven thriller about a Lithuaniandescended commander of a Russian nuclear submarine attempting to flee to America
and freedom. On a story level, however, it is about a battle between freedom and
authoritarianism. This is laid out in the story's premise, The courage to battle
oppression leads to freedom.
Because readers desire to experience that state where the values of freedom win out
over oppression, they readily internalize this story's movement. Because the story in its
every action proved its premise, it drew in readers. Its highly praised plot succeeded
because it made the underlying conflict of the story, freedom battling oppression, clear
and dramatic.

It moved its audience.

Its plot operated to make that movement dramatic.
When every character's actions revolve around a story's core dramatic issue, the
actions of each character affect every other character. A well-designed plot ensures
those premise-generated actions increase the drama around the story's course and
outcome. That makes the story's journey to its ultimate destination more potent.
Tom Clancy succeeded in creating a great plot because he understood how to create a
plot that manifested the movement of his story. Every character, situation, and action
grew out of his story's promise and existed in the world it created. Since the story of
The Hunt For Red October concerns freedom battling oppression, the story's plot made
visible and concrete the playing out of that deeper level of story. To the extent a reader
feels emotionally or thoughtfully connected to this story, they are engaged by its plot.
As the story of Hunt is clearly and powerfully presented, the readers
sees/feels/experiences how the freedom they identify with battles the oppression they
dislike/hate/want to see vanquished. That is why so many people had to read to the
end of the book to get that story question answered:
Will Ramius make it to America and freedom?
They had been hooked on a deeper, emotional level. They had been led to care about
the outcome. It was important to their own state of emotions, their own sense of what
was right and just, their own sense of mattering.
Engaging the interest of an audience around an issue of human need invests them in
the story's outcome. They want to know how it will turn out. They have to know how it
will turn out.
When someone has to finish your story to see how it turns out, your plot has fulfilled its
purpose.
The writer who doesn't see the connection between a story, its characters, and plot
risks introducing characters or plot devices that confuse what's at stake in the story.
That confuses a reader's emotional response/desire to pursue the story's journey of
feelings, thoughts and sense impressions.
The answer for the struggling writer is to see that a plot is generated by a strong, wellrealized story. It is not a substitute for a story. Setting up a situation common to action
films, "Who's going to get out of here alive," is plot-like. Lacking a story issue, however,
such films struggle to engage a wide audience.
To create a great plot, start with your premise. Understand how what's at stake in your
story raises questions to which your audience desires answers. Understand that your
plot should make the journey to get those answers potent and dramatic. When you
start to write, be clear about the obstacles that block the movement of your story. How
those obstacles force your characters to act with ever greater determination if they
would shape the outcome of your story's outcome.
That's when you'll be told, "Wow! Loved your plot! How did you think of it?"
2000 Bill Johnson