20 Master Plots

by Ronald B Tobias

  Everyone steals to some degree. If Shakespeare, Chaucer and Milton were alive today, they'd spend half their time in court trying to explain where they got their stories. (In those days it was okay to steal another person's story, as long as you made it better.) We all have our sources, and we rely heavily on them.

  Proceed, then, with confidence. Plots are in the public domain. Use and abuse them at will. Find the plot that most closely fits your story. Don't be afraid to tailor a plot to your specific idea. Don't hold rigid to the ideas. Mold, shape, form. Don't lose sight of the general rhythm that these plots have created over time, however. What are the basic movements in the plot? If you start to cut out movements, you may do more damage than good. These plots have taken centuries to evolve.

  The trick in learning how to use plot is not copying but adapting it to the needs of your story. As you read over the master plots, try to match your idea with the basic concepts that these plots employ. It might very well be that your idea fits two, three or even more of these plots.

  That means you need to shape your idea more than you already have. This is the first major decision you must make, and it will affect everything else that you do. So ask yourself as you read the outline of each of these major plots, "Does this plot offer me what I need in terms of story and character? How well does my idea fit with the plot?" If it doesn't fit exactly, don't let that bother you; the plots as I've described them are more or less "middle of the road," and they are very flexible. But each plot does have a basic thrust to it, which is the force that will guide your story-telling. Make sure you're comfortable with it. If not, read the others and then decide which fits your idea the best.

  Shaping ideas is a constant process for most writers. They don't have everything mapped out absolutely before they begin writing. A writer's blueprint doesn't have to look like an architect's blueprint. You should have an idea and a sense of what you want to do with that idea (plot). But that sense may change one time, a dozen times or a thousand times during the course of the writing. Don't let that unnerve you. If you feel you need a guide to follow, use the master plot outlines in this book to give you a sense of what you need to accomplish in each of the plot's major movements. Say to yourself, "All right, in the first movement, some event should happen that forces my protagonist to start her life over. What should that event be? How can I be convincing?" This book will give you the guidelines; use them and adapt them, but don't get boxed in by them.

  Don't feel bad about adapting the plot to your needs. What these plots will show you are their basic patterns. As you write, you'll embellish the pattern—that's a natural part of the process.

  The quest plot, as the name implies, is the protagonist's search for a person, place or thing, tangible or intangible. It may be the Holy Grail, Valhalla, immortality, Atlantis or The Middle Kingdom. The main character is specifically (as opposed to incidentally) looking for something that she hopes or expects to find that will significantly change her life.

  The historical range of this plot is enormous, starting from Gilgamesh, the great Babylonian epic, written about four thousand years ago, on to Don Quixote and then to The Grapes of Wrath. This plot is one of the world's most enduring.

  You might be tempted to say that Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade are also quest plots because Indiana Jones is searching for the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail (or whatever the artifact of the day is). Wrong.

  Alfred Hitchcock used to talk about the MacGuffin in his films. The MacGuffin is an object that seems to be important to the characters but is of little importance to the director (and consequently of no importance to the viewer). In North by Northwest the MacGuffin was the pre-Columbian statue with the microfilm hidden in it; in Psycho the MacGuffin was the stolen money; in Notorious it was the uranium in the wine bottles. The MacGuffin in Raiders of the Lost Ark is the Ark itself, and in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade it is the Holy Grail. In the quest plot, the

  object of the search is everything to the protagonist, not simply an excuse for the action. The character is shaped by his quest and his success or failure at obtaining the object of the search. In Spielberg's film, Indiana Jones is neither better nor worse for wear after his trials and tribulations. His quest has no effect on him as a human being (as much as it can be said he is one). Therefore, Indiana Jones isn't a true quest plot.

  The quest plot, while very physical, relies heavily on its protagonist. You must have a fleshed-out figure as your main character. Indiana Jones, however enjoyable he is to watch as he gets out of scrape after scrape, lacks any real depth as a human being.

  The object of the protagonist's search reflects heavily on his character and usually alters it in some way, thus affecting the character change, which is important by the end. Gilgamesh sets out to find immortality, and what he discovers along the way changes him in fundamental ways; Don Quixote sets out as a madman knight errant to redress the wrongs of the entire world and to find his lady Dulcinea tel Toboso; Dorothy's quest in The Wizard of Oz is simpler: she wants to find home; the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath are looking for a new life in California; the title character in Lord Jim seeks his lost honor; Conway searches for his Shangri-La in Lost Horizon; and Jason, of course, wants the Golden Fleece. Take out the object of their quest, and the story falls apart. In every case the hero is much different at the end of the story than at the beginning.

  In Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Fred C. Dobbs, the character played by Humphrey Bogart, seeks gold in the remote hills of Mexico. Here the quest is obvious: gold. What's not obvious is how his quest changes his character because of his greed.

  A hallmark of quest plots is that the action moves around a lot; the protagonists are always on the move, seeking, searching. Gilgamesh not only roams the cedar forests of Babylon but ends up in the underworld; Don Quixote travels all over Spain; Dorothy starts out in Kansas but ends up in Oz; the Joads travel from Oklahoma to the Promised Land of California; Jim of Lord Jim goes to sea and wanders from Bombay to Calcutta; and no one knows exactly where Jason went.

  In this kind of plot, the protagonist starts at home and often ends at home. Gilgamesh, Don Quixote, Dorothy and Jason all find their way home; the Joads and Jim do not, probably because they don't have a home to which they can return.

  The object of this journey, other than the quest, is wisdom. All the characters in these stories learn something about the world and about themselves. Sometimes they return heroes, wiser for their journey; sometimes they return disillusioned and sick. Jason gets the Golden Fleece and the girl, and Dorothy and Toto get back to Kansas. But Don Quixote, abused for all his troubles, gives up and goes home, repudiating everything. Gilgamesh learns to his dismay that death is a bummer after all. The reality of California doesn't exactly please the Joads, either. But in each case there is a lesson to be learned, a lesson that shapes the protagonist.

  These stories, by nature, are episodic. The protagonist may start at home, but she'll go from place to place in search of the object of her desire, encountering a variety of events along the way. These events should relate in some way to accomplishing the final goal. The protagonist must ask directions, find and solve clues and pay dues before getting the price of admission.

  A major part of the quest is the search itself and the wisdom the main character accumulates along the way. She must be psychologically ready to receive the wisdom, and therefore the search becomes a series of successive classes. She should graduate one class before moving on to the next.

  STRUCTURE OF THE QUEST PLOT

  Act One

  In Act One (setup), the hero is at the point of origination, usually home. A force moves him to act, either out of necessity or by desire.

  In Jason and the Golden Fleece, Jason, who has been living a blissful existence on a mountaintop with a centaur (half-man, half-horse), finds out that his uncle, the evil king, has stolen the crown that is rightfully his. So Jason goes off to demand his throne.

/>   Gilgamesh, on the other hand, is busy at the beginning of the story building the Great Wall of Babylon. He's not actually building the wall himself; he's got the city's inhabitants working double

  overtime to get it done. The people are so exhausted (and underpaid) that they petition the gods to send someone to stop the madman. One of the gods figures it's time to teach the king a lesson and creates a warrior out of clay to fight the king.

  Don Quixote starts out at home, too. He's been reading too many romances about chivalry and suddenly fancies himself a knight. He dons his grandfather's armor, gets on his rickety old horse, and sets out on his first adventure.

  Dorothy, too, is unhappy with her state of affairs. An orphan, she wants to run away from the farm where she lives with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, whom she accuses of being "unappre-ciative." She also wants to get away from her nasty neighbor, Miss Gulch, who's been threatening to kill her dog.

  In each case, something spurs the protagonist to action: Jason's desire to become king; Gilgamesh's need to defend himself against the clay warrior from Hell; Don Quixote's desire to become a knight and make a difference in an indifferent world; and Dorothy's decision to run away from home. The authors don't spend a lot of time telling us who the hero is, why the hero is unhappy and what the hero intends to do about it. In each case, the quest starts with immediate decisions to act.

  Then the story enters a transitional phase. The decision to act leads directly to the first major event away from home.

  Jason shows up at the king's palace. In those days it was common to have an oracle warn you to watch out for a man with only one shoe, and when Jason shows up with only one sandal, the king knows who he is and pretends to welcome him—while trying to figure out how to kill him. They have a great feast and the king tells the story about the Golden Fleece.

  To the king's surprise, Jason pledges to get the fleece back. The king thinks it's a great idea and, to give Jason the proper incentive, he offers to give Jason his throne back if he's successful. (He figures Jason has no chance to pull it off, so what the hey.) Jason puts together a crew that is a cross between The Magnificent Seven and The Dirty Dozen and sets off to find the Golden Fleece.

  Don Quixote goes through a similar trial. His first encounter on the road is with some traveling salesmen who beat him up when he challenges them to a passage at arms. It's his first test as a knight, and he flunks it miserably. He must go home to recover from his lumps and bruises. Meanwhile, Don Q's friends, fearing for his mental health, burn all his books. Of course this convinces Don Quixote that his books are being held hostage by an evil wizard. So it's back on the road for Don Q.

  Gilgamesh has other problems. A goddess sends down a clay man named Enkidu to teach him a lesson he won't forget for abusing his people. Enkidu shows up at the temple playing the role of bouncer. He refuses to let Gilgamesh into the temple. Gilgamesh, who isn't used to hearing no for an answer, challenges Enkidu to a Babylonian version of a duel.

  The pair duke it out. But it's a draw. Enkidu is impressed; so is Gilgamesh. The pair become solid friends. They go off together to fight the dreadful giant Humbuba.

  Dorothy's initial adventure is no less bizarre. She's run away to the carnival, but Professor Marvel, the carny showman, convinces her to go back to her family. Before she can make it back, a Kansas "twister" snatches her—house, dog and all.

  When the house finally touches down, Dorothy finds herself in the brilliant, garish, Technicolor world of Oz. The first thing she sees are the Munchkins, who are happily singing "Ding dong, the wicked witch is dead." Dorothy's house, it seems, has landed on top of the witch.

  In each case, the first incident, the motivating incident, prompts the hero to leave home. It isn't enough for him simply to want to go; something must spur him on. There may be doubt in the hero's mind about leaving (as with Don Quixote and Dorothy), but the motivating incident turns the tide. It establishes the hero, the hero's "home base," and the reason for leaving.

  The motivating incident also serves as a bridge between the first and second acts.

  As you sketch the action for your adaptation of this plot, show your character moving from one state to another. All of the characters we've discussed here start out in a kind of innocent or naive state. They don't fully understand what lies ahead of them. They think they know what they want, but experience teaches them something else.

  Your character should clearly identify what she is searching for. Maybe it's a desire to get away from home and find a new life—a plot often used with teenagers who feel stifled by their parents and their school. In any case, invest your character with a strong desire to go somewhere, to do something. Your character should have a strong mental image (which may be accurate or totally off base) of what she wants to achieve, and a strong desire to achieve it. She also should be strongly motivated, with forces at work that make her action imperative. Make sure you give your character the proper motivation to go on the quest.

  The intent of the character—to find whatever goal he has set for himself—is different from the motivation. Intent is what the character wants to achieve; motivation is his reason for wanting to achieve it.

  We should learn a lot about the main character in the first act. We want to understand why he's motivated to go on the quest. The experience is almost certain to change everything—but for now at least we know where the character is "coming from."

  The Buddy Concept. The main character rarely travels alone. Gilgamesh has Enkidu; Don Quixote has Sancho Panza; Jason has his Argonauts; Dorothy has the Tin Woodman, the Lion and the Scarecrow. The buddies are usually picked up late in the first act (as a result of the motivating incident). In none of the previous examples does the hero begin with all his or her buddies; they are acquired along the way. This gives us time to focus on the protagonist without complicating issues with a supporting cast.

  The majority of these stories also have a helpful character, someone or something that helps the protagonist achieve her quest. It may be Lancelot's Lady of the Lake in Le Morte d'Arthur or the good witch Glinda in The Wizard of Oz. In fairy tales, it is usually an animal—anything from a toad to a dove—that helps the main character find what she's seeking. The protagonist isn't a loner; she relies on the help of others.

  If you plan to use a helpful friend or animal, the best place to introduce this character is in the first act. Otherwise you may be accused of contriving the story by bringing on a character at just the right time to help your hero out of a tight spot. Lay your groundwork in Act One, and follow through in Act Two.

  Act Two

  As basic as it sounds, the middle connects the beginning and the end. Act One asks the question, and Act Three gives the answer. All Act Two does is make the story interesting.

  Act One of The Wizard of Oz asks the question: Will Dorothy find her way back home? Act Three answers the question: Yes.

  Will Jason find the Golden Fleece (and get his kingdom back)? Yes.

  Will Gilgamesh find the secret of life? Yes, but it doesn't do him any good.

  Will Don Quixote find his lady Dulcinea del Toboso (who's really a chesty farm girl with a great talent for salting pork)? Yes.

  (Notice the word find in each case? This is the bottom-line description of a quest plot.)

  So Act One provides the question, and Act Three provides the answer. That leaves Act Two. In literature, the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line.

  Act Two is the flavoring, the spice. If we know the answer as soon as Act Two, the story will be boring. The idea is to keep the reader wondering. A roller coaster ride would be no fun without a middle. If, just as your car got started, you pulled in at the end, you'd feel cheated. It's the ride, the going up and down, the unexpected turns, the bursts of speed and the topsy-turvy feeling of uncertainty that we love most.

  The same is true for a story. The journey is as important as the end: As with a roller coaster, there's a specific path that connects the start t
o the finish. Once connected, the entire journey makes sense, each step of the way contributes to understanding either character or the object of the quest.

  Dorothy doesn't go to an all-night diner and pick up some bikers from Oakland. Nor does Jason enter his chariot in the Athens 500. Those events have nothing to do with their stories. They might make great scenes, but—you know the drill.

  Jason and his Argonauts head out for the Golden Fleece, but before they get there, they must prove to the gods (and to the reader) that they are worthy men, and that Jason possesses both the strength and wisdom to be king. These aren't lessons that ever come easily.

  Gilgamesh has a tough task ahead, too. In the second act, after the dynamic duo slay the giant Humbuba as their first test of strength together, Enkidu starts to have nightmares about death. The two get tangled up with the gods, who don't like the way things are going, and Enkidu dies. Gilgamesh is heartbroken. He decides to find Utnapishtim, the man who holds the secret of life, so he can bring back his pal.

  Don Quixote is a loosely constructed book. Cervantes was a satirist, and he took time to poke fun at all the literary and social conventions of the day. Don Quixote seems to wander in all directions, as if Cervantes barely had a handle on his topic. But the book is a panoramic view of the people and the times. We follow the crazy old man because of what each of these episodes teaches us: about the clash between idealism and materialism; about the nature of the Spanish character; about the foibles of madness and inspiration; and about the basic nature of character. (Even though Don Quixote goes from adventure to adventure as a knight errant intent on saving the world, his real quest is for his lady Dulcinea, even though she exists only in his fevered mind.)