The reason I use the terms story or story structure instead of “plot” when I talk about fiction is to avoid blurring the distinction between plotted and episodic.
Consider: every good novel tells a story, and every story has a structure that moves it along and through an arc of time. And not randomly, but with a purposefulness that says: pay play close attention, read between the lines–this MEANS something.
Typically that structure is a plot, a narrative form we’ve known for thousands of years. But what if a story doesn’t easily fall into that identifiably “Aristotelian” plot pattern? What if, try as you might, like Whitney, you can’t get your material to yield anything resembling a plot?
When this happens, it’s usually for one of two reasons:
• You haven’t fully learned yet what a plot is and how it functions. Even if you grasp it intellectually, you haven’t absorbed it into your “muscle memory.”
• The natural body type of your story is different from that of the traditional plot. There is an organizing principle but it isn’t strictly causal. Rather, it’s non-linear– like a mind map–the order of events determined by meaning rather than cause-and-effect.
The episodic story works through accumulation of meaningful “episodes”–events, scenes, even cameos. An episodic story structure may seem random at first, but connections emerge and grow in significance. At some point, the reader gets it and the story has done its work.
For example: “I get it. This is about the shame of a proud family as they deal with their grandfather’s arrest on scandalous morals charges.”
There’s much, much more to say about the episodic story structure–a form I adore, by the way–and not enough room here to do it. There will be more on this down the line. That’s a promise.
Meanwhile, if you write non-fiction (or fiction), and enjoy getting a blast of daily inspiration check out Carols Blog, where writer/coach Carol Henderson (my wife) is posting a prompt a day throughout April.
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I struggle with the idea of building a plot and sticking with it. I always decide that what is plotted to happen next is not what I want to happen! The only way to stop myself from going completely haywire and ‘losing the plot’ altogether, is to use a kind of map in a notebook that tells me I have gone off the track and need to get back on at some point, or I will lose my way.