Action and plot are not the same thing (as last weekend’s big movie, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” so amply demonstrated).
When I attended the Odyssey Writing Workshop, I had a couple of epiphanies. One was about revising. Another was about plot. As in, my stories didn’t have any. I went around saying stupid things like, “Well, stories don’t need plot. Ray Bradbury’s stories don’t have any plot.” Everyone knows that Ray Bradbury stories don’t have plot because nothing actually happens in them, right? My instructor, Jeanne Cavelos, told me, “Why don’t you analyze a couple of Bradbury stories for plot and get back to me.” So I did.
Holy cow. Ray Bradbury stories have plot. The stories I analyzed were two in which (I thought) nothing much happens: “Homecoming” is about the reunion of an Addams Family-type family, with vampires and mummies and ghosts and all, from the point of view of the family’s youngest son who is completely normal. He watches the goings on, the magic, the dancing, the flying, the jokes about blood banks, the astral projection, all the time wishing he could be a part of it. His uncle (who has bat wings) finally sits him down and explains that no matter what, he’s still special and everyone loves him. The boy understands. But he’s still distraught, the odd one out. That’s it. The second one I read was “The Million-Year Picnic” from The Martian Chronicles, about a family who has just arrived on Mars as colonists. They go out for a picnic along the canals. The boys really want to meet Martians. Father keeps promising that they will. Finally, he leads them to the edge of a canal and shows them their reflections in the water. “There they are, boys. Martians.” And the boys finally realize that this is their new home, the old Martians are gone, and it’s just them now.
These outlines seem so simplistic, but of course the stories are poetic and powerful because it’s Ray Bradbury writing them. It’s easy to think they have no plot because nothing much happens. But here’s the thing: They do have plot, the characters make discoveries, they grow and change. But it’s all happening internally. It’s not the world changing, it’s their attitudes, the way they look at the world, and it totally works. Both of these stories are only a few pages long, but the conflicts and narrative drives are set up in the first paragraphs: Timothy in “Homecoming” wants to belong; the boys in “The Million-Year Picnic” want to meet Martians. You can point to the moment, the exact sentence, in the stories when the conflicts resolve, for better or worse: Timothy will never belong, and he realizes it; the boys have to adjust their worldview to fit their new home.
These stories are thick with plot, even though they don’t have much action.
On the other hand, I’ve read lots of stories by newish writers (and seen lots of big budget Hollywood movies) that have lots of action, but absolutely no plot. Things happen. The characters are cardboard cutouts moving through a predetermined set of actions. Often, the characters will explain to me (the reader) why things happened after the fact, or what their motivations were, because it wasn’t set up ahead of time. Characters seem to go through the motions, and the reader doesn’t know why they’re doing anything, what they want, what drives them. Without that sense of conflict and resolution, of character motivation, all the things that make up plot, the story won’t have any narrative drive. The reader won’t have a reason to keep turning the page. Movies especially seem to pad out so-called stories with explosions and fistfights when the characters aren’t interesting enough to follow for their own sakes. The most action-packed story in the world can still be boring as all get out if I don’t care why any of this stuff is happening.
I’ve seen many writers talk about a two-sentence way to describe the difference between plot and action (I’m not even sure who to reference, or who to attribute it to, I’ve heard it from so many different people. I heard it first from James Morrow at Odyssey):
The King died and then the Queen died.
The King died because the Queen died.
The first sentence is a sequence of events. Pure action. The second sentence intrigues me. It presents questions. It makes me want to know more. It has plot.
I’ve also heard, attributed to Raymond Chandler, that if you don’t know what happens next in a story, bring a man through the door with a gun. But remember, while this may be a good way to jump start a story by forcing you to reassess where the story is going and why the characters are there, don’t forget that you need to go back and make sure the guy with the gun has a really good reason for being there and impacts the story in a meaningful way. Because action is never a substitute for plot.
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Good points on the Bradbury stuff – I should read more of his stories.
As a reader I guess “plot” involves some kind of ending. A tying-up of the strands and a satisfactory conclusion. Three examples spring to mind: The Catcher in the Rye, A Painted House and Bleachers (the last two by Grisham).
In all three, interesting little events occur and life kind of moves on… but the endings just don’t leave me feeling satisfied. I would argue like you did that Catcher has no plot, or at least none worth speaking of. Bleachers was just a meeting amongst friends. I guess I was expecting some kind of twist in the end as it was a Grisham novel, but none came. A Painted House was the same.
The characters in Grisham’s two were great. The little events also. And they did hang together, so there’s a story there. But without a tidy ending I just felt a little cheated.
But, hey – that’s the great thing about literature (and art in general): nobody is right! Half of the fun is liking what you like and hating what you hate is being able to argue your case. It’s all about opinion.
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This is the best explanation–and examples–of plot that i’ve ever seen. So many people mistake plot for action. Or more subtly, mistake motivation for plot. In some ways, you could almost say that plot is: What did the character learn and how did they learn it?
It’s not the actions. It’s the metamorphosis.
Thanks again–this was an extremely illuminating blog and I’m glad I found it.
–Amy Corwin
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I do love a good “aha!” moment…
Excellent explanation, Carrie…it gives a great idea of why “the plot thickens” in so many books where there really isn’t that much action…and makes me think my hs English teachers weren’t just blowing hot air after all. 
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Thanks — it was useful for me, so I hoped it would be useful for others.
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The thing that struck me about the recent movie version of Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is that it had a plot. The book seems to be a series of random events that the characters manage to survive. They don’t set out to do anything. They restore the earth at the end, but not through their own actions. In fact, it would have been restored if they’d done nothing. If anything the story says that everything is out of your control anyway so you may as well try to enjoy the ride. Or put it this way, is it still a plot if the characters have no real goal? That’s the only plotless novel that I can think of, but it’s still great.
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There’s always an exception that proves the rule, isn’t there? The movie did unify the story quite a bit. I’m not sure the book lacks a plot, but it definitely lacks resolution of that plot.
I agree that characters usually have goals (and for the Hitchhiker gang, survival is an admirable goal). But they don’t always have to _achieve_ their goals. I don’t agree that characters always have to impact the outcome. Sometimes, the heroes fail. _Watchmen_ is a good example of this. I heard someone complain that the main characters don’t impact the story at all, and it’s my argument that that’s part of the point — that heroism doesn’t always (or often) work out.
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Heretic! :-p
I’m a huge fan of Adams’ work, but looking at it from the original article’s viewpoint (”and then”/”because”), I can see where you’re coming from. Things happen *to* Arthur in the book (and radio series, and TV series, and film, and LP, and stage play) rather than occuring because of his actions. He’s hand-led around. But in fairness, that seemed rather “realistic” to me and still does.
He’s a normal guy thrown into the most bizarre situation with a friend who knows what he’s doing showing him around. The joy of the book was in the imagination and descriptive writing of the author. I still recall paragraphs off the top of my head which make me smile. The film, however, did not as it was missing that vital ingredient – the prose. Oh, as well as several of the best scenes and lines from the book which were inexplicably ditched.
See Sasha’s comment below – isn’t the movement of a journey (literally or figuratively) also a plot even though things often just “happen”, though not for any discernible reason? Although that does rather knock *my* original comment up the top for six as that’s my exact complaint with the novels I mentioned!
But, again, we’re onto opinion here. I loved the HHG books (and other media) but can’t stand the film.
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Yeah, the BBC radio show is my favorite version. I can still quote an embarrassing amount of that show off the top of my head.
Your “led by the hand” comment made me think of another novel turned radio show, and a few movies; H.G. Wells War of the Worlds. I think of that story as a “Grand Tour” plot. People complained that the last Tom Cruise version was just a special effects movie, but then that’s largely the point; “Look at all these weird and fantastic things that could happen if aliens attacked! See the train on fire! Cool!” The reader, or the viewer, goes on a tour of a bizarre world and gets to see out of the ordinary events; and the human reaction to those events. But, nothing that the protagonists do have much impact on the story. They are just there to run from one cool/interesting event to the next. The thing is, your “world” has to be very cool and different or I don’t think the reader will care enough to stay with the story.
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Very intriguing post, Carrie. I’ve always thought several of my own stories didn’t have plots, but were character driven journey’s. Mostly because to me, plot meant things like mysteries or big exterior conflicts. But I really like the way you’ve explained it here.
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I’m increasingly coming to decide that plot and character are inextricable. To have a plot, you have to have characters who want something. The detective wants to solve a mystery, the action hero(ine) wants to save the world, the couple in a romance want to fall in love, etc. etc. If you can’t figure out what the characters want, it’s the plot that suffers. And the plot ends up being meaningless if you can’t relate to the people experiencing it.
That’s probably a whole other post…
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I heard it, “The king died, then the queen died.” is action, “The king died and then the queen died of grief,” is plot; both versions work; I heard it originally attributed to E.M. Forster. I’m learning this slowly myself.
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This was well put, succinct, and I got it. Thanks for shining a bright light on the subject.
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Great post, Carrie. You’ve illustrated the distinction in an easily recognizable way. I always appreciate a new perspective on confusing issues.
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Every story has the archetypal form SOMEONE STRIVES to get SOMEGOAL.
The goal can be something obvious and specific. But it can also be more subtle and general.
In The Princess Diaries Mia just wants to survive each day at high school. In War of the Worlds the main character wants to survive war. This DOES NOT mean the protagonists have no goal. They just don’t have a 42-minute TV goal such as “find the murderer” where the main character proactively seeks something. Or a 2-hour movie goal such as “rescue prisoners from terrorists.”
You can argue that reactive plots are boring. Well, some are, some aren’t. It depends on the writer, who can do a poor, middling, or genius job of handling them.
The reactive plots I most enjoy start out with the hero(ine) passive but becomes more proactive. But that’s a personal preference; there’re plenty of readers who would enjoy a purely reactive plot.
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As I recall, that king and queen drama comes from the great critic, John Gardner.
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Great post, and you’ve explained very well the difference between plot and action. It reminds me of what some clever scriptwriting guy said – ‘in real life, one thing happens after another – in stories one thing happens because of another’