Tuesday, July 26, 2011

The Difference Between Story and Plot

When I started writing, I would often wonder about the difference between Plot and Story. I initially thought they were one and  the same thing. As I waded deeper and deeper into writing, I researched about story and plot and the explanation, though simple,  made  a lot of sense and entrenched itself in my mind.

Very often, I  hear  people discuss books as ‘the story was good, but there was no plot’. I am guilty of that judgement. I have often told my friends ‘I could not find the plot in this book. This book is just a collection of scenes’. And my non-writing friends have that glazed look on their faces when I discuss story and plot.

‘Isn’t  story and plot the same thing?’ one friend asked me. Most non-writers  echo that thought.

I will use novelist E. M Forster’s words; in his classic work Aspects of the Novel, Forster made the important and useful distinction  between story and plot and stressed the causality of plot.

 The story Forster says, consists  of merely the events as they happened in chronological order; the plot is the portrayal  of those events in such a way as to show their causality, how one gives rise to another (rather than simply happening prior to it).   

Forster gives an example.The king died and then the queen died is a story. But the king died and then the queen died of grief is a plot.

Another example is  girl and boy fall in love is a story. Girl meets boy, boy saves girl, girl is charmed by his bravery and falls in love is a plot. There is a series of events, one leading to another in a logical way. This is what a plot is all about.

I loved Forster’s simple explanation. Wish I had stumbled upon all this when I started writing and my head was full of confusion about story and plot. But, better later than never.

When you started writing did you all wonder what was this thing called plot? Did you hope (like me) that  as you started writing, the plot would magically reveal itself? Or were you all aware of  what a plot  is, right in the beginning. Please share your plot confusions with us.

Giveaway Winner: The  lucky winner of Rahma's Ebook copy of the Guardian Cats is Mark Noce. Mark, you can email me for your prize.

18 comments:

  1. Loved your post. Wish a plot would magically appear in my book too. That would be bliss.

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  2. Honestly, I never gave any enough heed to concepts of plot and story. I thought plot is how you write the story and narrate the events, while I had a notion story is the one in whole, the final piece we write. Thanks for sharing the ideas here ma'am. They gonna be lot helpful may people who aspire to write better. It is very informative...

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  3. Cool post. It makes the distinction between story and plot so clear and easy. Thanks for simplifying it. :)

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  4. Great way of putting it! I've always thought of the two as separate, but as entwined. Without good story, the plot is boring. Without plot, story is pointless...

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  5. I will be accused of using a similar word every time I'm here, but what synonym must I used for an informative post like this.

    Weakest LINK

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  6. So informative! I never took the time to think about this and it helps a lot when thinking about my own work.

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  7. I have never been a big fan of plots. Done badly they take the Louvre and turn it into the Pompidou Centre. By that I mean, all the workings are on the outside for everyone to see. It’s one of the downfalls of being a writer, I tend to deconstruct. In fact my wife and I do it all the time watching TV shows. It’s fun in its own way. I have said before that a book does not need a plot but it does need a point and I still stand by that. I never plot in advance but as I write linear novels with only a handful of characters I can do that. Needless to say I don’t do subplots either. All my books have evolved naturally and since they are all character-driven things I’d have to agree with F. Scott Fitzgerald who said, “Character is plot, plot is character.”

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  8. I think I always had a more vague sense of what story meant, but had a very concrete idea of what plot is. Thanks for clearing that up!

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  9. I don't recall sitting down and separating out story from plot when I outlined my trilogy. I know it's in there and even in the end I had to change some things up because the villain simply had no reason to keep the prisoner alive. Some of the story/plot regarding the romance is very complicated and isn't fully explained in the first book due to time travel events that happen later on in books two and three.

    It would be interesting to see what someone had to say regarding plot vs story with my first book. No one has mentioned anything yet.

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  10. Woo hoo! Thanks!!! My email is markchristophernoce@gmail.com

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  11. Congrats Mark! :)
    Plot is what drives the story. It's a good thing to be familiar with.

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  12. I love your blog. You always have excellent posts on writing, and this one is definitely one of them. I've never thought of the difference between plot and story, so this was helpful information for me. Thank you. :)

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  13. I never knew...but your examples explained the difference beautifully.

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  14. I never really thought about plot and story being separate before, but your explanation has shown me a clear difference. Thank you!

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  15. Well done. Character arc and internal and external struggles such as sacrificing something of value for the greater good can go a long way in developing a plot rather than merely telling a story.

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  16. Until I read this article I thought both are the same and I never looked any story logically. I should give it a thought from now....thanks for sharing this Rachna :)

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  17. A former writing teacher quoted that very Forster quote, and I love it. But I still didn't know anything about plotting when I started out. I had read that if you put interesting characters together and a problem, the plot would come. I put some very interesting characters (I thought) together, and they just went off on tangents. Then I spent about a year reading everything I could find on plot and plot structure. I liked this post because it still can be tempting to confuse story and plot, and it's a great reminder of the difference.

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  18. thanks for sharing that distinction between plot and story. didn't realize.

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