Writing Clichés, Part I: The Ubiquity of Plot

Some years ago, I co-authored a musical. It was based on Charles Dickens’ story, “The Cricket on the Hearth,” one of his Christmas tales. I did the libretto (the script and song lyrics) and a colleague wrote the music. We invited a critic from the local newspaper to the opening night and, the next day, he gave us a favorable review. Like most reviewers, he seemed to feel he had to make one negative remark and said, “The opening song of the second act did nothing to advance the plot.”

The opening song of the second act was “Just To Be On Stage,” a song one of the main characters sings about how much he loves being an actor. It was a funny song in which the actor paused and quoted lines from Shakespeare. In all deference to the reviewer, I will admit it did nothing or not a lot to “advance the plot”—but why did it have to? That everything you write has to advance the plot is writing cliché number one.

 It’s easy to understand how such things get started. No one wants to read a meandering book full of digressions and pointless action. A book has to have direction. A novel is most often organized around the principle of plot. Edgar Allan Poe, in his discourse that defined the modern short story, said nothing must distract from the action that carries the story along (that is, the plot). But, as often happens in religion, what was designed to be a guideline for making life better eventually became a burdensome rule that people are forced to follow. Plot is ubiquitous—it is everywhere and, supposedly, is the driving force in a novel. So everything in the piece of fiction, it follows, must support, advance, or aid the development of plot in some way.

This has led to some misdirection.

Very often, in writer’s groups and in what I come across when I read to see what’s being written today, I encounter books that are simply plots. It’s supposedly good to be “plot-driven,” but very often this emphasis on plot robs the book of richness. There is no character development, no skillful use of setting, no creation of mood of atmosphere, no symbolism, and no unique narrative voice. The story is a sequence of events, which, for me at least, quickly becomes boring because the elements mentioned above do not accompany it.

Some famous books do not have plots. Willa Cather’s Death Comes to the Archbishop, written in 1927 and widely read and taught today, does not have a plot. It is a series of vignettes on the life of a Catholic priest living in Mexico during the last part of the nineteenth century. The sequence of years in his life give the book form, but really it has no overriding conflict. Yet it is a rich, vivid text. One of my favorite novels, The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles, is thin on plot. The main character sees a mysterious woman standing on a pier and becomes curious about her. Eventually, they fall in love and his world of Victorian propriety comes crashing down around him. But still, the narration is more important than the simple plot. My all-time favorite novel, Wuthering Heights, does have a plot with the formula of Want/Obstacle/Action, but the characters and what they are like are much more important than the very simple plot of the book.

Clichés, of course, arise for a reason. Beginning writers need to learn how to stick with the story so they do not wander and bore

Meryl Streep as The French Lieutenant's Woman

the reader. The reader wants to know what happens next. But plot is not the be-all and end-all of a book. And books that are only a sequence of events and fail to bring in the other elements of writing—character, narrative, symbolism, setting, theme—tend to be dull and, yes, boring, after a while.

So remember there are many other things in a book beside the plot. What happens is important, but it must not be the only thing in a novel. It can be a strong element—it should be a strong element—must be a strong element; but it is certainly not everything. If it is everything, the novel will be boring and incomplete.

More clichés to come!

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Creavity: Transcending Genre II

Novelist Evelyn Waugh is once said the only good 

thing about the Twentieth Century was the invention

of the electric light—because by it we are able to stay up all night and read Victorian novels. The Victorian novel I read and re-read is one that creatively bent the rules and taboos of Victorian literature and introduced startling characters and concepts. Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë, excels all other novels of its time in creative reach.

The Victorian era was an era of propriety. Sex was not mentioned, nor was the body. Furthermore, people were expected to restrain themselves. One of Dickens’ characters is falling in love and tells herself, Now, Esther:  duty, duty, duty. You lived to be a useful person and set aside your passion for respectability. Emily Brontë broke with this—at least in the one novel she published.

The teacup world of Jane Austen and the propriety of Dickens are blown out of the water in Wuthering Heights. It amazes the reader by the torrents of passion from her main character Heathcliff and his love, Katherine.

She shatters Victorian convention by making Heathcliff a passionate, emotional character, almost demonic in his drive to marry Katherine, whom he does not wed, and whom he spends the rest of his life trying to win her over from her husband. He rages, swears, swells with anger and violence. He is driven by primal love, which, when denied him, turns to primal rage and thirst for revenge. Katherine loves him the same way but bows to convention and chooses not to marry him. She is destroyed by this.

Rebuffed, Heathcliff goes on a lifelong mission to exact revenge on the people who kept him and Katherine apart. He gets control of Katherine’s and Edgar, her husband’s, son and make him an illiterate farmhand so he can scoff at him. He gains control of all the farms around him and oppresses his neighbor. His own wife, who bears him a son, deserts him, and then dies, writes in a letter, “Is Heathcliff a devil, or a man?”

 This sort of intensity is not seen in other Victorian novels. Brontë creatively pushes her characters to new heights of passion and intensity. She was also highly creative in structuring the novel.

It begins with three of the craziest chapters in literature. A man seeks refuge at Heathcliff’s home and enters a bewildering scene of violence and conflict. He stays at the house and has a bizarre dream related to a text he has just read; and then another dream based on a puzzling entry written in the margin of the pamphlet. He tells Heathcliff about the dream and his reaction is violent and then pathetic as he stands at an open window and weeps, ““Come in! Come in! Kathy, do come. Oh, do—once more! Oh! My heart's darling! Hear me this time, Katherine, at last!”

 The man returns home, is ill, and is told the story of what happens by the housekeeper who nurses him back to health. By the end of her long narrative, we finally understand what happens in the first three chapters. It is a marvel of framing and structuring a work of literature. The imagery of the dreams and the unfolding narrative of Heathcliff are nothing short of amazing.

Emily Brontë seemed quite conventional from her time. But underneath the propriety she displayed was a creative genius whose vast capacity for creating wonder would not fit into Victorian strictures. Wuthering Heights still ranks as one of the most amazing novels I’ve read even thought it was written 167 years ago. Creativity triumphs over time—as we will see in the next blog about a text that succeeds through skillful use of it. 

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