Discussion → Plotless Fiction
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How does a story that dispenses with plot satisfy a reader? Ecco Press, for instance, recently published Padgett Powell's new book, "The Interrogative Mood: a Novel?" – a book composed entirely of questions. Listen to an excerpt: http://bit.ly/3a6VNL
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Great sound bite. It's certainly engaging and provocative. I suppose that could be enough to satisfy a reader. I don't know that it's fair to say that it's plotless fiction, but I haven't read the book.
Hm. Geez, Edward Mullany.
I think any piece of writing that intentionally dispenses (or attempts to dispense) components (plot, characters, emotion) can succeed, at least in terms of keeping the reader captivated, by overcompensating in other areas. Odd or vivid imagery might do the trick. Or lightning dialogue. Creating an entire piece comprised of questions is obviously a good one, if done well. And by done well I mean it's something familiar presented in a new way. And what exactly is being presented?
A story.
With a plot.
Carefully sewn in between things.
It's there.
Presence in absence and whatnot.
By attempting to rid a work of the seeming essentials, you're actually opening the door to osmosis. Scenery becomes characters. Colors become emotions. A slew of questions becomes, or remains, a chugging narrative. The variations are endless, but a story will always be a story, and any form will succeed if executed well.
I think. Anyway.
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Bottom line is that readers like to think. That sound bite made me think. It was interesting in that it forces you to be introspective with nearly every sentence.
I don't mind the lack of plot if there is something new on the table, something that might help me see something in a fresh light. I'm interested in reading the book now.
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A note on my previous post...SOMETHING, SOMETHING, SOMETHING. Wow, favourite word much?
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Doesn't a "story" by definition have a plot? Not to get into arguing semantics, but it seems to me that the human mind is a) wired for narrative, and b) wired to make connections between words, images, etc. that may have no connection at all in order to make sense of what appears to be senseless. An evolutionary necessity, I’d guess. Of course, defining plot is another matter. Totally agree with Mel that there is a plot "carefully sewn in between things," because it's the choice of questions that suggests a persona or personae, a narrative. And of course Powell is a wonderfully talented writer, so the reader must naturally assume agency and intentionality in all of the choices that he makes.
You could probably argue that Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" is plotless, at least compared to other of his novels.
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analogous to asking "can one write a philosophy book without (philosophical) arguments?
i once asked cornel west if RACE MATTERS was not in fact a book without arguments? cornel said sure, maybe--but what's wrong with that? citing books that are howls, laments, songs, jazz riffs
regarding THE THINGS THEY CARRIED, i think the war was the plot, and o'brien worked with the given. there is beginning, middle, ending of a plot written by generals and presidents, and characters sent into motion by this plot--shot, stabbed, blown into trees, pieces of their bodies hanging like kites in the bright jungle sun. dunno--my $.02
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i crave plot. i don't like stories without it. of course, like mel, i often find plot sewn in b/w things.
the things they carried is one of my favorites and i see plot there. indeed, perhaps compared to cacciato and the fourth of july, july (oh wait, that book NEVER happened)...its plot isn't as clear. i'll let gary's comment about it stand.
i find plot in joseph young's work and i know some people don't. quite curious to hear his thoughts. i was on a flash f panel with him ealier this year and he said he didn't consider his work prose poetry b/c his stories always have narratives. i hope i'm quoting right. i'm old and this was back in april.
great comments stephen, gary, mel, teresa. thanks for starting this, edward.
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I really like the notion of Powell's book. And I absolutely agree with Teresa.
Most people, I think, want a plot in a conventional sense - A to B, and so forth or scrambled as in a Pulp Fiction sort of way - or like Julio Cortazar in his magnificent Hopscotch. It's plot, but with a major shift.
I don't have to have plot like that. I'm interested in the imagery and character and mood that a piece elicits that any story. I prefer loose ends. That pulls me deeper into the work. Maybe that's why I like William S Burroughs - why I like Raymond Carver. Carver does have plot of course, but for me his best works are those where the story is compressed into something else. A Carver story like "The Father" which is as much tone poem or prose poem - maybe more so - than story. That's what I like about his work.
I don't like being read to - as in most traditional prose works - where everything is placed before me, so much so, that there's no room for me to enter. I don't seem to go for that type of story. I prefer reading the work that is image driven, that is focused on tone.
This is an interesting thread of discussion here.
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How much plot in The Road? Boy and man try to survive, get to sea. All the Pretty Horses is bursting with plot in comparison. Or maybe consider a movie like Kings of the Road or Ivan the Terrible. It's atmopshere, it seems, that carry all three examples, atmosphere that creates an aesthetic tension, transfered to the characters. I think you can dispense with plot but I'm not sure you can dispense with tension. Abstract expressionist painting dispenses with 'plot' or 'story,' ie, content, but the paintings still work through the tensions between shape and color and composition. As someone else said these are somewhat matters of semantics, but I think tension, not plot, is maybe what makes narrative. Tension applied correctly gives the sensation of story even without plot.
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There are two levels to this: the semantic level (is it possible to have a "story" without plot?) and the fulfillment level (do we need plot to have a satisfying reader experience?).
The first depends on how narrowly you want to define the elements of fiction. It's probably only useful as a dinner table discussion for nerds. How much can plot can be under the surface? How much narrative can we ask a reader to infer? Even questions can imply events and actions and thus plot. The question is how much plot "stuff" you need for to reach that "story" threshold. The answer, I think, is debatable.
As for the second question (do we <em>need</em> plot to be satisfied?), I think probably not. Some writing clearly begs for it when it's missing, but I know I personally have written and enjoyed character pieces with no traditional plot (and sometimes, with no discernible action at all).
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is plot more a "guy thing," do ya think, going back to aristotle and the boys? is a lorrie moore novel less plotted than cormac? in other words, is this a gendered discussion, somehow? (isn't everything/)
dunno--just looking to start trouble
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plot = things happening. Passage of time by itself can give a sense of plot, as can recorded sensations, but I wouldn't really consider them plots in and of themselves.
I understand two or three basic kinds of plot. There's the more traditional kind, with causality, where the plot sets a series of events in motion. Avenge my father's death. Set out to solve this mystery. Try to get laid. Genre fiction relies heavily on this type of plot, so that the stereotype of genre fiction is that the plot is all that matters. Readers of genre fiction will say, "I want a good story," and what they mean is they want a plot with causality. There's an impression that literary writers are too self-absorbed and Artistic (with a capital A) to work in such pedantic considerations. But of course we write plots of this type, just maybe not with serial killers, genetically engineered diseases, or clever bank heists. Our emphasis on character and our taking the language seriously may lend to smaller plots or or plots overshadowed by other elements.
Episodic plot is more centered around the character, and each episode is distinct, not necessarily in any order, and for the most part equal. Superman saves the world today. Superman saves the world tomorrow. Superman saves the world a week from Tuesday. Don Quixote attacks a windmill or reads about himself in a library. Tim O'Brien sees a buddy get killed. Tim O'Brien sees another buddy get killed. Tim O'Brien ruminates on the whole experience. I haven't read The Road, but I suspect it's probably also episodic.
And then there is the impressionistic type where making sense of the series of events isn't so much the meaning as the experience of the moment. This is more what I understand as "plotless." An unnamed character is in an awe-inspiring meadow, and then it rains. The meadow and the rain are beautifully rendered, dare I say, poetic.
There's the metafictional type, which can be any of these earlier types, but the object is to highlight the artifice of plot and other narrative elements, including the page, the nature of time, character, personality, or identity as constructed, the conventions of realism, or even accepted notions of reality. This kind of story might be Surreal or merely self-conscious, and the plot may lead places that would break the rules set by other kinds of stories. These are plots, then, but they are magenta-colored, or stainless steel, and only a plot in an abstract sense. So I might still set out to avenge my father's death, but I'm not real and everything is made up, so the notion of causality also has an artificial character to it.
Personally, I don't write any one type or prefer to read any one type. When it's done well, I appreciate it for what it is. And when it's not done well, I sort of miss what's not there, which might amount to thinking, "this has no plot," or "more can be done with the plot."
And I suspect that most readers prefer plot because it's safer, it grounds the writing. We know where we are and where we are headed. When expectations are subverted, that's more like pushing out into the unknown, which is great if you can pull it off. But even then, readers may have a difficult time making sense of the experience (why am I in this meadow? What happens after it rains? Did the rain make me sick?), and so readers may feel uncertain about the the meaning they draw from plotless narratives. I have a feeling this is why most folks don't read poetry and why many read books that are also films or books written for teenagers. No one wants to feel stupid and downplaying the plot or leaving it out entirely risks making a reader feel they're not smart enough for Mr. So-and-So Fancypants Literary Writer. Or the contrary, that Mr. So-and-So Fancypants Literary Writer isn't so fancy if he can't come up with a compelling plot.
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I listened. It was amusing just like Powell is amusing (in a whimsical way) as a writer and speaker. I'm not sure if I could read or listen to pages of this, though. Powell is experimenting here, I think; nothing wrong with that. I still prefer a story, even just a wisp of one.
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So it’s Forster, right, who says “ ‘The king died and then the queen died’ is a story. ‘The king died and then the queen died of grief’ is a plot.”
Which touches on something John was saying—about causality, I mean… and actually, I don’t even know whether I think Forster stripped matters down to the useful bone or came up with something altogether too clever and pithy and reductive. All I know is that Forster knows/knew more than I do/ever will.
And maybe this: maybe the more immediate question for us as writers is a process-oriented one--I mean, think of two possible approaches (out of many): writers who figure out the chain of events in a piece—the things that will happen, and why, and when—with the intention of sticking to the plan before they actually start writing; and those who settle upon a provisionary starting point and let the scene/sentences/characters/neighbor yelling outside the window right now dictate where they go from there and how they get there.
Is one method a good recipe for a fine and humming narrative machine, or neither, or can we stumble upon such a thing even without a plan? Does anyone have a plan? Or a recipe? Gary?
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Jeepers, I should've gotten in on this first thing this morning. Now so much has been added I've a lot of reading to do to catch up.
"A'll be back."
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yeah, that's forster, alright--
i like john's treatment of plot types and victoria's process comments, and distinction of two methods (or recipes?)--of the two, i tend to work in the second way, that's the way i cook. not to say everybody has to cook like me, understand--and having tasted victoria's cooking, i know she works this way too--
what is funny about this discussion, to me, is that in my novel (the one i recently finished and--ahem--seek representation for--i have the characters discussing basic plot types, and applying them to the 2000 presidential election, somewhat humorously, i hope.
i like to "feint" at plot--as in, just enough to give the reader a zone of comfort, get her settled in, like, ok, i get the bones of this thing, you now have a hanger on which to hang things, now let's see some writing, feel some characters. if you don't seduce the reader into this feeling that something is happening, then it is more difficult to keep the reader's attention, focus.
that said, i have friends (william gass, for instance) who insisted that they would be delighted to make things more difficult for readers, would be happiest in fact if they could write a wonderful novel that no one would be willing to publish. there was a silly discussion of this a while back with jonathan (gag-me-oprah) franzen, with the dumb notion of contract authors vs status authors, or somesuch? remember that one? snooze--
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Very interesting thread, great comments from all. I loved the Padgett Powell excerpt. Margaret Atwood says it perfectly at the end of one of my all time favorite stories, "Happy Endings." Plots are a just a what and a what and a what. It's the How or Why that counts.
Thanks for posting, Edward!
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I would like to just add another word to gnaw on--narrative. When I read "short stories" or "short fictions" I can sense the difference in form. But I often thing that when we do talk about these various categories, I don't think we go far enough. We should also add a marker for style. Most of what we have been talking about is narrative realism. I think there is nonnarrative realism--an example would be William Gass's "In the Heart of the Heart of the Story," or irreal narrative--any number of fairy tales, surreal pieces, etc. Imagine examples of non narrative irrealism--think of JG Ballard or Lydia Davis or Borges's essays.
The existential imperative of the medium we work is to line up. Language wants to tell a story, form a narrative, go some place. There are some writers who resist that urge--most of them we call poets. And, to get back to the initial question--will a reader read a plotless story?--the answer is yes if the reader finds something to enjoy in the lyrical and the poetic.
As far as the plot discussion, we could also divide along the lines of melodramatic construction--episodic television plots for example--and dramatic construction--the Frietagian upside down check mark.
I guess you can say that Gass's "story" is a melodramatic one in which nothing "happens" in the sense we are using happen. But I like to think of it as a meditation or worry a fiction that defies the imperative to line up but instead keeps circling, circling.
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Oh wanted to say too that Donald Barthelme's "Concerning the Bodyguard" is a fiction done in questions.
Which is all to say perhaps that maybe there are two kinds of writers here we are talking about--and readers for that matter. One is interested in the reinvention of form and the other in the reinvention of content. I don't really belive in such binaries, but fun to think about. A Raymond Carver Story and a Chekhov sorry are the same in form. The differ in content. Barth's Lost in the Funhouse and Barthelme's Rebecca are the same content differ in form.
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In my own work, plot evolves from putting myself inside a character's imaginary world, defining a way of seeing for that character - which may or may not include action. Usually in a story, something changes. What changes defines a "plot". A character's internal "plot" may be tiny. Linearity is not anything that interests me in this process.
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