Lost The Plot

I don't think ever explained how or why I picked the name for this blog. At the time of creating it, I had already been thinking about my film and wondering about how the plot would unfold. What would the plot be? I've been reading Ronald B. Tobias' 20 Master Plots, a very helpful book that I definitely recommend, and I remember how he mentioned that there has been a degree of dispute over how many plots there are but, when it all boils down to it, there is only one.

 Our theme of dislocation, as I've stated before, is great. According to The Free Dictionary, it is disruption, disturbance and disorder, my initial reaction being reminded of chaos. In its thesaurus, it is described as 'an event that results in a displacement or discontinuity', and 'the act of disrupting an established order so it fails to continue', so it's a breakdown; a discontinuation of something. This is always interesting to watch at a safe distance.

Daily life is full of chaos, no matter how much we plan ahead. On the other hand, fiction contains reason. That is to say, there is always reason for the breakdown or discontinuity of certain events in fictitious work. It helps to spice up the story, and we watch on for a resolution, to be satisfied by how the new equilibrium comes about. Of course, that is generally how most stories should be structured, noting Todorov's equilibrium theory, which is how The News and commercial breaks would put their respective stories and commercials in a particular order because they want their audience feeling good at the end of the showing, but also ease them into the less cheery stories or commercials.

The stages in Todorov's Narrative Theory.
Often reduced to three: Equilibrium>Dis-equilibrium>New Equilibrium

 The initial equilibrium is the normal state of which the story and characters within are used to. The disequilibrium being the event that causes disruption of this, and the new-equilibrium is when everything has been resolved, or the story is wrapped up. Nothing will ever be the same again though because of the disruption, hence the word 'new'. Considering these stages, they generalise themselves into beginning, middle, and end, respectively. They are good structures to abide by, but sometimes we don't like writing necessarily happy stories, which is what the theory may suggest on the surface. Personally, I'm a fan of the bittersweet ending, but we can still make it work without daunting the audience. It just takes a lot more thought.

 This is a very basic structure for creating a story. How the beginning, middle, and end will unfold will highly depend on a combination of the plot, archetypal characters, and the genre of the piece. From there, you flesh it all out to give off the illusion of uniqueness. We need to follow rules in order to make something work, but we can go our own way about it, again, as long as it works and works well.

 Tzvetan Todorov wasn't the only essayist to theorise about the structure of story or plot. Mythologist and writer, Joseph Campbell, laid down a more fleshed out version known as The Hero's Journey. From looking at the fables of religions from all over the world, he concluded that there was a template to all those figures, such as Jesus of Nazareth of the Hebrew faith, Krishna of Hinduism, The Ten Labours of Heracles'  of Greek myth, etc., noticing a common pattern among them. This sparked off the idea of character archetypes.

The illusion of uniqueness for each story can be cleverly instilled in an audience by using a combination of ingredients. These ingredients are characters, plot, and genre. When it all boils down to it, there is only one plot; The Hero's Journey. The main reason as to why they change over time is so they can appeal to its contemporary audience. In order to connect with the characters on screen, we must find ourselves thrust into a recognisable world; one of which we can easily relate to and perhaps compare with our own lives. As they say, even the likes of Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings contain elements and characters that we can get onto the same level with. I can't really say the same about the soaps but that's beside the point.

 We're all on the same journey, but every individual story is told in its own unique way, even if the general premise is the same as another. I used a reference from Victoria Lynn Schmidt's book, 45 Master Characters, like I've probably mentioned somewhere before. I based my character, Barney, off the character archetype named after Greek god of the Sea, Poseidon. The character is an internal sea of emotions and, using his traits of both good and bad, it helped me to flesh out a story and his personal journey of battling his own inner demons and how it affects those around him.