Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Tried and True Plots



By Mark W. Danielson
Good versus evil, the underdog rises, the lost kid comes home. All are popular themes that are sure to win audiences. For lack of a better description, I’ll call them core plots. In movies, core plots are moneymakers. In writing, they usually mean a series. Romance and western writers rarely stray from their core formulas. Doing so ensures longevity, but it can also get boring and predictable.


I recently watched Real Steel, the first CGI movie I’ve seen in a while, and walked away feeling so-so. Compared to The Help, The Debt, Moneyball, Dolphin’s Tale, and Midnight in Paris, Real Steel melted like butter. Still, it’s been a box office smash and its audience has given it high approval ratings because it’s a feel-good movie about a comeback kid. Unfortunately, we’ve seen this plot before. Pair Rocky and The Little Engine That Could and you’re on the right track. (Pun intended.)


Mystery writers cannot get away with wowing readers with on-screen trickery, though. Their readers demand fresh plots with fun twists. The writers for Castle set the bar on how to do this well. Readers should be turning pages thinking, “Wow, I didn’t see that one coming.” If they manage to figure out the plot one third of the way into the story, then the author has failed.


Every mystery author wants their readers to think they know the plot and then Bam! take them in another direction. How you do that depends upon your writing style, but it all has to make sense so it’s believable. Learning to do this well is the real mystery in writing.


It may not hit you that your story isn’t unique until someone else reads it for the first time. Call these readers The Grim Reaper’s helpers. (Others call them editors.) Because murder can come in so many forms, it is difficult not to duplicate. For example, one day my daughter called me up with a great murder plot – use an icicle to kill someone. That way there would be no prints or means of tracing the murder weapon back to you. I told her it was a great idea except it had been done before and went on to explain its limitations. But what the heck, we had a good laugh over what had come to her in a dream. (Just to be clear, my daughter has no aspiration of murdering anyone.) The point here is the cause of death isn’t as important as the story behind the death. Why did the killer commit the act? What steps did they take to conceal their act? What ultimately led to their getting caught? The answers to these questions must be unique in every mystery. So dig a little deeper and make sure you don’t fall into the tired and true category. It may take a little longer, but your audience will thank you for your effort.

6 comments:

Jean Henry Mead said...

Good advice, Mark. I agree with you about "Castle," my favorite TV show. Great writing and unusual plots.

Mark W. Danielson said...

Yes, Jean, Castle is one of those shows that comes along once a decade if we're lucky. Kind of like finding new authors that write fresh themes and pique our interest . . .

Bill Kirton said...

I'm with you on this Mark - Whydunnit is much more interesting and complex than Whodunnit.

Mark W. Danielson said...

Bill, I was just having that same discussion with my first officer on yesterday's long flight. It is equally critical that the antagonist have reasons for his/her actions as the protagonist. Otherwise, they are as interesting as a flowerless vase.

Jaden Terrell said...

Oh so true, Mark. Shakespeare was right when he said, "There's nothing new under the sun," but he was also wrong. What's new is the perspective and vision a writer brings to the core story.

I love your description of the movie as a cross between ROCKY and "The Little Engine that Could."

Mark W. Danielson said...

Beth, the other day someone was talking about the game of whispering a story to the person next to you and see how it turned out once it went full circle. The fact is everyone can tell stories, but our goal as authors is to craft tales worth listening to. The beauty in writing is, as you said, each author brings a new perspective, and that is a good thing.