The Art Of Fiction: Notes On Craft For Young Writers - Plot & Excerpts
Without repetition of what has been said already, this chapter will examine all three of these methods as they apply to plotting short fiction, the novella, and the novel, and also examine ways of plotting other kinds of fiction, including the kind we call “plotless.” The discussion cannot hope to be exhaustive, but it should give the beginner some practical guidance on the hardest job a writer ever does. Though causal sequence gives the best (most obvious) kind of profluence, it is not the only possible means to that necessary end. A story or novel may develop argumentatively, leading the reader point by point to some conclusion. In this case events occur not to justify later events but to dramatize logical positions; thus event a does not cause event b but stands in some logical relation to it. So, for example, the writer might impose onto the twelve labors of Hercules—or some action from real life, or some fictional action—some logical sequence that, like any other interesting argument, keeps us reading.
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