Writing Plot Maps

The best way to start writing a play (or story), according to Aristotle, is to “lay out the general structure…and then proceed to work out episodes and enlarge it.”  In other words, map out the main roads of your story, then add the side streets.  If you try to go the other way, your story may get lost in a dead end or a maze of crisscrossing streets.

Before mapping out your story, you need to determine the characters’ goals. Knowing the goal(s) of the major character(s) enables you to draw the main road or plot highway of the story—it leads to the goal. Although Aristotle never heard of The Wizard of Oz, that classic story is an excellent model for plot construction, so we’ll use it.  Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and Lion have similar goals.  Each character wants to reach the Emerald City—by way of the Yellow Brick Road—to ask the Wizard to provide him or her with something that the character unknowingly already possesses:  brain, heart, courage, and the power to return home.  Picture the Yellow Brick Road as a plot highway winding toward the characters’ goals—the Wizard, the Emerald City or whatever.  Before you start writing your story, decide what your character’s goal is.  Once you know the goal, you know the direction your story will take. Your story must show the character or characters struggling to achieve this goal by overcoming (or failing to overcome) various obstacles.  To make the narrative or dramatic journey exciting, obstacles or road blocks are placed along the plot highway that the characters have to overcome or negotiate their way around.  In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and her companions confront the witch at every turn of the Yellow Brick Road.  She is their road block.  The confrontations between the witch and the others make the story exciting.  Also, the way each character deals with the road block (witch) reveals his or her nature.  Examine some of the confrontation scenes with the witch and observe how the choices (decisions) the Scarecrow makes show that he already has a brain.  Do the same kind of analysis with the other major characters.

Know Your Characters

Let’s apply these ideas to Antigone.  Creon’s goal is to assert his royal authority, that is, have his own way.  Draw a road and put Creon’s goal at the end of it.  Call this your plot map (or Yellow Brick Road map) for character C.  Now you need to draw in some road blocks.  What are the major obstacles to Creon’s goal?  Antigone’s disobedience, Haemon’s love for and support of Antigone, and Teiresias’ prophecies, are all obstacles in Creon’s way.  Draw them on your road, in the order that they occur. These are all external obstacles, road blocks outside the character.  Does Creon have any internal road blocks, attitudes or prejudices that make achieving his goal more difficult?  If so, draw these on your road map too and identify them as “internal” obstacles.  Most good plays and stories have both external and internal obstacles.  In The Wizard of Oz, the witch and her army of monkey-men are the external obstacles.  The internal obstacles are the character flaws inside of the Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion and Dorothy:  the Lion’s cowardliness, the Scarecrow and Tin Man’s feelings of inadequacy—I’m dumb; I’m heartless. What about Dorothy?  Does she have a character flaw?  Or is she perfect?  Her character flaw is similar to the tragic flaw in tragedy. (But, of course, it doesn’t cause her ruin!)

Antigone’s goal is to bury and honor her brother Polyneices.  Draw a Yellow Brick Road plot map for Antigone, character A.  What are the road blocks she encounters?  The main obstacles in her way are Creon’s decree and Creon’s dictatorial nature.  Other obstacles are her sister’s refusal to help her and perhaps the chorus’ support of Creon.  Antigone performs the burial anyway.  The way she deals with obstacles reveals her true nature.  Her choice—to disobey an unjust law and risk her life to honor her dead brother—shows her enormous strength, her fiery nature, her nonconformity and her uncompromising love for her brother.  What internal obstacles does Antigone have?  Is she perfect?  Or does she have a tragic flaw?

Draw a Yellow Brick Road map for Haemon.  What is his goal?  He chooses to defy his father and king—for love.  His choice, in the face of overwhelming internal obstacles (loyalty to his father and his country) as well as external obstacles (Creon’s threats), shows us what he’s made of.  He is a worthy of Antigone.

Law of Necessity

As you create your own characters and make their choices for them, REMEMBER to apply the law of necessity.  Aristotle says, “In characterization just as in plot-construction, one should always seek the principle of necessity or probability, so that a necessary or probable reason exists for a particular character’s speech or action….”  You must decide in advance what kind of people your characters are (make a list of their strengths and weaknesses), and then have them act in accordance with these traits.  In life, if you know someone well, you can predict how he or she will act in various situations.  The same is true in fiction: know your characters and you will know how they will behave in any situation.  If your characters are strangers to you, you will not be able to portray their behavior or their choices convincingly.   KNOW your characters, determine their goals based on their needs (which grow naturally out of their personality traits), and then set up probable external and internal obstacles to these goals that the character must try to overcome.

Also, Aristotle recommends that a writer “imagine his material to the fullest possible extent while composing his plot-structures and elaborating them in language.  By seeing [the story] as vividly as possible—as if present at the very occurrence of the events—the writer is likely to discover what is appropriate, and least likely to miss contradictions…for the most convincing effect comes from those who actually put themselves in the emotions; and the truest impression of distress or anger is given by the person who experiences these feelings himself.”  In other words, stepping into your character’s shoes, feeling his or her joys, fears and suffering running through your own nerves is the best way to know how she or he will act in any given situation.  The more real your story feels to you, the more convincing it will be to others.

FOR MORE CREATIVE WRITING LESSONS SEE “Character Sketches à la Steinbeck.”

Jesse Bryant Wilder, Editor

NEXUS – PALLAS COMMUNICATIONS, INC.

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