Frodo Baggins left the Shire with only one thing on his mind: to rid himself of the ring of power.  It wasn’t going to be an easy trip. 

Don Quixote left home in search of glory.  He got beat up. 

Dorothy ran away from home and found herself in Oz, but she did not plan the trip.  Still, she had to travel from Munchkin City to Oz to get home again. 

So also a fine young lad once got caught up in the search for Treasure Island, or in the cartoon version, Treasure Planet.  Or in the modern version, a National Treasure.

I once left Princeton with one thing in mind: to give my new wife a chance to meet my grandmother, my last living grandparent who was in a nursing home in a small, rural Arkansas town.  Mine wasn’t an easy trip, either.

The Quest is the classic journey plot and a good place to begin these posts.  As no doubt you can already see, there is a common theme to each of the above.  Someone leaves home for some reason, willing or unwilling and there is a definite objective in mind to be obtained (or fail to obtain) before a return is possible—if they ever come back…  Let’s parse that.

The quest starts with a reason to go.  This is the story trigger, and it is often an imperative as in, the person has no choice.  Certainly Dorothy of Kansas and Gulliver are extreme cases of having no choice.  Notice, in both cases, though, the object of the journey is to get home.

Often the reason for vacating the comforts of home is the objective of the quest.  It may be something as substantial as a treasure, like King Solomon’s Mines.  It may be something insubstantial like Don Quixote’s ideals (Dulcinea) or eternal life (Lost Horizons or the Myth of Etana).  It may be something semi-real like “home” or of questionable reality like the Holy Graal.  Whatever it is, there is some objective in mind, and the beauty of Lord of the Rings was the quest in Frodo’s case was not to find something, but to get rid of something!

The quest officially ends on obtaining the object or in the failure to obtain (with no hope of continuing).  Indiana Jones found the Arc, but the government buried it deeper than before…

The return home (assuming home is not the objective) is denouement.

The Plot 

Okay.  You have your character, your objective, and your trigger: the reason why your character must obtain or achieve the objective.  In other words, you have your beginning and your end, but what about the middle? 

This is where obstacles invariably turn up and the success of the story will to a great extent depend on how well these obstacles are portrayed, how well they relate to the objective and how creative, imaginative and well written the obstacle sequences are.  (I suggest clicking on the “On Stories” button above and reviewing the posts on the Magic of Three).

I know when my wife and I got to Virginia, there was terrible road construction.  We had to detour so far, we got lost.  Then we also got a flat tire.  Then we also spent the night in a terrible place and my half-Italian wife ate spaghetti everywhere.  She did not care if it was pasta with ketchup (It turned out she was pregnant)…  We eventually saw my Grandmother, but there was plenty of living along the way.

And then there is this 

The quest is often seen in action adventure mode (external plot) like Indiana Jones, but like Don Quixote or Pilgrim’s Progress or Captain Ahab’s search for the White Whale, the true quest may be internal so that what happens on the inside of the person is the real quest and the external objective, achieved or not is a trigger but ultimately of secondary importance.  Dorothy learned if she should ever go looking for her heart’s desire again she won’t look any further than her own back yard.  Luckily, Frank Baum got over that lesson pretty quickly in order to write plenty of sequels.  Still, something to think about: that the real purpose of the quest may be what happens inside the mind and heart along the way.  The Journey is the thing after all.

Next time:  The Journey plot of escape and pursuit…

Like triangle and trio plots, this final plot of competition is not exactly a separate entity.  The conflict will generally be adversarial or a rivalry with the difference being the relative starting point for the protagonist.  The underdog does not need to get knocked down or knocked back in act one.  They are already at the bottom of the heap.

No one would imagine a Rocky Balboa or Bad News Bears or Mighty Ducks should ever amount to anything.  Act one, in the underdog story, is to set up the potential conflict and in particular to show how impossible that dream is—how far the protagonist has to go.  The odds are overwhelming from the beginning. 

In One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, McMurphy is a patient in an asylum where Nurse Ratched owns all the cards.  In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the poor Hunchback is the most deformed and hopeless creature this side of the Elephant Man.  And in The Three Musketeers, a young country bumpkin is set up to match wits with the Cardinal—one of the greatest minds of his age—and all of the Cardinal’s henchmen as well.  Talk about overwhelming odds!

The underdog need not be “against” (in competition) with a person.  It might be a group or something like a system (Cuckoo’s Nest) or a government (Schindler’s List).

One thing that is common (though by no means universal) in underdog plots is the advent of a “helper” character or characters: a manager, coach, or the actual Three Musketeers.  Generally, it is a good thing to introduce the helper early on and show, to some extent, that it is the serendipity of putting certain puzzle pieces together that makes the success of the underdog possible.  Otherwise, the author may be accused of bringing in someone at the last minute and the underdog never could have succeeded without such magical help.  (The one flaw in Cinderella).

The difficulty in writing an underdog story is the need to keep it real (realistic) and not let it get clichéd or sappy.  You want Horatio Alger to succeed and your audience to cheer when that happens.  The virtue in the underdog story is people all over the world are naturally inclined to sympathize with such a character.  We all root for the Cinderella team, but it needs to be done carefully to not produce a yawn at the end.

Keep in mind, the underdog does not always succeed.  McMurphy gets lobotomized in Cuckoo;s Nest.  The Hunchback saves but certainly does not get the girl.  Cyrano actually enables Roxanne to fall in love with and marry the fop…  Generally, though, a good underdog story will lead to an ending where Rocky stays on his feet and the Bears and Mighty Ducks win. 

Now, returning to where we started these posts: to the world of simple fairy tales, let me see if we can summarize the plots of competition:

1.         Sleeping Beauty = Adversary plot.  This classic sword and sorcery story is about a witch versus the royal family.  The witch is slighted (not invited to the christening) and the curse falls on the baby, but it is a power struggle between the two all the same, and in the end, the royal family wins as the witch is slain and Beauty and her Prince carry on the royal line.

2.         Snow White = Rivalry plot.  Both Ms. White and the Queen want to be the fairest in the land (even if Ms White doesn’t understand the game).  Snow White is driven out, presumably killed, but when found alive there comes the final confrontation.  It is all about fairness (beauty), however.  That is the root conflict (rivalry) that drives the whole story.

3.         Cinderella = Underdog plot.  She is pitted in an adversary situation against her Stepmother who is determined to keep Cinderella down so her own awkward daughters can succeed.  In the original, she is also in a rivalry with her stepsisters. But in the end, she is really an underdog who, with a little help from her helper character, has a chance to prove her worth and find happiness in the process.

When we continue with Plots, we will move on from competition plots to journey plots, and start with the basic journey plot: The Quest.