First, let me say something about my lack of post last week:  life happens.  Just remember, for a storyteller, everything is grist for the mill so it is all good.

Now, as to Journey plots, the interruption could not have been better timed because with this post we transition a bit in our thinking.  Until now, I have presented journey plots that most often are external (action oriented) plots.  These include: the Quest (Indiana Jones and Bilbo Baggins), Escape & Pursuit (Smokey and the Bandit and the Great Escape), The Rescue (Saving Private Ryan and Finding Nemo) and Mysteries & Thrillers (Sherlock Holmes and James Bond)..  With this post, we begin to look at journey plots that are most often internal (character driven) plots, the first of which is Exploration and Discovery.

The exploration and discovery plot, like mysteries and thrillers or pursuit and escape might be seen as two separate plots.  Again, I put them together because they so very often go together. 

True, there are external (action) examples here.  The whole Star Trek universe is rooted in the idea of seeking out new life and new civilizations.  So also Journey to the Center of the Earth is rooted in exploring and discovering.  These more external plots, however are not the crux of the plotline.  Most often the explorations are of human life, society or culture and the discovery is within the person central to the plot. 

In Elie Wiesel’s Night, a story about the holocaust, he explores the depths of man’s inhumanity to man and discovers a reason to live. 

In Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver explores the South Seas, but in his strange adventures he discovers the nonsense of the political thinking of his day and the foolishness inherent in his society and culture.

In any number of Mark Twain’s books: Innocents Abroad, A Tramp Abroad, Tom Sawyer Abroad, Roughing it, he explores the world, but there are always the lessons to be discovered and brought home.

The Plot:

The plot of exploration and discovery is a particular journey that shares aspects with both mystery and quest plots. 

It shares with mysteries when there are clues to follow that lead to the discovery like some invention or some solution to a problem.  It may start with an unexpected invitation, the discovery of a treasure map, a phone call from a man the protagonist thought was dead. But where it ends… 

It shares with quests in the sense that it often involves the pursuit of something.  It is sometimes called a quest, though it does not involve searching for a known object (person, place or thing).  Instead, the exploration and discovery plot is a quest into  the unknown and often that unknown turns out to be something intangible like the truth or courage or peace or home.  What would the Red Badge of Courage be if he turned out to be a coward?  Where would all those prairie westerns go without arrival in the “west,” or the coming to America saga without a landing at Ellis Island?

In the middle, as with all journey plots, there will be obstacles, getting lost, the dreaded flat tire, but there will also be points of meaning, almost like clues in a mystery.  The reason is because ultimately the story is not about the exotic ports of call in the sea saga, nor mythical Xanadu nor Shangri-La in the Lost Horizons, nor Atlantis, nor any other location, but the discovery that happens inside.  One man explores the seedy underside of London and discovers that he is capable of committing murder…  There is a storyline for you.

True, there are still plenty of adventure stories here, like She or King Solomon’s Mines, but at best in the process of exploration, the characters discover something invaluable about themselves and/or about the human condition.  This is where the exploration and discovery plot comes into its own.  This is where the young man in All Quiet on the Western Front or the other young man in the classic movie, The King of Hearts, explore war and discover their aversion for the whole enterprise.

Next time, the Rise and the Fall, where the discovery is the beginning of the story and we first see how it may end.

Mysteries and especially their first cousins, the thrillers can be full of action and adventure (external stories) but at heart both are journeys – journeys of the mind (internal stories).  If done well, they are journeys as much for the reader as they are for the protagonist.

Read the greats: Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan-Doyle, Dorothy Sayers, Dashiell Hammett and you will quickly see what I mean.  From the beginning of the riddle to the revelation at the end there are miles to go before you sleep.  True, National Treasure may be seen as a thriller or mystery as much as a quest.  In The Hunt for Red October, action may be the draw.  It certainly is for an author like Ludlum.  Yet like any mystery, when the clues are followed, the mystery slowly unravels.

So the protagonist starts with a puzzle, perhaps something like a great jigsaw puzzle, and has to put the pieces in just the right places to see the final picture.  The journey, then, is from ignorance to knowledge, from confusion to understanding.  From questions to solutions.

The Plot

As with any journey plot, the trigger comes quick.  I would not recommend a chapter on what a wonderful person the victim is and another chapter on what an insane, evil creature the murderer is.  There is a reason why so many books start with a dead body.  That is where the mystery (the journey) begins.

Mrs. Lavender kept being slapped in the face by her own scarf as the wind roared through the broken conservatory window.  She did not mind, however, since she was dead.  The kitchen knife was planted firmly in her chest… 

OR 

Professor Pinch was lying on the plush oriental rug in the library, but he was not taking a nap.  The lead pipe with the blood stains beside his head assured that he would never take a nap again…

OR

Colonel Ketchup’s body swung from the end of the rope.  The chair was turned over and one of the officers handed his superior the suicide note in a plastic bag.  It looked like suicide, but as the chief detective reached for his Tums he decided it smelled like murder.

Once the protagonist enters the picture, it is off to the races.  There will be obstacles throughout the middle of the story like any journey plot and getting lost (misdirection toward the wrong suspect) is almost expected.  In the case of the mystery or thriller, though, there is another element that needs special attention: the clues.

The clues, above all, make for a good mystery and the slim chance that a reader might figure it out keeps the reader to task.  These must be done with great skill and dexterity, and probably why I will never be a true mystery writer.  I am too blunt.  But when done well, they make perfect sense at the end.  No one should doubt if the Butler really did it.

Again, as with all journey plots, the end comes with success or failure.  We are accustomed to success (probably because of all those detective/police dramas on television over all of those years).  But sometimes the antagonist gets away with it.  Everyone, including the reader knows, but…  The question in that case is should we be mad (upset) or cheer that they got away with it?

Any journey can be long enough to take weeks of travel, or short enough to be next door.  A journey plot is not dependant on the distance involved, but on the movement external or internal as the case may be.

When the rescue is mentioned, many first thoughts may be something like Rambo.  I suppose somebody had to save Private Ryan.  But consider Schindler’s List or more recently, the Blind Side.  In the Blind Side, a young man is rescued from a terrible situation and given a chance at life he could never have imagined… and the audience knows when the rescue is complete.  When he and they are a family

Consider how many fairy tales involve rescues: Snow White at the end, Sleeping Beauty, and Beauty and the Beast.  The beautiful thing about Beauty and the Beast is the way the story is twisted in the end (at least in the Disney version).  Gaston musters the courage to rescue Belle from the beast, but in the end we discover that all along Belle has been rescuing the beast.

The Plot 

Like the escape and pursuit plot, the plot begins with someone in need.  Escape and pursuit has someone held captive.  Rescue has someone taken captive, like Red Chief in O’Henry’s Ransom of Red Chief.  (I say someone is taken captive but to be sure it can be a dog, a cat, a whale, a snail or it may simply be someone in a terrible situation).  In any case, the protagonist is the one who must do the rescuing and often the story shows little of the one imprisoned.  Consider the cliché of the ex-husband who steals the kids and the mother who goes on a search and rescue mission.  The plot invariably focuses on the efforts of the mother.

The trigger, like in most journey plots comes quick.  It is the set-up.  Someone needs to be rescued and your protagonist is the only one for the job.

The middle is where the obstacles arise.  Again, like the escape and pursuit plot, a near miss or two can do wonders to build the tension.  Of course, if it is the Princess imprisoned by the dragon or Repunzel who for some reason has no capacity to exit the tower, there are no opportunities for near misses.  But the forest ranger might pass right by the child lost in the woods without realizing it, or the mother might get to the motel in time to see her ex drive away—the child looking out the back window and crying for her…

The end is the completion of the rescue, success or failure.  They are not all happy endings, but hey, that’s your call.  In any case, there is rarely a return pursuit.

Some might see these as two separate plots.  I see them as intertwined, even when the entire story is focused on one part or the other.  For the One Armed Man, Cary Grant in North by Northwest, the Bandit in Smokey and the Bandit, and the trio of fools in O Brother where Art Thou the story is all but entirely about escaping the law.  And they are very different stories at that.  For others, such as the Great Escape or Alcatraz, the story is entirely or primarily about how to get free.

Even so, I see these ideas together because whenever someone is trying to break free or stay free, someone else will try to keep them captive.  And when the break comes, someone is going to pursue.

When The Count of Monte Cristo escaped from prison, there was no pursuit.  But he was clever and he was careful.  The idea of being caught again played havoc with his motivation and limited what he could do until he was secure and ready. 

When Huck Finn escaped his father, the pursuit was more imagined than real.  Still, it affected every action that followed for Huck and old Jim.

When the man in Hitchcock’s thriller, North by Northwest escaped being arrested for murder, the pursuit was all too real.  He needed to get away and clear his name at the same time without getting caught first.  Good trick, that.

When the soldiers broke out of the Nazi prison camp in the Great Escape, there was nothing but pursuit.  Few actually made it to safety (Switzerland or wherever), but what a story!

The Plot

Like any Journey plot, the story begins with a need to move.  This is the trigger and in this plot it is generally not complicated.  When Moses went back down into Egypt, the children of Israel were suffering under slavery.  Often it doesn’t have to be spelled out.  The reader can immediately sympathize with words like slavery and knows what needs to happen.

The middle, then, is more or less in two parts: the actual escape and the pursuit.

Moses performed miracles until Pharaoh surrendered.  Normally it isn’t that easy—if you consider that easy.  There are obstacles to be overcome, and if written well, the escapee should be nearly discovered at least once if not more than once.  Here is the tension that keeps a reader on edge.  But as with the quest, it really depends on the skill, creativity, imagination and ability of the writer.

In part 2 of the middle section, Moses lead the people to the red sea.  Suddenly Pharaoh had a change of heart and sent out the troops.  The people had their back to the wall, so to speak, but God did one more miracle.  The sea parted.  The people passed through and the Pharaoh’s army got swallowed up by the waters.

Again, you can see the tension.  They almost get caught,  They almost get slaughtered.  “Almost get caught” is key to the escape and pursuit plot.  And it better be “gets caught” if the rightly imprisoned person escapes from prison in order to murder someone… or maybe…

Anyway, the end of this plot is again like any journey plot.  Either success or failure ends it.

Next Journey plot:  The rescue.

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.