Sapheron
Making no sense.
- Joined
- Nov 9, 2006
- Messages
- 850
Given that I haven’t posted anything meaningful for a while, or anything useful for an age, I thought I’d throw together some ramblings in my lunch break today. I’d like to start a discussion about plotting. Specifically, about the sort of plots which are ridiculously complex, span vast amounts of time, and account for variables and complications that most of us would be hard pressed to ever predict, let alone counter.
Obviously, a well written plot is satisfying to read. The antics of Locke Lamora and co. are a more recent example of such a thing, pulling Italian Job style schemes of dazzling complexity. They aren’t quite what I’m discussing though (sometimes they border on it), because Locke and co. are shown to mess it up. Their plans don’t really survive contact with the real world, and by the end of any particular gambit things become increasingly pants on fire improvisation. I think, personally, that such a system works well, and its prevalence in books, films and so on seems to support my opinion. The grand plan which works up till near the end, then the bad guy pulls ahead before finally being outwitted after all. Excellent.
The other form of plotter (and by that I mean successful plotter, so all the amateurs and failures out there don’t count), is more the epic sort. To borrow examples probably familiar to most of us, I mean the sort of plotting done by people like Varys or Petyr Baelish from ASoIaF, or a multitude of characters in the Dune series. Here we have people who make ridiculous plots (I don’t necessarily mean ridiculous in a bad way), stretching into days, months, all the way up to decades ahead, which seem to rely on so many things being done by so many people uninvolved in the actual plot. The people involved in them seem often to be human supercomputers (I suppose in Dune some of them actually are…) capable of processing amounts of data far in excess of that of mere humans.
When done well, such a thing can work well, giving the impression of a masterful web weaver (reminding me of a real life example, the good King Louis of France, The Universal Spider). Done badly, it seems farfetched and unbelievable, far beyond the level of complexity and real scheme could achieve (which some doubtless are, but then this is sff).
I’ve just begun a piece of work which involves long term, highly complex plans, so I’ve been putting a lot of thought into it. Where would you draw the line? How complicated, with how many variables accounted for, can a plan be while maintaining believability? What, for that matter, examples of excellent or favourite plotters do you have? What about ones which made your eyes roll?
Obviously, a well written plot is satisfying to read. The antics of Locke Lamora and co. are a more recent example of such a thing, pulling Italian Job style schemes of dazzling complexity. They aren’t quite what I’m discussing though (sometimes they border on it), because Locke and co. are shown to mess it up. Their plans don’t really survive contact with the real world, and by the end of any particular gambit things become increasingly pants on fire improvisation. I think, personally, that such a system works well, and its prevalence in books, films and so on seems to support my opinion. The grand plan which works up till near the end, then the bad guy pulls ahead before finally being outwitted after all. Excellent.
The other form of plotter (and by that I mean successful plotter, so all the amateurs and failures out there don’t count), is more the epic sort. To borrow examples probably familiar to most of us, I mean the sort of plotting done by people like Varys or Petyr Baelish from ASoIaF, or a multitude of characters in the Dune series. Here we have people who make ridiculous plots (I don’t necessarily mean ridiculous in a bad way), stretching into days, months, all the way up to decades ahead, which seem to rely on so many things being done by so many people uninvolved in the actual plot. The people involved in them seem often to be human supercomputers (I suppose in Dune some of them actually are…) capable of processing amounts of data far in excess of that of mere humans.
When done well, such a thing can work well, giving the impression of a masterful web weaver (reminding me of a real life example, the good King Louis of France, The Universal Spider). Done badly, it seems farfetched and unbelievable, far beyond the level of complexity and real scheme could achieve (which some doubtless are, but then this is sff).
I’ve just begun a piece of work which involves long term, highly complex plans, so I’ve been putting a lot of thought into it. Where would you draw the line? How complicated, with how many variables accounted for, can a plan be while maintaining believability? What, for that matter, examples of excellent or favourite plotters do you have? What about ones which made your eyes roll?
