Home: Writing for Comic Books: Chapter Two - Plot and Story Construction: What Makes a Good Story

Chapter Two
Plot and Story Construction

WHAT MAKES A GOOD STORY?

There are as many answers to that as there are good stories to tell. However, every good story has at its core characters that we care about living through events that we find interesting. Every story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end--although not necessarily in that order. Beginning, middle, end is your classic three act structure.

To me, story construction is puzzle solving. I see a story as big picture made up of many small pieces. When a story fails for its readers, it is often because one or more pieces of the puzzle is missing. In the previous chapter, I addressed many of those pieces: story, plot, character, theme/premise, change, emotional investment, conflict, the five Ws (and sometimes H), and when addressing serial fiction, family, the secret, and memory. In this chapter, I will add more pieces to the puzzle, concentrating on elements of plot.

THE MANTELPIECE RULE

The Russian playwright Anton Chekov coined "The Mantelpiece Rule" which states, "If you place a gun above the fireplace in act one, it absolutely must be fired by the final curtain." This means if you take the time to establish that Super Guy can bend steel with his bare hands at the beginning of the story, this is something he should exhibit again by the end of the story, preferably at the climax. Otherwise, there's no need to confuse the issue by establishing something that the reader won't see again.

The converse is also true. If you are going to fire a gun in the final act, then you need to establish that it was there prior to its being fired. To me, this is a simple matter of fair play. I am a great believer in playing fair with the audience, meaning that everything the reader needs to understand a story or any given episode in serial fiction should be in said story or episode. Readers love mysteries, but they hate to be mystified. Mysteries are puzzles which have solutions. When you don't play fair with the readers by not giving them all the pieces of the puzzle, you will mystify, anger, and alienate them.

If your character is required to possess a special, extra normal ability or knowledge in order to resolve the story, you should establish that it is possible that the character would have that ability or knowledge prior to exhibiting it. If you don't, then you create a deus ex machina, and that is a cheat.

The term deus ex machina comes to us from Ancient Greek theater. It literally means "God from the machine." In Greek theater, the gods would be lowered over the stage at the climax of the play, and if the story was a comedy, they would make everything better for the characters, or if it was a tragedy, they would make the characters' lives worse (usually exacting terrible retribution for whatever sins were committed by the protagonist). The characters had no control over their fates--resolutions to their dilemmas were delivered from on high. This can be a useful plot device, but if it is used too often, it's a cheat. The audience usually prefers to see the protagonists solve their own problems in a believable way.

So, if Hero Woman is required to use her heat vision to resolve the climax of the story, then it is important that you establish that she has heat vision earlier in the story. A clever writer is able to set these elements up in a way that does not draw attention to them immediately. You want to find a way to naturally establish abilities and knowledge without hitting the reader over the head with it. It should be so subtle that the reader may not even realize that you've given them the key to the climax until they see it played out and go, "Of course! It was there all along." It's a very difficult balance to maintain, and it takes a great deal of practice to get to the point where you do it well. In many ways, it becomes a matter of misdirection. You draw the reader's attention to a different point while playing out the key. In the first act, as you establish Hero Woman in action against some two bit thugs as they draw their guns, you might have her use her heat vision to melt the gun barrels, directing the reader's attention to the immediate threat of stopping the gunfire. You don't go out of your way to draw attention to it, but at the climax, when it's do or die and the only way out is use of her heat vision, the reader knows that she has the power. I would highly recommend reading Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise stories--either collections of the comic strips or the novels--to see a master at work.

INTERNAL LOGIC

Your audience wants to believe that a man can fly. They want to suspend their disbelief. You are the puppet-master of your literary world. You can invent any rules you want, and the audience will buy them as long as you play by your own rules (again, we're playing fair). If you establish that a character has a specific ability or knowledge, and then construct a plot where the character has to forget he or she has said ability or knowledge, you create what we call the "idiot plot"--this is a plot that only works when your characters must act like idiots in order to make the story work. This is a major cheat. It makes your characters look stupid and worse, it insults the intelligence of your readers as you assume that they aren't smart enough to realize the huge plot hole into which your story has sunk.

In the example stated above, we see Hero Woman use her heat vision to melt the guns of two-bit thugs at the beginning of the story. If, at the end, she is trapped in a bank vault made of steel and a big deal is made of how she might die of asphyxiation--if she doesn't even try to use the heat vision established earlier, then she has become an idiot. (Granted, it might be able to invent a reason for her not to--the radiant heat might harm someone else trapped inside or set fire to the money/documents she's trying to protect, there might be the presence of explosive gases, etc. But if she simply forgets she has heat vision simply to create false tension, both she and by extension, the writer, have become idiots.)

It is very important that you set the ground rules of your world and establish the strengths and limitations (both physical and emotional) of your characters and then play by those rules in order to maintain your illusion of reality.