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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47900
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47900
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

You may be interpreting McKee too narrowly. "Design in time," for instance, does not have to imply a strict sequence.

But I would suggest that you look at the word "plot" in much the same way as you would look at it in the real world. A plot in the real world is a conspiracy to make something happen without the people affected being aware of what is going on. Transfer that concept to fiction and the author plots to force his characters into a situation that, if they were real human being, they would not want to be in.

I think it is useful to think of the structure of a story as hinging on a moment of decision, generally a decision between competing values. This is the moment that Christopher Vogler calls "the inmost cave" and James Scott Bell calls "the mirror moment". It is the point at which the character has to face some choice they would rather not make, and the rest of the story depends on what choice they make at that agonizing moment.

The thing is, no normal person wants to come to such a moment of choice, to enter the inmost cave, to look in the mirror and decide if they are man or mouse. If you are going to create characters who resemble real people in their emotions and their decisions, you are going to have to create situations that force them to make that choice, to enter that cave, to look in that mirror. In other words, you are going to have to plot against them to force them into a position they don't want to be in. This forces the character toward the will she/won't she choice that is the main source of tension in a story.

A plot, in this sense, is very much concerned with emotions, with "deeper things" because it is the instrument that forces the character to face the deeper questions which provoke the deeper emotions. But it does this by arranging events in time in order to force the characters into those situations.

A plot, in short, is the instrument you use to put your characters in situations that create emotions and force them to face deeper things, leading toward a central choice of values that lies at the heart of a story.

Original score: 8