Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection
Part Three: On Writing Science Fiction Plotting
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Every once in a while, an article about me appears in a newspaper, usually in the form of an interview. I don't go looking for these things, because I hate the hassle of being photographed (which, these days, invariably goes with interviews) and I hate the risk of being misquoted or misinterpreted.
Nevertheless, I can't always turn these things down because I'm not really a misanthrope, and because I do like to talk about myself. (Oh, you noticed?)
As a result of one such interview, an article about me appeared in the Miami Herald of August 20, 1988. It was a long article and quite favorable (the headline read "The Amazing Asimov") and it had very few inaccuracies in it. It did quote me, to be sure, as saying that my book The Sensuous Dirty Old Man was "nauseating." That is wrong. I said that the books it satirized, The Sensuous Woman and The Sensuous Man, were nauseating. My book was funny.
It also quoted me as saying that I considered "Nightfall" to be my best story. I don't, not by a long shot. I said it was my "best-known " story, a different thing altogether.
Usually any reporter who interviews me is willing to let it go at that, but the Miami Herald reporter was more enterprising. She asked questions of my dear wife, Janet, and of my brother, Stan, who's a vice-president at the Long Island Newsday. Both said nice things, but then they both like me.
However, she also consulted someone who teaches a course in science fiction at Rutgers University. Her name is Julia Sullivan, and I don't think I know her, though it is clear from what she is quoted as saying that she is a woman of luminous intelligence and impeccable taste.
She praised my clarity and wit, for instance, but I'm used to that. The thing is, she is also quoted as saying about me that "he surprises me. Sometimes I think he's written himself out, and then he comes up with something really good...He has the greatest mind for plot of any science fiction writer."
That's nice!
I can't recall anyone praising me for my plots before, and so, of course, it got me to thinking about the whole process of plotting.
A plot is an outline of the events of a story. You might say, for instance, "There's this prince, see? His father has recently died and his mother has married his uncle, who becomes the new king. This upsets the prince who hoped to be king himself and who doesn't like the uncle anyway. Then he hears that the ghost of his dead father has been seen-"
The first thing you have to understand is that a plot is not a story, any more than a skeleton is a living animal. It's simply a guide to the writer, in the same way that a skeleton is a guide to a paleontologist as to what a long-extinct animal must have looked like. The paleontologist has to fill in the organs, muscles, skin, etc. all around the skeleton, and that's not feasible except for a trained person. Hence, if you give the plot of Hamlet to a non-writer, that will not help him produce Hamlet or anything even readable.
Well, then, how do you go about building a story around the plot?
1) You can, if you wish, make the plot so detailed and so complex that you don't have to do much in the way of "building." Events follow one another in rapid succession and the reader (or viewer) is hurried from one suspense-filled situation to another. You get this at a low level in comic strips and in the old movie serials of the silent days. This is recognized as being suitable mainly for children, who don't mind being rushed along without regard for logic or realism or any form of subtlety. In fact children are apt to be annoyed with anything that impedes the bare bones of the plot, so that a few minutes of love interest is denounced as "mush." Of course, if it is done well enough, you have something like Raiders of the Lost Ark, which I enjoyed tremendously, even if there were parts that made no sense at all.
2) You can go to the other extreme, if you wish, and virtually eliminate the plot. There need be no sense of connected events. You might simply have a series of vignettes as in Woody Allen's Radio Days. Or you might tell a story that is designed merely to create a mood or evoke an emotion or illuminate a facet of the human condition. This, too, is not for everyone, although, done well, it is satisfying to the sophisticated end of the reader (or viewer) spectrum. The less sophisticated may complain that the story is not a story and ask "But what does it mean?" or "What happened?" The plotless story is rather like free verse, or abstract art, or atonal music. Something is given up that most people imagine to be inseparable from the art form, but which, if done well (and my goodness, is it hard to do it well), transcends the form and gives enormous satisfaction to those who can follow the writer into the more rarefied realms of the art.
3) What pleases the great middle-people who are not children or semi-literate adults, but who are not cultivated esthetes, either-are stories that have distinct plots, plots that are filled-out successfully, one way or another, with non-plot elements of various types. I'll mention a few.
3a) You can use the plot as a way of bringing in humor or satire. Read books by P. G. Wodehouse, or Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer or Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby.
3b) You can use the plot to develop an insight into the characters of the individuals who people the story. The great literary giants, such as Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Tolstoy, Dostoyevksy, do this supremely well. Since human beings and their relationships with each other and with the universe are far more complex and unpredictable than are simple events, the ability to deal with "characterization " successfully is often used as a way of defining "great literature."
3c) You can use the plot to develop ideas. The individuals who people the story may champion alternate views of life and the universe, and the struggle may be one in which each side tries to persuade or force the other into adopting its own worldview. To do this properly, each side must present its view (ostensibly to each other, but really to the reader) and the reader must be enticed into favoring one side or another so that he can feel suspense over which side will win. Done perfectly, the two opposing views should represent not white and black, but two grays of slightly different shades so that the reader cannot make a clear-cut decision but must think and come to conclusions of his own. I go into greater detail on this version than on the other two, because this is what I do.
There are many other ways of dealing with plot, but the important thing to remember is that they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. A humorous novel can be full of quite serious ideas and develop interesting characters, for instance.
On the other hand, writers can, more or less deliberately, sacrifice some elements of plot buildups in their anxiety to do, in great detail, what it is they want to do. I am so intent on presenting my opposing ideas, for instance, that I make no serious attempt to characterize brilliantly or to drench the tale in humor.
As a result, much is made of my "cardboard characters" and I am frequently accused of being "talky." But these accusations usually come from critics who don't see (or perhaps lack the intelligence to see) what it is that I am trying to do.
But I'm sure that this is not what Ms. Sullivan meant when she said I had "the greatest mind for plot."
I rather think she means that my stories (especially my novels) have very complicated plots that hang together and have no loose ends, that don't get in the way of the ideas I present in my stories, and that are not obscured by those ideas, either.
Now, how is that done?
I wish I could tell you. All I'm aware of is that it takes a great deal of hard thinking, and that between the thinking and the writing that I must do, there is little time for me to do anything else.
Fortunately, I both think and write very quickly and with almost no dithering, so I can get a great deal done.
Which brings me to another part of the interview. The reporter speaks of my apartment as "filled with eclectic, utilitarian furniture chosen more for comfort than for style, much like Asimov's wardrobe.
For a recent speaking engagement, he wore a Western tie, a too-big jacket, and a striped shirt with the kind of long wide collar that was popular in the 1970s."
She's absolutely right. As far as style is concerned, I'm a shambles. It doesn't bother me, though.
To learn to live and dress with full attention to style would require hours upon umpteen hours of thought, of education, of decision-making, and so on. And that takes time I don't want to subtract from my writing.
What would you rather have? Asimov, the prolific writer, or Asimov, the fashion plate? I warn you. You can't have them both.
Nevertheless, I can't always turn these things down because I'm not really a misanthrope, and because I do like to talk about myself. (Oh, you noticed?)
As a result of one such interview, an article about me appeared in the Miami Herald of August 20, 1988. It was a long article and quite favorable (the headline read "The Amazing Asimov") and it had very few inaccuracies in it. It did quote me, to be sure, as saying that my book The Sensuous Dirty Old Man was "nauseating." That is wrong. I said that the books it satirized, The Sensuous Woman and The Sensuous Man, were nauseating. My book was funny.
It also quoted me as saying that I considered "Nightfall" to be my best story. I don't, not by a long shot. I said it was my "best-known " story, a different thing altogether.
Usually any reporter who interviews me is willing to let it go at that, but the Miami Herald reporter was more enterprising. She asked questions of my dear wife, Janet, and of my brother, Stan, who's a vice-president at the Long Island Newsday. Both said nice things, but then they both like me.
However, she also consulted someone who teaches a course in science fiction at Rutgers University. Her name is Julia Sullivan, and I don't think I know her, though it is clear from what she is quoted as saying that she is a woman of luminous intelligence and impeccable taste.
She praised my clarity and wit, for instance, but I'm used to that. The thing is, she is also quoted as saying about me that "he surprises me. Sometimes I think he's written himself out, and then he comes up with something really good...He has the greatest mind for plot of any science fiction writer."
That's nice!
I can't recall anyone praising me for my plots before, and so, of course, it got me to thinking about the whole process of plotting.
A plot is an outline of the events of a story. You might say, for instance, "There's this prince, see? His father has recently died and his mother has married his uncle, who becomes the new king. This upsets the prince who hoped to be king himself and who doesn't like the uncle anyway. Then he hears that the ghost of his dead father has been seen-"
The first thing you have to understand is that a plot is not a story, any more than a skeleton is a living animal. It's simply a guide to the writer, in the same way that a skeleton is a guide to a paleontologist as to what a long-extinct animal must have looked like. The paleontologist has to fill in the organs, muscles, skin, etc. all around the skeleton, and that's not feasible except for a trained person. Hence, if you give the plot of Hamlet to a non-writer, that will not help him produce Hamlet or anything even readable.
Well, then, how do you go about building a story around the plot?
1) You can, if you wish, make the plot so detailed and so complex that you don't have to do much in the way of "building." Events follow one another in rapid succession and the reader (or viewer) is hurried from one suspense-filled situation to another. You get this at a low level in comic strips and in the old movie serials of the silent days. This is recognized as being suitable mainly for children, who don't mind being rushed along without regard for logic or realism or any form of subtlety. In fact children are apt to be annoyed with anything that impedes the bare bones of the plot, so that a few minutes of love interest is denounced as "mush." Of course, if it is done well enough, you have something like Raiders of the Lost Ark, which I enjoyed tremendously, even if there were parts that made no sense at all.
2) You can go to the other extreme, if you wish, and virtually eliminate the plot. There need be no sense of connected events. You might simply have a series of vignettes as in Woody Allen's Radio Days. Or you might tell a story that is designed merely to create a mood or evoke an emotion or illuminate a facet of the human condition. This, too, is not for everyone, although, done well, it is satisfying to the sophisticated end of the reader (or viewer) spectrum. The less sophisticated may complain that the story is not a story and ask "But what does it mean?" or "What happened?" The plotless story is rather like free verse, or abstract art, or atonal music. Something is given up that most people imagine to be inseparable from the art form, but which, if done well (and my goodness, is it hard to do it well), transcends the form and gives enormous satisfaction to those who can follow the writer into the more rarefied realms of the art.
3) What pleases the great middle-people who are not children or semi-literate adults, but who are not cultivated esthetes, either-are stories that have distinct plots, plots that are filled-out successfully, one way or another, with non-plot elements of various types. I'll mention a few.
3a) You can use the plot as a way of bringing in humor or satire. Read books by P. G. Wodehouse, or Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer or Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby.
3b) You can use the plot to develop an insight into the characters of the individuals who people the story. The great literary giants, such as Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Tolstoy, Dostoyevksy, do this supremely well. Since human beings and their relationships with each other and with the universe are far more complex and unpredictable than are simple events, the ability to deal with "characterization " successfully is often used as a way of defining "great literature."
3c) You can use the plot to develop ideas. The individuals who people the story may champion alternate views of life and the universe, and the struggle may be one in which each side tries to persuade or force the other into adopting its own worldview. To do this properly, each side must present its view (ostensibly to each other, but really to the reader) and the reader must be enticed into favoring one side or another so that he can feel suspense over which side will win. Done perfectly, the two opposing views should represent not white and black, but two grays of slightly different shades so that the reader cannot make a clear-cut decision but must think and come to conclusions of his own. I go into greater detail on this version than on the other two, because this is what I do.
There are many other ways of dealing with plot, but the important thing to remember is that they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. A humorous novel can be full of quite serious ideas and develop interesting characters, for instance.
On the other hand, writers can, more or less deliberately, sacrifice some elements of plot buildups in their anxiety to do, in great detail, what it is they want to do. I am so intent on presenting my opposing ideas, for instance, that I make no serious attempt to characterize brilliantly or to drench the tale in humor.
As a result, much is made of my "cardboard characters" and I am frequently accused of being "talky." But these accusations usually come from critics who don't see (or perhaps lack the intelligence to see) what it is that I am trying to do.
But I'm sure that this is not what Ms. Sullivan meant when she said I had "the greatest mind for plot."
I rather think she means that my stories (especially my novels) have very complicated plots that hang together and have no loose ends, that don't get in the way of the ideas I present in my stories, and that are not obscured by those ideas, either.
Now, how is that done?
I wish I could tell you. All I'm aware of is that it takes a great deal of hard thinking, and that between the thinking and the writing that I must do, there is little time for me to do anything else.
Fortunately, I both think and write very quickly and with almost no dithering, so I can get a great deal done.
Which brings me to another part of the interview. The reporter speaks of my apartment as "filled with eclectic, utilitarian furniture chosen more for comfort than for style, much like Asimov's wardrobe.
For a recent speaking engagement, he wore a Western tie, a too-big jacket, and a striped shirt with the kind of long wide collar that was popular in the 1970s."
She's absolutely right. As far as style is concerned, I'm a shambles. It doesn't bother me, though.
To learn to live and dress with full attention to style would require hours upon umpteen hours of thought, of education, of decision-making, and so on. And that takes time I don't want to subtract from my writing.
What would you rather have? Asimov, the prolific writer, or Asimov, the fashion plate? I warn you. You can't have them both.
