Plot Anxiety
Syndrome
by Anita G.
Gorman
He could feel
his palms start to sweat, his heartbeat quicken,
his head begin to throb. He tapped his fingers
nervously on the desk and his right foot
frenetically on the floor. He could feel it
coming, his monthly neurosis that took its toll
on his body. Chauncey’s writing group was
meeting on Monday night, and it was Sunday
evening. Thirty days of sloth were now catching
up; Chauncey was suffering from Plot Anxiety
Syndrome.
He knew the
importance of plot. Aristotle himself called plot
the most important part of drama, didn’t he?
Sure, Aristotle had never read a short story, but
Chauncey agreed that plot was important, even if
some modern writers paid no attention to it. And
plots had to follow the principles of probability
and necessity. According to old Aristotle, a plot
had to be believable, possible in some way, even
if outlandish—think some of those Greek
myths. And the events had to follow each other in
some logical way. Necessity—Chauncey figured
that necessity meant that if a person jumped off
a bridge, he would go down and not up. Most of
the time, at any rate.
Chauncey
needed to find a plot, any plot, before Monday’s
meeting. He started thinking about strange
happenings reported in the newspaper. They
happened, but were they probable? He remembered
the university president who made obscene phone
calls from the mahogany desk in his great big
office. When women complained to the police, the
cops traced the calls right back to the important
guy with the Ph.D. Ironic as well as baffling,
but not a good short-story plot; it somehow
lacked credibility.
How about the
news story about the ten-year-old girl who
attached a note to a balloon at a party? The note
was picked up by another ten-year-old girl with
the same exact name and the same pets (guinea pig!
black Lab!) who lived 150 miles away. Aristotle
would say, “Not probable, and please pass
the stuffed grape leaves.” And here’s
something else that he might have said: “So
what does the coincidence signify? After you say,
'Wow, what a coincidence!' what else is there to
ponder?"
So even if
some really crazy thing happened, Chauncey
figured he couldn’t use it if it violated
those probability and necessity thingies. And
even if the plot was believable and probable,
what if it was also stupid or silly or of no
importance whatsoever?
Somewhere he
had read that there were only two plots: someone
goes on a journey, and a stranger comes to town.
He supposed that Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey combined
both: the Greek strangers come to call on the
Trojans, and then they have a tough time making
the journey back home. So how does that
university president fit in? Is he the stranger
who comes to town, this time over the telephone
lines?
Chauncey
needed to make some decisions. “OK,” he
said to himself, “here’s an idea: a
university president makes obscene phone calls,
after which he confesses his deeds in a note
attached to a balloon that he sends up into the
air. The balloon and the note are picked up by
the police 150 miles away." Satisfied with
the night’s work, Chauncey retired to his
bed. He had become a real writer.
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