Significance of Plot in Literature

All plays, novels, and epic poems have a plot. Though more recent post-modernist writers have tried to get around the necessity of plot, every story ultimately revolves around the events that happen. In many plots, authors create a certain sense of inevitability, so that the reader can trace back the conclusion of the story to minor inciting incidents and say, “If only ___ hadn’t happened.”

Many authors and literary scholars have described both how plots work and the most frequent plots in literature. The most common understanding of plot is that of a pyramid, as originally posited by the German novelist Gustav Freitag. This pyramid consists of exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement.

Leo Tolstoy famously once said that, “All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” Of course, many stories are much more complicated than this simple binary, and indeed many stories include both plots (for example, the Star Wars series has both elements). Other theorists break plots into three groups: man versus nature; man versus man; man versus self. Still other writers have enumerated more “master plots,” such as:

§  Forbidden love

§  Underdog

§  Revenge

§  Rivalry

§  Metamorphosis

§  Discovery