Talk:Plot (narrative)/Archive 1

Archive 1

Discussion on 'mergefrom Elements of plot

VOTE on 'mergefrom Elements of plot

• Disagree— both have a lot of expansion possibilities, though some overlap will result. FrankB 21:05, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
• Agree. Should be merged. Stiles 03:54, 23 May 2006 (UTC)*
• Agree Same as Stiles. --Alexie 05:55, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Removing Disambiguation Proposal TEMPLATE

Due to the long lead time and null result, I'm removing the TEMPLATE from Plot at this time.

• If someone feels strongly on this, considering the little attention and few arguements listed here, I submit that you can reassert the template (I'll just comment it out) and that you would be well advised to then submit it to peer review or another RFC forum to give it better visibility.
• Letting such notices sit on an article for such a long time is contraindicated. Best wishes, FrankB 19:17, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

• "long lead time and null result"?? "Letting such notices sit on an article for such a long time is contraindicated"? Oh, please. That's ridiculous. We have a Template:Cleanup-date simply to sort articles which have been marked as needed attention by how many months they've been waiting for someone who sees how to do it. And the notice has been on this one less than a month and you're saying "well, sure, nothing that was wrong with the article has actually been fixed, but God knows we can't let the notice stay on there so long! It's much better to have this page serve as a discourse on plot in the narrative sense and also serve as a disambiguation page for data plotting, cemetary plots, garden plots, conspiracy plots and something the hell or other about epistemological historian Paul Veyne!" I'm restoring the notice. While I'm at it, I'm also removing the sandbox vandalism that you saved on top of. Yeah. I really believe you paid a lot of attention to this. -- Antaeus Feldspar 04:13, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

• Disagree. I personally don't agree that the article title should be split into a disambig page, as it is generic to and characteristic of most works in all forms of fiction. That an article is concise and short does not mean it is useless. I'll see what I can do to beef up the introduction and expand it some, but it may take a few days, so I'll add it to my TO-DO list.
• Agree. There should be a disambig page. Stiles 03:58, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
• Agree. There should be a disambig page. ZachsMind 20:46, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
• Disagree. There should be no disambig page, this page is a top level article which has been split per WP:SS and Wikipedia:Article series. There is nothing to disambiguate between, since the concept is the same, and Wikipedia should define that core concept. Hiding Talk 08:28, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

• Agree. As far as I can see, a disambig page could list three meanings of plot:
  • Plot as a system of incidents: As described in section one of this article.
  • Plot as small piece of land (e.g., on a cemetry, in a garden). I cannot imagine what should go into a whole article about this.
  • Plot as a graphical representation: Ground plan, map (e.g., of one or more plots in the second sense); drawn graphical representation of data. See section two, which already somewhat resembles a disambig list in itself.

I propose to split this article into Plot (with section one remaining here) and Plot (disambiguation), listing the other meanings with appropriate links as done in the rest of this article.--TowerDragon 23:31, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

• Disambiguate. User:TowerDragon's suggestion is better than nothing, but I think the disambiguation page should be plot & that this page be moved to plot (narrative) or plot (fiction). I am unconvinced that the other forms of "plot" form such a minority that most people who search for "plot" would expect a page on literature. It is distasteful that the half dozen alternative meanings of the word appear directly in this article. -- Karnesky (talk) 00:34, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Title

Can we please change the title to "Plot Elements"? It's shorter and easier on my mind when I have to search for plot elements. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aznpride05 (talk • contribs) 09:43, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

plot, what is it really? i mean the defenition should be changed right? well lets say that you are to write a two sentance plot of a 400 page book. can you do it? improbible. right? thats what i have to do and i totally don't know how. HELP!!!!!!!!!!!! -maja s. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.195.143.159 (talk) 01:34, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

FA drive

Two obvious things that need fixing (please feel free to expand)-- 1. The lead. sounds absoloutely unprofessional and does not give a good summary of the article. 2. Small sections like Subplot and Suspension of Disbelief need major expansion. Bardofcornish (talk) 02:26, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Plot Structure?

Where it is titled "beginnning, middle, and end" perhaps we should use more appropiate wording. For example, using these words, in this order: Exposition, Rising action ,Climax (turning point),Falling action, Resolution. The exposition is when an introduction of the characters and the settings are given. Rising action is the starting point point of an issue where is slowly rises and reaches the climax. The falling action is when the problems are revealed and the issue slowly calms down.And finally the resolution is where the story winds up with all the problems solved and everything back to normal just like in the beginning. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.165.193.165 (talk) 01:57, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Definition

I think that the definition of plot is not accurate, because it doesn't give the necessary information to understand the term properly. Moreover, the same word, "plot", is used in the definition, basically incorrect when explaining terms in any definition. On the other hand, I think it is important to provide a disambiguation page in order to extend the word definition to all the other possible subjects and meanings that are not directly related to literary/artistic uses of the word. csantama 08:36, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Also, "mood" is definitely not an element of plot, which is strictly who-what-when-where-why. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.81.61.63 (talk) 16:08, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Plot of historical events

This citation reminds me of another word. Perhaps he ment the context by this summ. of teh plot? 84.16.123.194 (talk) 23:02, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Foster-Harris references deleted?

Can someone tell me why all references to Foster-Harris have been deleted?

It's an interesting alternative view of plot. And this page is bare-bones.

-later-

Well, I'm giving up. My Talk page says this was an automatic Bot undo, to eliminate spam; but feel free to undo the Bot's undo if you want. I did that and nothing happened; I don't see what the problem is; it seems to me that if it weren't becoming so difficult to contribut to Wikipedia, this page wouldn't be so sparse. No reason for it to be this sparse: people have said and are saying a lot of things about plot; but it looks like whoever's running the forcefield isn't going to write it, and isn't going to let anyone else, either. Contributions/71.101.164.169 (talk) 18:39, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

What?

The previous two sections containing comments by 84.16.123.194 are unintelligible to me.Lestrade (talk) 16:56, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Entropy at Work

This page has been changed countless times, and It appears as though it has slowly but surely reverted back to its original form. When I read this page years ago, and my writers text book agrees with this...the parts of plot were usually worded Intro, Conflict, Complication, Climax, Denouement, Conclusion. The Exposition would be the combination of the Intro, Conflict, and Complication. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.231.158.114 (talk) 03:37, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

WRONG LINKS TO OTHER LANGUAGES

Plot = the events in a story ordered the way the author put them, following the development of his ideas... In slavic languages, this corresponds to "Sujet" (сюжет)... When you talk about the events in a story ordered in their chronological order (completely different from above), the word "fabula" (фабула) is used....

someone needs to fix this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.147.27.107 (talk) 16:18, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

History of Plot?

I'd like to include a section on the history of plot: starting with Aristotle, then Freytag (to contextualize what's already here) and on through to modern ideas of plot. (Notice that plot as it applies to drama and film is a slightly different animal than as it applies to novels, and both of these are different as it is currently being applied to video games.)

Any thoughts? 76.118.23.40 (talk) 19:27, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

All's been quiet; I've done it.76.118.23.40 (talk) 17:17, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Introduction

It would be more consistent with other articles if this article began with a summary/definition of what a plot is. I can see that it is difficult to do, which is why I have not attempted to do it myself--NicholasJones (talk) 21:17, 6 January 2005 (UTC)

Hideous Mongrelization of "Conflict" Section

I think this might be a consequence of (1) the fact that this page wasn't cited properly as being about Freytag's Pyramid (in its earlier, sparser incarnation) and (2) the result of a merge with a completely different way of talking about plot, which is discussed above.

Here we have a phase in Freytag's analysis of plot, which should be "Rising Action," called by the name of "Conflict." But to Freytag, "conflict" is introduced through the Exposition, and its final unveiling is what closes the Exposition phase and opens the Rising Action phase. Therefore, "Conflict" in this scheme ought to be a boundary between these two phases.

But what has happened here was that someone renamed "Rising Action" to "Conflict," which you can see would be an honest mistake, and then someone else saw a (probably pretty barren) section called "Conflict."

Then, I think through the merge with "Elements of Plot," we shoe-horned in an entirely different theory (of narrative conflict) in to this now-badly-named phase of Freytag's scheme, because it was also called "Conflict." In fact, you can see merged material in a well-attributed form in the Conflict (narrative) section.

Therefore, the solution I'm following is (1) to take out most of the content of the faulty "conflict" section, (2) to haul out Freytag's book and rewrite that section (and its sibling sections as needed), and (3) to put in a *different section* with a brief overview of the Conflict (narrative) material, with a link to that main article.

How does that sound? -- If all's quiet in a few days, I'll go ahead with this. Freytag also has some interesting stuff about "play and counter-play" that I might put in...

This means that, if that "conflict" section goes missing, it's for these reasons, and it's being replaced by two properly separated sections, as described above. 76.118.23.40 (talk) 17:17, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Page Locked?

This page appears to have been locked. Looking at the history, it seems there's been a bit of vandalism. So the lock is fine; but there's current vandalism (or a nonsensical typo, at least) in the section on the last phase of Freytag's Pyramid.

That section begins "5th -" ...and then the article begins. Whoever's locked the page, please correct that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.185.61.194 (talk) 01:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

plot

what is a plot for a story ?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.147.121.168 (talk) 20:17, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm confused...

I'm confused, and I don't think the articles about story, plot and narrative are helping people understand terms like story, plot and narrative at all. In fact I think Wikipedia is confusing people and have them learn things that are completely wrong.

This is how I've learned story, plot and narrative. A story is simply a sequence of events. A plot is what actually happened. However the narrative is what the reader or viewer get to see and hear of the plot. There. Simple. Or am I completely wrong? --Kebman (talk) 10:04, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Merge with Dramatic structure

This article is almost identical to Dramatic structure, basically an article about Freytag's pyramid. Suggest merge.--Mongreilf (talk) 08:52, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

That's true, it is; but this is because the Plot page is sparse, and it's sparse because people keep reverting it every time someone adds something. Plot (which is a function of narrative) is a far broader topic than dramatic structure (which concerns dramas). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.118.23.40 (talk) 18:58, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

As I've learned it, the plot is what you build the narrative around, or out of. Thus the plot isn't in itself the narrative, but comprises the basic story element before they are presented to the reader or viewer, in the form of a narrative. The structure is then that the plot is the whole story as it really happened, while the narrative is how this story is presented to the reader or listener, for instance trough the eyes of a certain character, or told in a way as to hide certain important plot points in order to create excitement. Thus the narrative is in my opinion more closely related to dramatic structure (i.e. those techniques used to create drama, excitement, fear, etc, in the reader or viewer) rather than the plot. --Kebman (talk) 11:44, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Word salad

Large parts of this entry are incoherent.

 Comment: Thank you for pointing that out. I removed irrelevant sentences and paragraphs.--Mat Lorn Seeker (talk) 03:10, 18 November 2014 (UTC)