The Weekend Writer: Droning On Some More About Story

Why am I going on and on about story when I'm supposed to be going on and on about writing and, specifically at this point, getting started on a writing project? You know, getting started on writing a story? I'm obsessing on this because story, in my meandering research on the subject, is very ill-defined. How can anyone do a job they can't define, if they don't really know what they're doing? I read once that organic writers (I'm one! I'm one!) will sometimes use an entire first draft just trying to find their story. That kind of thing makes writing hell, let me tell you. If we knew our story, if we could find the damn thing, before we started writing, wouldn't we work more efficiently and suffer less?

Well, that's my theory, and that's why I've developed a story obsession.

I've mentioned before that some people would say that story and plot are the same thing. There's a famous quote from E.M. Forster regarding the difference.

"The King died and then the Queen died is a story

The King died and then the Queen died from grief  is a plot."

I've never understood Forster's definitions. (But I never understood Forster's A Passage to India, either.) To me, "The King died and then the Queen died from grief" is the story. Something happened to someone and why it's significant. What Forster might have been trying to get at was that plot is supposed to have cause and effect--Plot Point A leads to Plot Point B, leads to C, and so one. Otherwise, you just have a list of unrelated events, as in "The King died and then the Queen died." But why is a list of unrelated events a story? 

"Story is an account of incidents or events that convey a deeper understanding of the human condition," according to Laura Cross at The Write Network. Doesn't that sound like "The King died and then the Queen died from grief?"  "Plot," Cross says, "is how those events are arranged to achieve an intended effect." 

So once we have our "account of incidents or events that convey a deeper understanding of the human condition" or our "something happened to somebody and so what?" we work those incidents to tell the story the way we want to.